Mt Seymour 1st Peak 2020-08-09

[Mark Latham]

Mt Seymour is a popular half-day hike near Vancouver, which our club does several times every year. But this time was a bit different, for these reasons:

1. It took advantage of the new BC Parks day use pass system. Normally I avoid weekend crowds by just hiking on weekdays. But the passes help limit crowding, so I tried this on a Sunday. Also, the separate day use passes for AM vs PM fit well with the weather pattern in reason #2:

2. I don’t think this happened so often 10 years ago, but in recent years we often see cloudy (& sometimes rainy) weather in the morning, followed by sunshine after 2pm or so. The forecast for this day looked like that. So I scheduled the hike to start at 1pm.

3. The NSHikers classification for this hike is A2a (see GPS track & stats), but I planned to go at a faster pace than most of our “A hikers” would find comfortable. So I flagged that by calling it a “fast A2a”. (If you’re a logged-in member, you can see the original scheduling post here.)

I posted it with less than 24 hours’ notice, so wasn’t surprised that only four of us went on this hike.

Day use passes are harder to get on the weekend, so I was at my computer logged in before 6am when reservations open on the morning of the hike. I had no problem reserving four of the “PM” passes by 6:02am, and noted that at 6:06 there were still more than 8 passes available. (This contrasts with passes for Garibaldi Park hikes, which I’d seen disappear within seconds on weekends.)

I went back to sleep. Later at 9:26am I noted that both AM and PM passes for Seymour were all gone.

We were cautious about social distancing. Even though the club now allows carpooling, we each drove separately and met by the washrooms near the trailhead.

The BC Parks reservation system was very slow to email me the passes: I didn’t receive them until 2:44pm, when we were already hiking. But I had learned previously that the confirmation number is sufficient. I saved it from a confirmation screen at the time. It was also available online at Your Account > Your Passes.

The trail was a bit more crowded than I had expected, with a large group starting out the same time as we did. This made us wonder whether AM pass holders can still be on the trails for hours after 1pm. I guess they can, as long as they start before 1pm. Next time I try this, we might start at 2pm.

The weather forecast turned out to be quite accurate: mixed clouds & sun when we started, clearing to blue skies by the end. A beautiful day!  🙂

I plan to try more of these “fast afternoon hikes”…

— Mark

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