Lindeman Lake Backpacking Trip

May 6, 2020May 6, 2020 / Maria / 6 Comments

It’s been a while since my last post. Obviously the world has changed substantially since March 18th. It has been challenging to be confined to my home for the last 2 months, but I still have my job and my health, so taking a break from the outdoors is really a very small price to pay right now. We had to cancel several Girl Guide camps that we were planning for May, as well as I was planning to go on a May Long weekend backpacking trip with some friends. I currently have a trip booked to Mount Assiniboine for the first week of July that I’m not really convinced will go ahead, but I guess I can still hope.

In the meantime, I have literally dozens of backpacking trips and day hikes that I have never taken the time to write about, so I decided to kick things back off with a recount of my first time backpacking up to Lindeman Lake. I’ve posted about Lindeman Lake on my blog before because it’s a hike I’ve done many times. I think it’s a great introductory hike for beginner day hikers, as well as backpackers. Plus the snow melts pretty early in the season, so it’s one of the few hikes you can do from May onwards. The first time I backpacked up to Lindeman Lake was over the May Long weekend in 2017 and it ended up becoming an annual backpacking trip for me and my friends. The first year we went, it was just me, Carolyn, and Megan, her (at-the-time) new roommate and soon-to-be one of my good friends.

We picked it for all the reasons outlined above – it’s free of snow in May and at 3km, it’s a good start-of-season warm up hike. We decided to hike up on Saturday morning and stay 2 nights, day hiking up to Greendrop Lake on the second day. Lindeman Lake is located in Chilliwack Provincial Park, about 2 hours out of Vancouver at the end of Chilliwack Lake Road. There’s no cell service out there at all, so be prepared. You do need a backcountry pass if you plan to camp overnight in the park, but it’s only $5 per person for night, so it makes for a cheap trip. There’s no reservation system, so you don’t need to book in advance, but be prepared for a decent number of people at the lake for this reason. We camped there again on the long weekend in 2018 and both times we were able to find somewhere to pitch our tents (actually camped in the same spot both years), but the tent pads fill up fast, so be prepared for variable ground if you don’t head up early. There’s a number of good spots right at the edge of the lake, and more spots back along the river when you first walk up. I say “spots” and not “sites” because aside from the 4-5 tent pads, it’s really an open camping area, so it might not be the best location for this season as you have to be prepared for close neighbours.

Lindeman Lake attracts a lot of visitors because the entire round trip trail is only about 3.5km – but beware, with almost 400m in elevation gain, it is still pretty steep for almost the entire trail. With our backpacks it took us about an hour or more to reach the lake, without backpacks I’ve done it in 35 mins, but we were moving fast. The 3 of us shared a tent, so we pitched it sometime around noon and settled in to make lunch and have a lazy afternoon. The campsite is very forested, so it doesn’t get much sunlight, and only in the morning, so it can get really cold in the trees in May. We scrambled across the river along the logs to the other side so that we could chill on the rocks in the sun and read for a bit. I’m not sure how easy it is to normally cross the river – I suspect it depends on the previous winter and the water levels. Fortunately it was easy when we visited, but I’m sure that’s not always the case. We had gorgeous weather, so it was pretty warm lying out on the rocks.

It still gets pretty cold in the mountains in May, so we brought lots of warm gear for sitting out and for sleeping. Since it was a short hike, we hauled up lots of luxury items, including a frisbee, my hula hoop, and my hammock. Please be aware that there are no campfires allowed in the park. This rule gets ignored a lot at the campsite and it really bothers me. Since it was May, there was no fire ban in place yet and a lot of people take that as free reign to have campfires, but my suspicion is that the real reason campfires are banned is because there’s just not enough firewood in the area for people to make them. You have to go out in the woods to collect your own firewood and it is very damaging to the natural landscape and I’m sure lots of habitat. You can see where people have been chopping down trees over the years and I support the ban here to protect the environment. So please don’t have campfires if you’re going up there! In terms of other facilities at the lake, there are a few tent pads and a bear cache (take your garbage home with you please! So many people leave trash in the bear cache), but the washroom facility is bare bones. It’s just a pit toilet up on the hillside (no walls, no toilet paper).

