Joffre Lakes Backpacking Trip

August 24, 2022August 20, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

My first trip to Joffre Lakes was in 2015. Then I didn’t go again for 6 years, only to return twice in 2 years!

Joffre Lakes is one of the most popular and well known hikes in BC. It’s for a good reason – it’s jaw-dropingly gorgeous and easily accessible – but the crowds have definitely been a deterrent for me in visiting frequently. However, my friends from Toronto were visiting and they wanted to go there for their first ever backpacking trip, so I agreed to go with them since I’ve never actually backpacked there before.

Joffre Lakes now has a day pass system – so you can’t visit the park at all without either a day pass or an overnight pass (which are limited). This helps a lot with the stress of parking, but there is still an impressive amount of people in the park every day, even with the pass system. Overnight passes are hard to get – me and Philippa logged on at the same time to try and get them – I lucky enough to score 2 tent pads on my device, but even with 3 devices of their own, Philippa and Justin didn’t get any. Fortunately we had all we needed, but it gives you an idea of the competition for tent sites on a Saturday Night. I definitely recommend going on a week day if you’re able.

I won’t talk too much about the actual trail because I’ve written about it in my post about day hiking here. I’ll just say that as beginners, I do think this was a good trail for Philippa and Justin – it’s not too long or difficult, and it has washroom and bear cache facilities, which make things a lot easier.

Brandon joined me for the trip and drove us all up to the trailhead early on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, we realized at the trailhead that Philippa and Justin had forgotten their lunch in the fridge, but I always carry a spare meal, so we decided to go anyways and they ate that. It was a gorgeous sunny day for it – definitely hotter than I prefer, but that’s how summers in Vancouver seem to be these days, so I’ve gotten pretty good at staying hydrated and no one suffered too much with the heat.

We stopped at the second lake for lunch and went for a quick dip in the freezing cold water, and then continued up to the third lake. This is where my account of the lake will diverge from my last post. When I visited last year, we just hiked to the base of the third lake, but if you’re camping overnight, you have to continue around the edge of the lake to the other side, where there are a bunch of campsites under the glacier. I’d never backpacked at Joffre before, so I was excited to check out the campground. Plus, one of the big benefits to staying overnight is that crowds are greatly reduced in the evening and you get to enjoy the view for much longer.

We chose a campsite along the edge of the lake and set up our tents. I was keen to go for another swim, so me and Brandon decided to take our thermarests out into the lake this time, since it’s so cold. We did this at Assiniboine to great success! However, I’ve since replaced my sleeping pad with a smaller one and unfortunately, it’s not really big enough anymore! I floundered around on it for a while, with lots of screaming about the cold water that kept swallowing me up, before Justin went and got his pad for me instead (which is actually my older, bigger pad that he was borrowing). So we all tried them out in the water for a bit, and while they do insulate against the cold, you have to lie perfectly still on them lest you disturb the water and cause your limbs to go numb. So maybe not our best idea!

Instead, Brandon and I had the idea to hike up towards Matier Glacier for supper. Lien did the Matier Glacier hike last year and told me you could see all three lakes once you get high enough. There was still snow at the base of the glacier, so we didn’t plant to go the entire way, but we figured if we hiked up to the top of the moraine, we might be able to catch the view for supper.

The hike to Matier Glacier is entirely a scramble up one of the old moraines. I didn’t find it too challenging, but it is pretty steep. It had cooled down, so we pushed up for about a half hour, but as it got steeper, Philippa got uneasy about having to go back down, so we pulled off to the side and found the flattest place we could to eat (not very flat at all, but we made it work)! Philippa and Justin had a mix of freeze dried meals to sample and Brandon made his legendary thai curry chicken for us. We were hoping for a sunset, but the sun goes down behind the mountains, so we just enjoyed golden hour instead.

It’s definitely worse hiking down the moraine than up, so it took us a while to go back. There’s a lot of loose rock that makes it slippery, so I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. Philippa didn’t like the descent, but she still did a great job on it and her feedback for beginners is to go down sideways and focus on small steps! Nonetheless, they made it down and used their new skills when they went to Panorama Ridge a week later.

It was starting to get dark by the time we got back to the campsite, so we got ready for bed early. We were all super tired after the early start and I wanted to get up in the middle of the night to shoot the stars. I think I was asleep before 10pm! I had my alarm set for 1:30am, but I ended up waking up to pee just before midnight and decided to get up then. Brandon decided to join me and we spent about 45 minutes playing around with our cameras and got some lovely shots of the milky way! I brought my tripod on this trip, which always makes for a more enjoyable experience.

We managed to sleep in until after 7, but once the sun hit the tent it was time to get up. We had a lazy breakfast and then packed up the tents to start the hike back down. We had a little break again at the second lake, but decided to save our swim for the first lake. I loved this idea because I wanted to swim in all 3 lakes and liked the opportunity to wash my body at the end of the hike. All the lakes are quite cold, but they definitely get warmer the further away from the glacier you get.

