MICROADVENTURES, A REFRESH BUTTON FOR EVERYDAY LIVES

– ALASTAIR HUMPREYS

 

After five days of working in the city we need to get out.  By Friday it doesn’t matter where we go as long as we’re away from the hustle and bustle, city lights, and crowds of people.  We want to sit in front of the campfire with friends, watch the stars come out, and fall asleep to the sound of a nearby creek.

We made the drive to Chehalis Lake, just west of Harrison Lake near the District of Mission with our friends Alex and Alison.  In 2007 a rock slide triggered a tsunami on the lake that destroyed two campgrounds and flooded a third.  The Chehalis slide is said to be second in size only to the Hope slide (the largest recorded in British Columbia history.)  Lucky for us, we enjoyed calm waters that were warm enough to swim in on the last weekend on September.

But how did we get there?  How do you find awesome backroads to drive on and epic places to camp?  (To be honest,  in this case Alex had actually done the hard work and scouted the location earlier in the week.)

One great resource includes the map found on the British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests website.  This map shows backroads (and their conditions), camping, and hiking spots.  Spend some quality time on here and Google Earth to figure out the general area you’d like to go to.  After you have chosen your route and you’re in the woods (without cell reception) what do you do?  That’s when you pull out your Backroad Mapbook.  We’ve got a hard copy version, but you can also download a GPS map for your Garmin or a PDF version for your tablet.

Alastair Humphreys coined the term #microadventure.  This video he put together is a nice motivator to get out of town, even if it’s for a single night.  We did just that for a single Saturday night.  But, with dirt still on our truck and the smell of campfire in our hair are refreshed enough (with the help of a little coffee) to start our Monday morning and make our way through another workweek… well, almost.

After checking out the photos below, make sure to check out Alex and Alison’s blog post for even more!

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