The Squamidian Report – Oct. 9 / 04

For the ‘ON LINE’ version of this newsletter, go to:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/2004/oct09.htm

Also in this issue:

The Ontarion

Hi All,

Because of the limited amount of storage space I’m aloud on each web site I set up through my ISP account, both my sites were starting to get a bit crowded. Each site is aloud up to 10MB of space and I’m aloud up to 7 sites so total space is not the issue. I’ve now streamlined both my sites, removing most of the duplication. Now, the ‘doug_b’ site concentrates on being my Brubacher Family web site while the ‘doug_b2’ site is dedicated to the Squamidian Report and related items. Both full addresses are shown at the bottom of this newsletter. The only reason I’ve never bothered with setting up my own domain through a dedicated web hosting server is that I haven’t been able to come up with a domain name I’m happy with. This is all totally irreverent and has no bearing on you what so ever.

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When we get a rainstorm spinning in off the Pacific or the Gulf of Alaska, it sure rains. The rain does not come down in buckets, it comes down in barrels. Every rock face has it’s own temporary waterfalls. Every river and stream becomes a boiling turbulent spectacle. We spent Friday morning at the job site in Britannia trying to control the runoff, digging and repairing drainage ditches and swales so that we wouldn’t loose the whole project down the side of the mountain. Kind of fun actually.

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I know I’m running the risk of loosing your interest by writing about yet another bike ride up into the high country but I’ve got to tell you about this adventure. It got a bit hairy for a while, but in the end everything worked out fine.

Because we were having such beautiful warm sunny clear weather we decided to do the Brohm Ridge assent again. The other time we tried Brohm it was pea soup fog the whole way. This time a neighbour who has a dirt bike decided to tag along with us. Now this man, who is a few years older than me, claims to have ridden pretty well every back road in this part of BC. So we naturally believed that his skill level would be at least par with our abilities. And while he may have been very skilled at one time, he is a bit rusty now.

For starters, let me assure you that there had been some benefits to ascending Brohm in the fog. We could not see how daunting and exposed some of the long steep sections of trail actually are. It was not the same wild rush to take a tight steep switchback turn when you couldn’t see that there was virtually nothing below over the side.

We had taken it fairly slow working our way up and by noon we were on the Ridge having lunch, where I took a bunch of pictures. The link to those pictures is below. After that, Warren expressed an interest in hiking a bit further on up toward the peak area. That section is way to rugged for our bikes. I would have joined him but our third bike man Don wasn’t interested in that so I stayed with him and we sat in the shade enjoying the view. He grew restless after a while because the horseflies or whatever were bugging him. He decided to climb back on his bike and ride around on his own.

I headed up the hiking trail and met Warren making his way back. By the time we got back to where our bikes were there was no sign of Don. We scanned the area and saw no one. Our conclusion was that he had decided to start working his way back down. We set off heading down. Now ‘down’ is even harder than up as I’ve mentioned several times in the past. We finally met a 4x4 working it’s way up by the time we had gone well past the chalet area. When I inquired, they said they had not seen anyone headed down. Damn.

So I scooted all the way back up, this time moving quite a bit faster than I would normally ride. At the top I rode to a couple of vantage points scanned all around. No sight of him. Now there are several alternative routes down off the area, one of them branching off from down below where we talked to the 4x4 driver. It was always possible that Don had taken an alternate route by accident. When I got back down to were Warren had waited for me we headed on down, eventually getting to where his truck was parked. Still no sign of Don and no one we checked with had seen him. Warren loaded up his bike and headed home. I rode back down to Squamish and home so I could check with Don’s wife and see if he had turned up.

She said no, but that she had gotten a static garbled hard to hear cell call from him that he was over the backside of Brohm where he had crashed on the far side of a small steep ridge. He couldn’t get his bike out of where it was. I phoned Warren and we met back at the parking area after fuelling up our bikes. By now it was after 3 in the afternoon and we had a lot of country to cover before dark. We did not want to get caught up there once the sun went down.

We had to make some choices, the first one being which route to follow back up. As we really did not no for sure what he had meant by the ‘backside of Brohm’ we decided to follow the most likely trail he would have taken if he were actually off the main trail, on a ‘back’ one. Let me tell you, we needed to cover a lot of country is a short period of time so we pushed our bikes and ourselves pretty hard. I must say Warren did a pretty good job of keeping up. Just short of where this trail would come back out onto the main one we met a 4x4. He informed us that a dirt biker had found Don and helped him get himself and his bike running again and headed back down the right way. Don had been up on top all along. He had even seen me looking for him but had been down over the slope of the ridge and quite far away where I hadn’t been able to spot him.

