Red Heather Chaos: Hot Chocolate Tasting, Overslept Alarms, and Tree Wells – A Trip to Remember

Trip date: Saturday, March 15^th

Trip participants: Ann-Cathrin (AC) Muller, Sri Chaitanya, Diego Fernandez, Le Tra Mi Do, JJ James, Lucile Paschal, Eemaan Alam, Ellen Scott, Roseisa Weeraratne, Faisal Maqbool, Tristan Lefferts, Joanne Ho, Zack Peachell, Cecily Downs, Ivana Sanchez Olivares, Tejas Vijay, Duncan MacIntyre, Andrew Carriere, Yuze Zhou, Sarah Tischer, Toji Nakabayashi, Eleanor Hsiun

Note: this trip report is a messed-up tale, where I both tell the general story of the trip, but also add some fun anecdotes about my experience attempting to ski for the third time in my life

Ever since Marie’s Bring Your Own Cheese trip to Semaphore Lakes back in September have I been inclined to organise a similar trip myself. Combined with my search for the best hot chocolate in Vancouver, I quickly came to the conclusion that I simply have to host a hot chocolate tasting somewhere in the backcountry. The idea was to have everybody bring their own powder / solid chocolate / spices etc., and have everybody try each other’s creations sitting somewhere in the snow.

For context, this was my first time leading a proper trip (I don’t count the walking a marathon one), and only about my third time on skis. So, I very much knew that I will likely face a few challenges.

The first issue arose while we were still driving along the Sea To Sky. I suddenly received a message from a participant, saying that their driver, who was supposed to pick them up 40mins ago, still hadn’t showed up. Well, what fun. I frantically started calling the two people responsible for this car (I shall not disclose their identities), and after a few minutes I finally got a call back, with a VERY sleepy person on the other end. We chatted for a bit and made the conclusion that this car would simply have to stay home, since they would pull up to the parking lot way too late. But then, mere 2 minutes later was I called back saying they have changed their mind – they want to come. Knowing that this car has three very experienced people, and them assuring me that they are awake enough to drive, we decided that they could simply join us a few hours late.

Duncan and I had planned to stop at the Save On in Squamish to buy fresh milk (because milk powder is simply not fun). While doing that, Sri decided to grab breakfast from the café nearby. I was shocked to hear this man seriously order a hot chocolate, when we’re about to embark on a trip where the whole point is to drink as much hot chocolate as possible. I suppose he wanted to get a head start. 12 litres of milk later, we continued our journey.

We finally reached the lower parking lot, where we started shuttling people in the only car that had chains. Some hiked up, while most of the skiers piled into Kevin’s car, true to the VOC ways. Finally, we started the hike / skin up to the Red Heather warming shelter. Tristan, Duncan and I each had a 4L milk jug in our packs, with other people all carrying their respective ingredients.

Skinning and snowshoeing up the trail PC: Tejas

The people that reached the hut early had started scouting for a good place to build a table in the snow, and found a wonderful space with some trees that we used to set up tarps. Our trusty engineers, Eemaan and Ellen, found a way to tie the tarps to skis and ski poles to shield us from the quite intense snowfall.

Soon after, people started heating up milk, with only a few pots boiling over. Anybody who has heated up milk knows how challenging it is to prevent this – and now imagine that on a camping cooker in the snow!

The tasting started, and people started passing around pots and mugs filled with wonderfully warm hot chocolate. Here are some fun little photos (click on them individually to see them in better quality)!

Now, you might be wondering, what creations did we come up with? Well, here are some examples (but there were many more!).