So overall, a very successful trip! Even though me and Brandon have been to Joffre Lakes several times, we loved exploring it through new eyes with Philippa and Justin. I’m definitely not in a rush to go back, but I am always enthusiastic about hiking with anyone who loves adventure. I do think Joffre is a great option for beginners and wish you luck in getting permits to this beautiful location. Just remember to treat it with respect. Leave no trace and pack out all your garbage!

Hut Lake Backpacking Trip

August 19, 2022August 20, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

Please excuse the late post for this week – I have been having so many great adventures this summer that it’s been a struggle to find the time to write about them all!

As a result, I have a bit of a backlog of trips to write about, the first of which is Hut Lake, which I visited in early July. Vancouver had a really terrible Spring this year – it was very rainy and cold – and as a result, the snowpack in the mountains was extremely slow melting. I was planning to do an alpine hike in Pemberton, but it still had snow AND avalanche risk, so I had to come up with a back-up plan on short notice.

So many of the hikes I want to do have a short season because of the snow, so we really had to rack our brains to find something that was both low elevation and dog friendly. In search of a trail, I took to my regular hobby of just scrolling around the GaiaGPS app and seeing what I could find. I focused on the Squamish area and discovered a few lakes that I had no idea existed.

The first is Levette Lake, which is very well known by the locals. When the road is freshly graded, anyone can drive all the way up to the lake, though later in the season I’m told the road conditions can become variable for lower clearance. There is a rec site at Levette, so you can pay to camp there, but we were looking for something a bit more remote and I noticed that the trail continues up past Levette to Hut Lake, where there is a free rec site. With no better ideas, we figured it was as good an idea as any.

We ended up having a great time! It’s not the most scenic trail, but since it was threatening rain, it was totally empty. Unfortunately, when we arrived we noticed that Levette Lake was closed due to a human-habituated bear. This seems to become more and more common lately – Cheakamus Lake, Helm Creek, Golden Ears, and Rainbow Lake have all been having issues with aggressive bears and several of the sites were closed this year and sadly the bears were killed. A good reminder that all of our actions have consequences and that everyone needs to do their absolute best to leave no trace so as not to attract bears.

Fortunately, we weren’t going to Levette Lake, so we opted to park at the bottom of the road and walk past towards Hut Lake. Our party consisted of me and Brandon, and Carolyn and Steve with their dog Jasper. I wanted to bring Sadie, but with Seth not coming and the weather rainy, I decided she was too much to handle on her own. We kept Jasper close the whole trip to avoid any potentially negative bear encounters.

It’s a steady uphill, but easy 3.5km hike along the road up to Levette Lake – a quick peak up the road revealed an outhouse, a bear cache, and several campsites, but a lot of garbage. Which is ridiculous because there are garbage facilities PROVIDED at the site! We did a quick clean up of the cans to deter the bears and then continued on towards Hut Lake.

If you’re into the 4×4 off-roading community, you might be familiar with this trail as it seems to primarily be used for off-roading. The road is still pretty easy going for the next 2km, but once you reach the 5.5km mark, there’s a very steep dip and it becomes more trail than road. It rained for most of our hike up, but it’s more shaded along this section of the trail, which slowed down the rain and we followed the fairly easy trail another 2.5km to the Hut Lake Rec Site. There’s not much to see on the trail besides the forest, which was prefect on a rainy day.

We didn’t see anyone on the trail and we were the only people at the lake too. Like the road, it seems to be tailored to off-roading rather than backpackers. There are a few picnic tables, which is lovely, but they are located on most of the limited flat ground, so it was a bit of work to find a good spot to pitch the tents without being on the road. After we set up though, we discovered that there are a few more sites at the back of the lake (where there’s another trail that goes to some smaller lakes).

Fortunately it stopped raining when we got to the campsite, so we had a good time setting up and the sun even started to burn off some of the clouds! I was sweaty from the hike and decided to go for a swim before I cooled off and the whole group joined me, except for Jasper, who was very distraught about this new activity. I guess it’s easy for off-roaders to bring supplies up to the site and someone had constructed a huge floating raft that was tied to the shore. There was one tiny paddle, which was hilarious because the raft was much too large to paddle anywhere, but we left it tied on and pushed it out into the lake so that we could swim off it.

Alpine lakes are really some of the most scenic lakes in the world, but there’s definitely something to be said for low elevation lakes! In Newfoundland we would definitely call this one a pond (it’s not very large), but it was very warm! Alpine lakes are always freezing because they’re comprised of glacier and snow melt, but Hut Lake was the perfect temperature for swimming and we easily hung out in the water for a half hour.

We had started making supper when we heard the low roar of a vehicle coming up the road. A small, but extremely lifted, jeep pulled in and we were weary about what kind of visitors we were about to get, but it ended up being a dad and his 2 kids out exploring for the day. Because the rec site is on crown land and there was no fire ban, you can have fires and the family asked to join us and got a fire started up! We had a nice chat with them about all the 4×4 roads in the area and learned about some other trails to check out. We had a good laugh though because the family was from Squamish and assumed we were too. The dad started ranting about the backpackers who come up from Vancouver just to party at the site, and then kind of paused as he was talking and noticed us smirking, to say “… you guys are from Vancouver aren’t you?” Fortunately he gave us a pass because “we look like we know what we’re doing and are properly outfitted”. Not sure if it’s a compliment, but I’ll take it because I like to rant about the partiers too.