Now we had to decide which direction to head as we didn’t know when he had been ‘found’. We headed on up the main route almost to the chalet. At this point I checked with my cell phone and someone had tried to call. Can’t hear those things when you are riding a motorcycle and wearing a helmet. I tried Don’s number and to my relief he answered. He had just finally made it down to where Warren’s truck was parked. He was tired, sore and bruised, his bike battered a bit. He would rest at the truck and wait for us. We had a fast hard ride back down. Probably covered what would normally take us an hour and a half in about 45 minutes. Don’s biggest injury was to his ego.

We all went back to his place, tired and hungry. His wife ordered pizza and we spent the evening talking and laughing about our adventure. And we hadn’t run out of daylight to our vast relief. It would have been a real bummer to have had to call search and rescuer. I don’t know if Don’s wife will let him come out and play with us again or not.

Check out the pictures we took:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/Pictures/brohm.htm

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THE ONTARION REPORT

OCTOBER 9, 2004

Like we’ve all said before “Isn’t it amazing how quickly these weeks fly by”? The month of September has been absolutely incredible weather wise and now October is turning out to be just as nice. I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful day than the one we just had. It’s nice to see that the five day forecast has nothing but pure sunshine in it as well. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this “Summer” spell lasts a good long while yet.

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Carole and I were watching the news in Washington state tonight and it’s interesting how many people are staying within a dangerous distance of the Mt St Helen’s eruption zone. Do these people have a death wish or what? I guess they think they’re going to miss something if they leave. Scientists are now saying that they don’t think the impending eruption will be as severe as the one in 1980. The blast is supposed to be of the same magnitude but will be directed more vertically than the previous one. If the mountain blows in the next 24 hrs, the smoke and ash will drift northeasterly. I’m not sure exactly what is in that direction but isn’t Calgary in that general position? I guess we’ll find out when she blows.

I personally have never seen a natural disaster that compares with this volcanic activity and actually I have no desire to witness such an event. With all the horrific natural disasters that have happened in the Northern Hemisphere over the past few months we are very lucky to live in a quiet area such as we do.

Carole and I are taking a drive in the MG today and will likely end up somewhere near Long Point Beach on Lake Erie. We used to vacation there when I was a kid and I’d like to see if the same cottage is still there. Friends of my parents had the cottage and their name was Doubleday. I remember going down to the “Penny Arcade” on the main road and spending hours playing the games. My recollections of the area are vague now but I think I’ll still be able to find the cottage. Lake Erie beach towns tend not to change much but now that I’ve said that, Long Point will probably resemble Miami Beach. The sand there was the best part of the vacation. I used to make sand castles and bury my dad with it. That was some feat since my dad was 5’ 10” and weighed in at around 250 lbs. I remember being able to walk out from shore for what seemed like a mile. The water was always warm and clean. I wonder if it’s still as clear as it was back then. Hmmmmmm probably not! I took my first boat ride on Lake Erie in Mr Doubleday’s cedar strip 18’ outboard. The waves seemed like mountains that day. The boat pitched right out of the water at times as we scooted over the crests. I was so petrified that I think my fingernail marks are still in that wooden seat to this day. Actually, that boat I believe sank in Long Point harbour the year after our last summer there. It always did leak a lot. Mr Doubleday had to keep one of us bailing all the time when we were out fishing in it. The other thing that I remember from those vacations was the extremely hot sun. It seemed that the sun was much hotter there than back in KW. I had the worst sunburn of my life the summer that I was 11. Just before school ended that spring, I got hit on the end of my little finger by a soccer ball. A friend of mine kicked it to me and as I stuck out my hand to block the ball, it hit me smack dab on the end of the finger. Of course the finger was broken. The bones were split from the tip to the big knuckle. I had to have a cast on the hand for 6 weeks. This made for a pretty boring summer. My mum would place a plastic bag over my hand with an elastic around the wrist to keep the cast dry when I went in the water. I was floating around most of the day with my arm resting on an air mattress. Of course there was no such thing as sun block in those days. You just burned and then your mother would put Noxema on the burned shoulders that night. This particular time, I woke up in the morning with huge blisters the size of Ziplock sandwich bags hanging on my shoulders and back. It was the most painful thing! With a sunburn like that, I was made to keep a shirt on and stay out of the sun for the rest of the week. What a disappointment that was for a young kid. The only saving grace was that it meant I had to spend more time in the penny arcade. I’m anxious to see what’s left of the Long Point we knew as kids so I think I’ll call it a day for this Ontarion. I should get things ready so we can be on the road before noon. I’ll let you all know how things in Long Point are these days in next weeks Ontarion. Until then, have a great week and stay safe!

Bye for now…….GREG.

PS: Something to Think About>

We first make our habits then our habits make us.

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The family site:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/

The Squamidian site:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/

Have a good one..

the doug