Well that was fun!
How did we end up hiking up Seymour Saturday evening with headlamps and camp overnight?
It wasn’t even planned. Like at all. This whole trip came to fruition in a few hours. It started on Saturday morning when I woke up to what feels like EVERYONE posting pictures and messaging me about the northern lights. My sister sent me this picture she took:
“Oh it was spectacular!”
“Oh you didn’t see it? That’s too bad, it was glorious!”
“Oh you went to bed after the Canucks lost in overtime? You should have stayed up”
“It was amazing, SO many people were at the beach watching it too. Look at my pictures…”
So I started Saturday morning feeling major FOMO (fear of missing out) and I so disappointed that this spectacular event may never happen again in my lifetime in metro Vancouver. I went into a bit of a rabbit hole of articles on Northern light viewing and even downloaded the Aurora app (yes, there's an app for that!) It said to head somewhere away from lights and face north and look between 8:00pm to 2:00am. It said there might be a chance that May 11 could have a chance of seeing northern lights like the incredible light show that was on Friday evening. So I jokingly said, “What am I going to do? Hike up Seymour and set up a tent for the possibility of a glimpse of northern lights ??”
Of course my sensible and practical husband tried to talk me out of this and suggested driving to Iona beach or another location rational humans would gather for this opportunity.
I asked my kids how crazy would it be to hike up Seymour after dinner and tent in the snow overnight. They responded with, “that would be MOM crazy” (I didn’t even know that was an adjective for the level of crazy)
But the more I thought about the idea of it, the more appealing it sounded. Night hike! Snow camping! Constellations! Possibly Northern lights! Mountain sunrise!
The mountains are calling and I must go!
So I asked a couple of like-minded friends how crazy this idea was. Both of them it was a great idea and one said his family would be up for it. So by Saturday afternoon it became a real thing and then it was the mad scramble to prepare. None of our camping stuff was out yet so it was a race to find the camping stuff and then borrow extra packs and a lightweight tent from friends and jam everything in the packs.
The great thing about Mt Seymour is that it’s so accessible, we scrambled to pack, scarfed down supper and made it to the overnight P2 parking lot just after 8:00pm. We met up with the other crazy family and started hiking around 8:30pm just as the sun was starting to set.
I should have packed crampons because the snow was slushy and with the heavy pack it was not easy hiking. We made it to Brockton point in about an hour and the kids declared that we shouldn’t go any further and it was the perfect spot.
And it really was. We had a great view of the twinkling city lights in one direction and the glorious mountains in the other direction. This is snow camping so there are no tent pads. Based on my scrambled research about how to snow camp, you're supposed to find a flat area and pack down the snow. So we found the flattish spot we could find on the top of Brockton Point and we stomped around on the snow hoping that would make it a more suitable campground. We set up the tent successfully in the dark with our headlamps on. And then we took it all in…
Little Brother was cold and tired so he fell asleep almost right after we set up the tent. We joked that he’s in all the pictures because he was asleep inside the tent for all the pictures. Big Sis stayed awake til past 11:30 and then she went to sleep too. Honestly, I thought the northern lights would get brighter as we stayed up later but the glow was pretty much the same from 11:00pm til 1:00am when we finally crawled into our tents. We didn't see the bright red, pink, purple colors that everyone saw on Friday night but at least the cameras captured some of the colors and with the mountains and the constellations, it still looks pretty spectacular.
I wish I had slept that night but I didn’t. Sadly I forgot to pack an extra pair of socks and the ones I had on were wet from all the snow inside my hiking shoes. The good part about freezing and not sleeping was that by 5:15am, I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep so I just got up and sat and watched the sunrise above the mountains and that was pretty cool. So no breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day, everyone was still asleep in the tent but peace and quiet and gorgeous sunrise was a pretty great way to start Mothers Day.
I don’t think anyone slept well but I was impressed no one complained. The kids had great attitudes when they woke up, we had leftover cookies and candy (breakfast of champions) and we packed up our tent and trekked back down.
Sometimes the best things are spontaneous and this was one of them! Hopefully, the kids look back at the video of our adventure and say, "Our mom is crazy but that was totally worth it!"
