The town of Jordan River, is a small settlement on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, located approximately 70 km (43 mi) west of Victoria. Originally founded as a logging camp it is now home to Vancouver Island’s second largest hydro-electric plant. The town itself is easy to miss, home to only 100 permanent residents with no cell phone service (there are a few points where you can pick up US service from the San Juan Islands across the strait). The settlement is most known among outdoor enthusiasts for winter surfing (although locals are known to be EXTRA territorial of their waves) and the Juan de Fuca trail - a 47 kilometre/ 29 mile long wilderness hiking trail located within Juan de Fuca Provincial Park.

My love for spending time in the outdoors is only matched by my love for all things coffee related. I don’t remember when this began, my mom is a tea drinker and what my dad considers coffee is more akin to coffee bean flavoured water. It may have been when I was in high school - all of the cool girls worked at Starbucks and I was determined to do the same. And so I did, I spent year slinging over sweetened coffee drinks to teenagers who could likely not afford them. As time went on the balance of sugar to coffee in my drinks flip flopped and I became a snob of all things coffee related. And so, when I ventured into the outdoors I needed options that were better than the instant that my mother would add into chocolate cakes and lighter than lugging a parceling carafe thousands of meters up the side of a mountain. I have three tried and true ways to help you find a good cup of coffee no matter where you are.

I woke up long before the sun on my first morning at WhiteCap Alpine Lodge and peered out my window to a sky filled with starts and a layer of fog filling the valley floor. After a few weeks in the city the silence felt almost deafening. I crept down the stairs in the WoodHall building where I slept, out the front door and down the path toward the soft glow of the main lodge. This is where Ron, the patriarch of WhiteCap sat beside a wood burning fireplace with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, a pot on the stove. It is moments like these, quiet conversations around a fire dozens of miles from cell phone towers, cars and any other conscious human, that remind you of what is important in life. A story of a baby born on a set of stairs wrapped in newspaper, tales of children learning to ski in the backcountry and the indirect route that life (more often than not) takes.

One of my favourite towns in the world, under an hour and a half from downtown Calgary and a five minute drive from Banff National Park east gate, Canmore has the heart of a small town with nearly every outdoor activity to offer as well as amazing food and great local shops .

Two things that run through my veins: a love for the mountains and a really good cup of coffee. I have spent the past handful of years trying to find a way to leave my heavy bags of beans, grinder and aeropresse at home and find an instant coffee that I enjoy. In that time there have been some really wonderful strides in the field… and so this post was born.