After a while they took off and left us a lovely fire to enjoy! Me, Carolyn, and Brandon went exploring around the edge of the lake while Steve and Jasper manned the fire. Our new friends had told us that there’s a great view of the Tantalus Range on the other side of the lake. We tried to find the trail he described and ended up bushwacking our way into the lake from the other side – but he was correct and even though we didn’t find the trail, we did find a gorgeous view of the Tantalus mountains!

I was trying out my new bearproof sack on this trip, but everyone else needed to do a bear hang, so I watched Carolyn and Brandon struggle at that for the better part of 30 minutes. Their aim is not great and Carolyn hucked a doozy of a rock up at the tree only to have it fall down and land directly on my bear bag and break my stove, so I left them to it. The effort was worth it though and they produced one of the best bear hangs I think I’ve ever seen, so well done.

After that misadventure it started to rain again, so we decided it was time to hit the sack! It rained most of the night, but it was only drizzling when we woke up and we were able to make breakfast and take down camp without getting wet. We had a totally dry hike out and did the whole 8km return in 2 hours. It’s not a hike I’d recommend in the dead of summer because it’s not the most scenic, but I would definitely recommend it in the off season. The lack of crowds made for a very enjoyable experience, as did the swim in hut lake. There’s no outhouse or bear cache, so be prepared for that, otherwise we had a great time and I’m keen to return again sometime in the future!

The Secret to Easy Dehydrated Meals

August 10, 2022August 2, 2022 / Maria / 3 Comments

Figuring out what to eat in the backcountry is one of the more intimidating parts of backpacking when you first start. Pre-packaged dehydrated meals are expensive and still quite bulky, so it can be a little overwhelming to figure out what to eat. I assumed dehydrators were really expensive, and some of them are, but there are a lot of cheaper ones on the market and my life got so much easier when I finally bought one! I currently use one of these “cheaper” dehydrators, from Hamilton Beach. It has increased in price since I bought it, but it is still relatively affordable and often goes on sale, so I’ve found it to work great for the price, especially if you’re just starting out and aren’t sure you’ll use it much.

Unfortunately, purchasing a dehydrator was only have the battle and I still found it a little bit overwhelming finding good recipes after I got it. There are lots of resources out there, but they are often still a lot of work – involving either specialty items or a lot of steps. I toyed around with lot of different recipes and tried creating some of my own, but I have one big secret when it comes to easy dehydrated meals. Here’s what I think most people miss out on when dehydrating:

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and start dehydrating all your favourite every day dishes.

Instead of dehydrating all your veggie and protein sources separately and then combining ingredients and spices, just make your favourite chili or rice dish and pop the entire thing in the dehydrator. Making a stew or pasta? Have leftovers from your favourite mexican or curry restaurant? Just put the whole thing in the dehydrator. You don’t even have to pack the pasta or rice separate, just dehydrate the sauce and pasta together and then you don’t even have to mess around with cooking 2 separate ingredients at camp!

Once I figured this out, I stopped using recipes for dehydrated meals altogether. Instead, I look for easy to cook meals that I like to eat at home and then just dehydrate those. You just need to try and stick to one-pot type meals and things that will dehydrate well. For me, that mostly means avoiding things with a lot of oil (as this won’t dehydrate) and good protein sources (you can dehydrate chicken, but it’s tricky and ground meats and beans will dehydrate better). When I find a good dish, my practice is to cook a double batch, share it with Seth for dinner and then dehydrate the rest. That way I know if it tastes good and I can piggyback off a meal I’m already cooking anyways.

The benefit to dehydrating the rice or pasta along with the dish is that it will save you time and fuel later. Pretty much any dehydrated meal will rehydrate with cold water. So if you let it soak for a few hours, the entire meal will be edible already and only require re-heating rather than cooking. This means you don’t have to boil your pasta for 10 minutes or cook your chili – as long as you soak, you can just quickly heat it and eat it right away. Plus then you don’t need to bring a second pot to cook the rice or pasta separately! It’s also great for quick lunches. I will often add a bit of cold water to my lunch at breakfast, let it soak while I hike, and then eat it cold for lunch (as long it’s a meal you don’t mind eating cold, like a pasta or quinoa salad). It involves no cooking or prep, but tastes a lot better then sliced salami on tortilla.

I’ve been experimenting with hydrated meals a lot this year and plan to share some of my recipes (or links to favourite recipes) as a series later in the year, but for now I just wanted to talk about how one-pot meals made dehydrating so much easier for me. It removed a lot of the stress about serving sizes and taste because I could eat some first and then dehydrate the same amount, rather than having to worry about dehydrating everything separately, assembling, and then hoping I got the level of spices right. So if you backpack a lot, I think getting a dehydrator is a great alterative to the expensive freeze dried meals and it didn’t take me too long to see a lot of value from my dehydrator. Plus I love how lightweight my food bag is as a result.

Bon Appetit!