Day Hike on Mt. Seymour

From Vancouver, the view of mountains in the not-so-distant distance is pretty alluring. Mt. Seymour is just one of the several mountains visible from Vancouver, and last Sunday we took advantage of the non-rainy weekend weather to head out of the city for a day hike.

Dave's friend-slash-colleague Evan had agreed to be our hiking buddy for the day, so we scooped him up around 11am and headed north to Mt. Seymour. The drive takes less than an hour - one of the many benefits of living in Vancouver is how quickly you can be in the mountains!

We parked in Mt. Seymour's lower parking lot, got ourselves booted up (plus I threw on some snowshoes for good measure), and began our hike!

.  trailhead  .

The Seymour Main Trail for winter hiking/snowshoeing goes up alongside the alpine ski trails of the mountain, so we could see/hear skiers and snowboarders along the way. Also - views on views on views:

.  view of the alpine ski trails  .

.  snow  .

.  where we stopped for lunch  .

Mt. Seymour supposedly has three different peaks to reach, the third being the true summit at 4,754 feet.  It's a bit confusing to tell where the first peak is, though, IF YOU ASK ME. For awhile we had ourselves convinced we'd already reached the first peak - in record time, mind you - but apparently we'd made that announcement a little prematurely. Or a lot prematurely. We hit the actual first peak about an hour and a half later. And then we called it quits, because although we could see both of the next two peaks from the first one... it was apparent that our views would be best from the first. 

.  finally at the first peak, behind me  .

.  view from the top of the first peak, looking northwest  .

.  top of the world  .

.  looking south from the first summit of mt. seymour  .
.  view of vancouver and english bay  .

Coming down a snowy mountain on a beautiful day is a lot more fun than climbing up it, because you can glissade down!! Glissade is mountain-lingo for "slide on ya bum." You can't slide down the entire mountain, obviously, but you can do it in certain parts. It saves time and #LetsBeHonest it's fun as shit. We even scooted off the trail to purposely climb up another trail... just so we could slide down it. Here's some of that happening:

.  glissading!!  .

.  whooooooo  .

Sidebar, this will make your ass hurt. I still have that "there should really be a bruise here" feeling in one large area of my bum/upper thigh. Worth it.

.  very approximated version of our trail - except ours was under snow  .
.  click for larger view  .

. the three ALLEGED summits  .

Hopefully I'll end up on Mt. Seymour again this summer to see what it's like sans snow. There are lots of other trails around the mountain to explore as well, so maybe we can even make it one of our go-to weekend hiking spots, since it's so close to Vancouver!