dinky peak.

Its 6:45am and I have been woken up precisely 3 times thru the night. Once because small child needed to pee and two other times because small child's blankets are 'all scrunched up'.  There's no point trying to sleep in anymore so I wake up and get the kids ready for our adventure hike at Mount Seymour. Husband and I talk endlessly about how 'big' the kids are and how strong their legs are getting and how even though we have 2 hiking packs, it is only for emergencies like running quickly away from a grizzly bear. Older sister seems to be buying into this propaganda and starts marching and chanting, "I am never going to give up!!" Sadly, younger brother says he is too tired to even put on his socks....

We make the drive to Mt. Seymour and meet up with family all ready with their snowshoes. Sadly, snowshoers can't park at the start of the hiking trail so we have to walk 1 km before we even get to the trail head. After adjusting mittens, toques, boots 27 times, we have walked for about 10 minutes and younger brother starts whining that he is too tired and then goes boneless. I hate it when he goes boneless. At least, we know remember from our experience of hiking up the Grouse Grind with them last year that its futile to tell him that he's not tired or to remind him of his strong legs...what actually works is to ignore the wails and start telling them a made-up story (usually with poor plot line and character development but involves batman, monsters and unicorns). It works. They are immediately interested and whiny child and older sister make it to the trail head. Small win. I reward with gummies. Husband and I are slightly concerned that it took so much effort to make it to the beginning to the trail but when the kids see that the trail is marked with orange poles we tell them that it's just like the arrows on the floor at IKEA and they need to just keep finding the next pole. This totally works and they kids mood immediately shifts and they traipse through the winter wonderland racing from one marker to the next.

catching snowflakes

riding 'snow ponies'

We had planned to hike to Dog Mountain but the sign must of been buried in the snow because we missed the turn off for it. However,  clever husband knows these mountains so well and takes us all on a new trail to Dinky Peak.
The skies open up and the sun is shinning when we make it to the top of Dinky peak. I don't know why they call it Dinky Peak, it is not dinky at all, the view is quite breath-taking.

This is the perfect lunch spot. We document this achievement extensively.

So proud that older sister hiked the whole trail and younger brother didn't need to go in the pack until the last half hour. I wasn't wearing a watch but I think it took us 4 hours to hike probably 3 kms but at least we all got out there and conquered a mountain. Well at least conquered a dinky peak. That's a win!