Tag 7: St. Mark's Summit

~ Friday, 19.10.18 ~

Hello there,

Today I had my longest hike so far. I searched for hikes near Vancouver on Google and found several that were suitable for a day trip. One of them led to St. Mark's Summit in Cypress Provincial Park. By chance, a German guy contacted me on Facebook who was also interested in the trip, and the best part was that he had a car! :-) So the round trip transportation was taken care of and we set off in the morning.

The trail started directly from the parking lot into the forest and it kept getting higher and higher. Especially towards the end, it got steeper and more challenging, but after 2.5 hours, we finally made it! From up high, we had a great view of the sea and the small islands again. We found a good spot to sit on the rocks and took a longer break. As soon as we unpacked our food, the birds and squirrels came and some of them even sat on our feet or back. Unfortunately, I was too slow to take a photo, but if we hadn't been careful, they would have definitely taken our food away :-D

The way back was the same path through the forest. It was a bit faster, but overall we were on the trail for about 6 hours... So a very long hike for me, who has been sitting at the desk for almost the past half year.

Once we arrived back in Vancouver, it was fortunately still early enough to stroll through North Vancouver and get a coffee at Starbucks (or for me a hot chocolate). To finish off the day, we treated ourselves to a pizza from a pizzeria with exceptionally cheerful staff, who celebrated each completed order with excitement :-)

We then ate our pizza on a park bench under the watchful eyes of hungry passersby (it was simply too big for me). I gave the rest to two homeless people afterwards, who were very happy about it. So on this day, I also did a good deed ;-)

We said our goodbyes in North Vancouver and I took the SeaBus (something like a regular bus, but a ship) back to the hostel in Downtown. And so ended a truly beautiful but also exhausting day.