Expedition Poutine: "this'll be easy"

After camping at Nair'n Falls (see earlier post) Evelyn and I headed back towards Vancouver. We planned on finding a cool short hike to do in Whistler on the way back. Before getting to Whistler, we saw a sign for hiking on the side of the road. We turned off to check it out and found ourselves on a steep gravel road winding up a valley between two huge mountains. The signs said 4-wheel drive recommended, but we assumed they were meant for winter. They weren't. But we made it, and reached the trailhead about 15 minutes later.

This was our first experience in Garibaldi Provincial Park. We had read about it online but hadn't looked into it too much. I remembered reading about a fairly easy 3km hike around a lake, and this hike was called Wedgemount Lake so it seemed likely that it could be the one I recalled. Judging by the map at the trailhead, it looked like it could be 3km but it was hard to tell with all of the switchbacks and whatnot. Thinking it'd be a short easy hike, we left our food, warm clothes, and time-telling devices behind in the car. We only brought a small backpack with light sweatshirts and two water bottles.

After what could have been anything from 30 minutes to 2 hours, we finally ran into another hiker. He said the top was great, but didn't say anything about how far away it was and we didn't ask, assuming we were close. There were no distance markers on the trail so we had no idea how far we'd gone, but it was getting steeper. Way steeper. Our legs were exhausted but we thought it couldn't be much farther so we continued onward for another hour or two, drinking our water quickly.

After running out of water and considering giving up multiple times we reached a large rocky area. It was nice to be out of the forest where we could see more of what was around us, but there was no lake in sight. We were by a little stream though, and we were thirsty enough to refill our water bottles from it without thinking twice about giardia. After getting back home and googling the hike, I found out that this was only the halfway point.

The trail wove back into the forest and throughout the next section of the hike we were treated with a few quick glimpses of what laid ahead and the occasional patch of snow covering the trail.

Wedgemount waterfall, a 300m waterfall

We had absolutely no sense of time at this point but we knew we had gone way more than 3km. Some more hikers passed us on their way down and told us the lake was only another 45 minutes up, but it was steep and an avalanche took out the trail. We asked if it was worth going to the top but we knew the answer by the astounded look on their faces before they could answer.

About 5 more minutes of hiking and the path opened up into a clearing. It was incredible. We were nearing the tree line but most of the trees above us had been taken out by the avalanche. On one side we could see across the valley to the next mountain range over:

On the other side the destruction of the avalanche laid ahead of us:

There was a pretty little waterfall in an area that looked like most of the snow had melted, unfortunately access to that area was blocked by cliffs. The cliffs might have stopped us from getting there, but it didn't stop my camera's 4x zoom lens:

The rest of the trail was all snow, there were no more dry patches. Our shorts and t-shirts held up though even as it got quite steep towards the top.

The end of the hike was more of a climb than a hike, and I have a habit of eating snow (it's delicious!) so my fingers were pretty numb by the time I got to the climbing section. I made it though, and as we reached the top of the ridge we were greeted by some of the most amazing views the planet can offer. The natural beauty can't be given justice by a camera, but here's my best try: