Zach Doehler

A few weeks ago, some friends and I decided to head out to the West Coast of Vancouver Island for camping. They were going to be camping at a campground near Port Renfrew, and I was going to be heading out for a solo night at Sombrio Beach so that I could get optimal conditions for milky way photography.

One of my favorite ways to get outdoors and get my body moving is to go out for a hike. Sometimes that may be a day hike, other times that may be a multi-day overnight hike. Whatever the case, there is always some exertion required, but it always pays off when you're out in nature.

When people tend to think of a beautiful landscape, often what comes to mind are the picturesque snow-capped mountains of the Canadian Rockies or perhaps a beautiful tropical beach in the Caribbean on a warm sunny day. They may also think of a colorful forest in the peak of Autumn or maybe wide-open rolling hills at sunset. But what if I told you that most landscape photographers would rather head out to the desert instead? Would you believe me?

One Sunday morning during the peak of Winter out here in Beautiful British Columbia, I woke up to a gorgeous layer of snow covering the landscape outside my window. It was a stunning sight to see and a very welcome one, as it is not very often that we get snow where I live. Contrary to what many people believe, we don't all ride polar bears and live in igloo's up here in Canada. There are some parts of the country that hardly ever get snow, like Vancouver Island, the place that I call home just off the coast of BC. So, as you'd expect, it's always a very exciting time when we get snow here. And it's something that I must take advantage of since it doesn't take much time before that fresh snowfall begins to melt and everything starts to look rather gross...

It was late-September of 2019, I had this desire to do an overnight hike at a location I had only since dreamt of visiting. It was a place that continued to avoid me, due to poor weather and inconsistent planning on my part. I knew of many people who had made the trek up this mountain out in the middle of nowhere. It was a place I had only ever experienced through the screen of my cellular device, as I looked upon the images of photographers who had been to it. I wanted to go, so very badly. But the weather was always poor on the weekends, and that was the only time that my fellow hiking friends could take the time off from work to go hiking. Therefore, the only option was for me to go hiking alone in the middle of the week.