But on to more fun stuff. On the second day we decided to pack a lunch and day hike up to Greendrop Lake. At the time, we did not have microspikes and we managed okay, but I’d recommend them as there was still some snow near the top and I think the ice and snow levels could easily vary based on the year. It’s about 8km round trip to hike up to Greendrop from Lindeman. My favourite part of the hike is the first section right when you leave the campsite. You continue on along the edge of the lake across the many boulder fields. When you reach the end of the lake, there’s a beautiful view looking back at the lake and tons of big rocks to relax on. In retrospect, this is the place to hang out and read. If you’re only going as far as Lindeman Lake, don’t miss out on this view, make sure to hike up to the end of the lake, it’s not that much further.

I don’t have that much else to say about the hike to Greendrop Lake though. There’s a lot more uphill and few more boulder fields to pass over. It’s not too difficult a hike, although it was somewhat confusing near the top because there was still snow there and it was difficult to find the trail. But overall it’s not one of the more scenic hikes I’ve done and there’s not much of a view of Greendrop Lake. I know some people love camping up at Greendrop, but we didn’t really see the appeal. In May it is substantially colder than Lindeman Lake and we were freezing trying to make our lunch. We couldn’t find anywhere that was getting sunlight, so we ate as fast as we could and then started to make our way back to Lindeman again. Later in the year you can do a 20km loop from Lindeman to Greendrop to Flora Lake and then back down again, but I wouldn’t attempt this until July because there will still be lots of snow at higher elevations.

On our way back we decided to take a long stop at the end of the lake to sunbathe on the rocks. It was really warm lying out and Carolyn and I decided to do a polar bear dip in the lake. The water is absolutely freezing in May (and likely all year round since it’s all snow melt), and your body starts to go numb as soon as you jump in, but the shock to the system is soothing on your aching muscles and we loved the quick dip in the water.

So overall it was a pretty relaxing long weekend hike. We ended up making it an annual trip and we’ve always tried to keep it as a more relaxing start-of-season hike. We spent lots of time lounging in the hammock and playing frisbee and I taught Carolyn a trick or two on my hula hoop. We were camped on a bit of slope, so we’d wake up every morning with the 3 of us having shifted down to the bottom of the tent overnight, but we had a good laugh about it. Me and Carolyn are morning people, so we loved going to bed as soon as the sun went down and then getting up early to make breakfast. Meg is definitely a night owl, so she’d chill outside watching the stars and let us fix her breakfast in the morning (never ask Meg to be responsible for breakfast lol). We didn’t love Greendrop – but I have lots of fond memories at Lindeman Lake and this hike was the start of a bigger tradition that has become one of my yearly highlights. I’ll be sad to miss it this year, but hopefully we’ll be back at it later in the season!

Artist Point Snow Camping

March 18, 2020June 26, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

Well it’s that time of year again! Time for my annual snow camping trip with Carolyn and Brandon! It’s a new hobby for us, so we’ve been trying to get out at least once a year to work on our snow camp skills. Carolyn broke her ankle back in July last year and it’s been a really long time healing, so this was our first time out together since last Spring. We have a few snow camps on our bucket list, but we wanted a shorter one for her first snowshoe since breaking her ankle, so we decided to try Artist Point in Washington. It has a fair bit of elevation gain, but it’s not very long – only 6km round trip.

Our first discovery though was that camping across the border sucks. I made a few trips down to Washington this year with Lien for day hikes, but when you’re trying to pack for an overnight trip, it’s a big hassle. We had to leave snacks like jerky, dried mango, cheese, and trail mix behind, and modify our normal camp dinner. Brandon makes a mouth watering backcountry thai curry chicken that we eat on almost every adventure, but we couldn’t bring the chicken or veggies across, so we opted for my dehydrated vegetarian chili and macaroni instead. The chili is fine, it’s just not quite as rewarding as thai curry chicken (okay A LOT less rewarding).

So crossing the border was definitely a pain, but I have to admit, we’ll probably keep on doing it because there are some really great hikes in the Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The actual border crossing was quick because we crossed in Abby at the Sumas Crossing and drove to Mount Baker from there. I snowshoed to Artist Point last year, which was what inspired me to try snow camping there this year. In the summer you can drive most of the way up to Artist Point, but the road and parking lots aren’t plowed in the winter. There’s a ton of open space at the top for the parking lots, which is why I thought it would be a great place to snow camp!

We started hiking up sometime around noon. The last time I’d hiked up there it was a bluebird day and there was a million other people on the trail, but it was a bit overcast when we went, so there was definitely less people around, which was nice. The area had also received a massive dump of snow the night before (60 cms!), so the entire area was covered with a fresh blanket of shimmering powder. It was definitely a snowshoe day (as opposed to spikes). We had nice views hiking up, though the occasional clouds moved through, sometimes obscuring our view of the mountains, but not our visibility.

That changed a bit when we reached the top. You come up a pretty steep slope before getting to a large flatish base area where the parking lot(s) are located in the summer. The area attracts a lot of backcountry skiers and from there some hike up to Artist Point (another ~15-20mins), while others continue on to table mountain or down into the bowl going back towards the (base) parking lot. We didn’t want to camp right on Artist Point because it’s pretty exposed, but planned to find a somewhat sheltered spot around the parking area. Once we crested the last slope though, the fog moved in and it became harder to see where we were going. Plus in the winter it’s really hard to tell what is actually the parking lot. We wanted somewhere sheltered, but also with a good view. We ended up picking a spot looking out towards Table Mountain and Mount Baker that had a few banks sheltering it on either side.

Fortunately the fog moved out again and our visibility improved a lot while we were setting up camp. We always dig out tent hole too small, so Carolyn outlined a truly massive site for us to shovel out this time. It was clearly too big, but for some reason none of us argued with her and just got to work shoveling! It took quite a while because there had been so much snow the night before and we had to dig down about a metre before we could finally start stomping it down and compacting the snow. Eventually we got enough space for the tent and realized we’d kind of over-shoveled a bit if we still wanted a snow wall to provide some shelter for the tent, so we built up a snow counter on the last side and made a pretty slapdash kitchen that actually ended up being pretty good.

The later it got, the fewer people around, but one giant group showed up in the middle of the afternoon – it must have had 40 people! We think it was an avalanche safety course because there seemed to be one guide and they started digging some shelters themselves. It was obvious from their packs they weren’t staying overnight, so we kept joking they should come dig out our hole for us since they weren’t going to use theirs anyways!

The temperature was around -5 degrees, which in my opinion is perfect for snow camping because you don’t want the snow to be wet at all. It continued to snow on and off as we were setting up our shelter, but the wind kept down and we didn’t have any problems. I love snow camping, but it is definitely a lot more work. It was pretty late in the afternoon by the time we finished the shelter and we decided we wanted to start melting snow for water right away since it takes forever and it gets dark early. It did take a long time, but fortunately the snow was all very clean and it tasted a lot better to drink than the snow on some of our previous trips. We started dinner before dark, but it was definitely dark by the time we finished and started cleaning up.

We puttered around camp for a bit with our headlamps, cleaning up and sharing Carolyn’s flask. Eventually we climbed into the tent because we always look forward to getting into our sleeping bags on a cold winter night. By the time we were all geared up and ready for bed, Carolyn asked me to check the time and I turned on my phone to see 7:30pm staring back at me! I couldn’t believe it! We all knew the sun sets early, but we had a good laugh at ourselves all set up and ready for bed that early! At Elfin Lakes I’d set up and done some star photography, which kept us up a bit later, but the clouds were moving around a lot and it wasn’t really a great night for star photos, though we did catch a great view of Orion at one point.

We read for a little bit, but it’s cold with your hands and arms out of your sleeping back, so it was probably still only 8:30pm when we turned off the lights and went to bed. Carolyn was thrilled about it because she loves to go to bed early without anyone making fun of her for it! As usual, it was a fair bit of work to keep warm overnight, but we all managed it and it was 7:30am before we finally got up.

It was a big change from the previous night when we crawled out of the tent. It was a gorgeous bluebird day with the sun shining down on us! We wanted to make first tracks up to Artist Point, so we grabbed some snacks and postponed breakfast to hike up to the point. It was definitely a good way to warm up! We were all sweating by the time we reached the top and we stayed up there for a while taking photos and goofing around in the snow. The landscape looked much the same as the last time I’d snowshoed up there, which was also a bluebird day, but the big difference was that we were the only people on the mountain.

The point gives a great view of Mount Shuksan, but the Baker side stole my attention on this trip because there were a ton of clouds sitting in the valley around it and it felt really cool to be up above the clouds. While we were up there we noticed the fog was starting to creep up the valley on both sides and we decided to trek back to the campsite for breakfast. By the time we got back the fog had totally moved in and within 30 minutes you couldn’t see any of the view any more! I felt bad for all the day hikers and skiers coming up later, but lucky that we got to enjoy the nice weather before the clouds moved it. It wasn’t snowing, but visibility was pretty bad and I can see how it would be easy to get lost in those conditions. So it was a good reminder of how fast things can change in the backcountry.

Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful climb down. Snowshoes definitely aren’t as fun going downhill, so we had a few stumbles on the way down, but no more injured ankles! I think we can definitely call this trip another success!

Ski Resort Series: Mount Washington

March 11, 2020March 3, 2020 / Maria / 5 Comments

Now that I’m finally up to date on my posts about our trip to New Zealand, it’s time to return to my ski resort mini-series from last winter! Every year me and my friends go on a ski trip to Interior BC, usually around 4-5 hours driving distance from Vancouver. We like to stay in chalets right on the mountain and we finally ran out of new ski resorts in the Interior and decided to take the ferry to Mount Washington instead.

We drove out after lunch on Thursday and had a chalet booked right at the foot of the slopes. It was an uneventful ferry ride, but the drive up the mountain more than made up for it. About 10 minutes before we reached the chalet, my car came across another car pulled over on the side of the road. It turned out to be one of our other companions – poor Meg who had hit one pothole and ended up with two burst tires on the right side (we’re talking rims on the ground). The benefit of going with so many people is that is wasn’t too hard to call for help and we ferried everyone and their gear up to the chalet while Meg waited for the tow truck to bring her car down to Courtney. Fortunately there was no real harm done except for Meg’s bank account and we finished off the evening with mulled wine, chocolate fondue, and a soak in our hot tubs (yes, we had 2!).

We were expecting the snow at Mount Washington to be on the wet side, but we ended up getting pretty awesome conditions. It was just around zero degrees on Friday, so it was wet, but the mountain dropped snow on us the whole day, making for poor visibility, but some pretty sweet powdery conditions. Only about half of us went skiing on the first day – I’d debated only skiing one day this year and instead checking out some of the snowshoe trails, but I couldn’t resist and ended up skiing both days. It wasn’t really snowing in the morning, but we had trouble seeing through the low clouds on the slope; they did eventually clear and we skied some gorgeous sunny(ish) runs before lunch.

After lunch it was a totally different story with the snowy coming down thick. We were stoked about what the conditions were going to be like the next day, but it accumulates so fast that we has some really great runs on Friday too, though the visibility did get worse as the day went on.

As usual, we have a pretty well-tested meal plan for the weekend and I made traditional Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner and a turkey, followed by one of Emily’s famous cakes. Some of the group did go snowshoeing in the afternoon and boasted about how awesome the trails were over at the Nordic Center. Overall it was a low key evening, but I think everyone enjoyed relaxing and watching the snow pile up outside in anticipation of the next day.

Saturday was the kind of skiing conditions you dream about…. almost. It was a gorgeous sunny day with 10-15 cms of fresh powder on the slopes! We all got up early to catch some of the first lifts up the mountain. The only problem was that only half of the lifts were actually open. Apparently it had gotten pretty windy overnight and was still windy at the top of the mountain, so the peak chair was closed. We did a warm up run without too much fanfare, but then we were forced to wait 30+ minutes in the lift line for every run after that. It was super disappointing to spend the beautiful weather waiting in line and the group started getting a little antsy.

We decided to head over to another lift to try our chances and fortunately by the time we got over there, the remaining lifts had opened. It was still a longer wait than Friday (which had really been no wait), but much better than earlier. We spent a lot of time on the far side of the mountain on the sunset lift and really enjoyed the conditions. The group split up a bit after that and I did a few runs from the top of the mountain before heading over to the bunny hill to help Lien, who was learning to ski. We decided to ski through lunch with the intention of ending the day early. But then we couldn’t bear to leave the awesome conditions and ended up skiing until close and having a late lunch.

I wouldn’t say Mount Washington was one of my favourite mountains, but it was definitely a comfortable one. It’s a great mountain for beginners and with the exception of the Outback at the back of the mountain (all double blacks), I was willing to ski pretty much any of the runs. It’s a nice mountain if you like nice wide runs. There were some nice gladed areas to try too, but I feel there was a bit less to explore over some of the other mountains we’ve skied.

We finished our last night with Brandon’s delicious hot pot and played games into the night. As usual, our accommodations were pretty awesome. This year we had a few less people, so they felt particularly spacious as we had two units (the upstairs and downstairs unit in the same chalet). It had a really nice log cabin feel, I just wish we could have figured out how to get the fireplace working! So overall it was a great trip with some really unexpectedly great conditions, despite the long lift waits on day 2.