The next hike.

The next hike will be on Saturday, 17th December.
We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am

Last week much of Texada had a white covering of snow and only the lower elevations had none. To avoid any slippery places as far as we possibly could we decided to just keep the hike fairly short and make our destination the beach near the Sandbanks between the community and the Texada Airport. We started from the Airport Rd. near the water tower and quickly found there was some almost invisible ice on the first part of the gravel road. We made it safely down to the beach on our short trail through the forest and had no problem walking south along the shore as the tide was not too high. Lunch was on the logs at the high tide line hoping we might see some of our less common marine mammals, but no luck this time. On our return to the vehicles we climbed the steep Sandbanks Trail and were pleased to find the thick strong rope was firmly in place to help us climb the very steepest sections.

The subject of my photo this week is a very unusual rock that appears to be a fracture zone breccia with jagged veins of a white mineral that is probably feldspar. I would guess the small black fragments are pieces of the originally solid rock which was broken up as a liquid lava was forced in under great pressure.
JD.