Made with 3% Dairyland milk:

• Tristan – Smoked Hershey’s milk chocolate bar, smoked cedar shavings (from Pacific Spirit Park)
• Duncan – cocoa powder, brown sugar, semisweet chocolate chips
• Sri – Lindt Pistachio solid chocolate, freshly grated orange zest, cardamom, cinnamon, whipped cream
• AC – 70% Western Family solid chocolate, Nesquick cocoa powder, freshly grated orange zest, whipped cream
• Zack – Tim Hortons Hot Chocolate powder (no comment)
• Eemaan – Chaga Dark Chocolate

Dairy-free versions:

• Sarah – Silk Oat Milk with cocoa powder and mint extract (although we would like to add that Silk is American owned, while Earth’s Own is Canadian – take from that what you will)
• Ellen – Earth’s Own oat milk with cocoa powder, sugar and pumpkin pie spice

I have to say, it was a wonderful experience to taste everybody’s hot chocolates. However, I must admit, despite the warmth of our beverages and many foam pads to sit on, it got rather chilly (I suppose that’s a side effect of snow). So, a bunch of us skiers decided to start getting some laps in. After skinning up for a bit, it was time to transition – which is when it got obvious how incredibly deep the powder was. Keep in mind this was my third time skiing. Sri just casually decided to inform me right then and there that using the pizza in powder is not really possible. Yay! With many falls, I somehow made it down (shoutout to Sri for pulling me out of the snow more times than once). I definitely didn’t faceplant somewhere on the way, no. It was a truly interesting and frustrating experience. But clearly, it didn’t bother me too much – Toji, Sarah, Eleanor, Sri and I decided to skin back up and get one more lap in before Sri and I had to head back down to our car group.

The joy of transitioning PC: AC

While the others went ahead, I took it slow and made it down with many falls and whatnot, because I suddenly felt very weak on my legs (I should add that I fell ill a day later so there’s a good chance I was already under the weather without knowing, which definitely affected my balance). Eleanor gave me some sour peach gummies to bring back my energy, which was insanely appreciated. We just had a short ways to go until the hut, when I stopped just before a tiny, but very steep slope, causing me to slide forwards. So I backed up, about to turn to head down this slope – but clearly, I had forgotten that there was a tree directly behind me. Lo and behold, I slid backwards right into the tree well. Luckily I went down feet first and my upper body was still above the snow, but my skis and legs were stuck underneath several layers of powder. My legs were overstretched and I was slightly panicking and in pain. Sri managed to dig me out very quickly, and the rest of the way went smoothly. But I have to say, that was an interesting experience and I’m glad nothing worse happened.

Happy skiers about to hit the slopes
PC: Faisal

We got back to the hut to find out that everybody had already left, apart from our car group. Oops… So, after taking a short break in the shelter and befriending some former VOCers (also Germans!) who had skinned up with their children, Sri, Duncan, Tristan and I started heading down to our car. This was my first time skiing down the trail myself, so I was happy to see it somehow worked. Meanwhile, Tristan’s ski kept popping out. I honestly don’t even know how to describe our way down – we were all hyped up, and probably went a bit crazy. It was such a fun time, and I cannot express my gratitude for this merry rabble enough. We made it to the upper parking lot, and decided to attempt to ski as far down as possible. At that point, we had all definitely gone absolutely crazy. Sri started spinning around on his skis, Tristan started sitting down on his skis, and Duncan probably also did something insane (I was too focused on not falling). Then, the rocks started causing issues, to the point where Tristan’s skis were sparking. Shortly after that, Duncan took a pretty hard fall, which is when we decided to stop immediately and bootpack down.

The Merry Rabble
PC: Faisal

The joy did not stop there. Duncan had already announced that he was not sure whether we’d have enough gas to make it to Squamish. In addition to that, this car did not have winter tires. So yes, we had to push it out of the parking spot to get it going. The car told us we have 1km left in range. Uhhhhhhhh….. Luckily, the range first jumped to 5km, then 10km, and ultimately ended at 25km when we reached the gas station after a very wild ride. I should also add that the drive was quite enjoyable, since both Duncan and Tristan simply could not stop chatting away, full of enthusiasm. To this day I wonder what was in that hot chocolate. But all in all, we made it down safely and now definitely had enough gas to make it back to Vancouver. After a quick stop at Tim Hortons to grab some food, we started driving back with some VOC-style deep talks.

All in all, it was a very successful trip and I am grateful to everyone who came and made this such a fun time. I look forward to drinking more hot chocolate (feel free to comment with some recipe ideas or your favourite hot chocolate place in Vancouver!) and gaining ski experience. Thank you to everybody, and especially the people who helped me organise and coordinate this trip, the people who brought tarps and mats, and of course the people who skied much slower than they normally would to let me keep up