Lightning Lakes Backpacking Trip

July 11, 2026July 8, 2026 / Maria / 2 Comments

Last week I wrote about Keats Island, which was the first in a slew of backpacking trips I did in late Spring. Many people are familiar with Lightning Lakes, which is a popular location for day trippers in Manning Park. I’ve done a lot of backpacking and car camping in Manning Park and I love spending a day relaxing at the lake in the summer. At this point, I think I’ve hiked the majority of the popular trails in Manning Park, including many times hiking around Lightning Lakes, but I’ve never done the Lightning Lakes Chain Trail. I’ve been wanting to do it for years and I finally made it happen in early June.

Lightning Lakes Chain Trail starts at the main parking lot and includes hiking around the first two lakes before continuing 11km into the backcountry, passing 3 more lakes along the way. It’s a good hike for early in the season because the trail follows the river through the valley and has minimal elevation gain. So even though the hike starts at a pretty high elevation (1200m), all the snow melts at once, meaning the trail is usually completely clear by June. I first became aware of this hike in 2018 when I did the Skyline II Trail from Strawberry Flats to Mowich Camp. That trail hikes up to the top of the mountain and then follows the ridge through Despair Pass and up to Snow Camp Mountain. From there, you can see Thunder Lake, which is the final lake on the Lightning Lakes Chain Trail, located in the valley below.

On this occasion, I left my house on Saturday morning with my dog, Sadie, to meet my friend in the park. I haven’t seen very much online or on social media about this trail, so I wasn’t expecting it to be busy. We met at noon and started hiking around 1pm. It was a pretty hot day for early-June, especially in Manning Park, which can be cold. I find that you never know what you’re going to get in Manning – you’ll either get beautiful sunny weather, or it will be cloudy and absolutely freezing (more common) – but it feels like there’s no in between.

So I was thrilled to get warm weather. Even though it had been nice in the city for weeks, Lightning Lakes was my first real mountain hike of the summer and I felt a giddy anticipation for the season to come. This was enhanced by the fact that the trail was filled with wildflowers! I can’t ever recall seeing wildflowers in June before, but we saw common paintbrush, lupin, arnica, columbine, valerian sitka, spreading phlox, pentstemon, and violet (among others I couldn’t identify).

It was busy along the first Lightning Lake, but the crowds tapered off when we hit the second Lightning Lake. We stopped for a snack at the end of the second lake, before continuing along the rest of the chain trail. From that point onwards, we saw very few people, I can only recall passing one or two groups of day hikers. The trail continues to Flash Lake and Strike Lake, with the campsite located just past Strike Lake. The challenge is that this trail doesn’t see a lot of trail maintenance and there is a fair amount of blowdown, so we did a lot of crawling over and under trees and my legs got pretty scratched up.

I wanted to swim in all the new lakes I’d never been to before, but Flash Lake wasn’t particularly nice. It’s a bit scummy and I couldn’t see anywhere nice to enter the water, so I ended up skipping it. Strike Lake was a little bit better, but there’s still not a lot of good places for swimming. Close to the end of the lake, we found a decent spot and took another break. Colin had a snack while I went for a swim. The water was cold, which it always is in Manning, but surprisingly, I didn’t find it too bad. We were pretty sweaty from the humidity, so it was a nice break to cool off.

The campsite is just a few hundred metres past the lake, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how busy it was at the campsite considering the trail had been empty. It is a fairly large campsite, with several tent pads spread out along the river and through the forest, but they were all full. There was a school group that had hiked in on Friday that was taking up a large portion of the sites near the river, but even excluding them, there were still a lot of hiking groups. I do wonder if this campground is busy all summer long, or just in Spring/early Summer, since it’s a lower elevation hike. Either way, we couldn’t get a tent pad and wandered around for a while looking for empty space before squeezing in among the trees near the river. We had Sadie with us and there was another dog on the other side of the campground, so we mostly tried to avoid them. I think it ended up working out.

We arrived around 3:30pm, meaning it took us approximately 2.5 hours to hike in, including the swimming and snack breaks. I was keen to continue hiking to Thunder Lake, so once we set up camp, we packed supper with us and hiked another 3km to the final lake. Trail maintenance definitely didn’t improve after the campground. There was still a good number of trees blown across the trail, but what was more annoying was that some sections of the trail were very overgrown with shrubs, and in one area, a very prickly plant. I’m not sure what it was, but we quickly noticed it stinging us as we were walking through it, so shorts weren’t a great idea. It was probably only along 5 minutes of the trail, so we just suffered through it, but we both changed into pants on the way back.

As far as the trail goes, Thunder Lake is a bit of an anticlimactic way to end. It’s a beautiful lake, but it’s really hard to access. As you approach the lake, the trail goes through a very steep boulder field, with the river flowing along underneath. You end up getting pretty high above the lake and the area doesn’t look entirely stable, so it’s not a great place to stop. Eventually you reach the treeline at the edge of the lake and there’s a sign saying that it’s dangerous to go further. We did go a little bit past the sign and I can confirm that it’s not worth it. The trail got steeper and was very dicey with loose rock overhead, so I don’t recommend it. It’s too steep to get down to the water, so we backtracked to the sign.

It’s frustrating to be so close to the lake, but unable to access it. We did find a small side trail leading down to the edge of the water, but there’s limited space to hang out. Fortunately there weren’t many other people around because it was late in the day, so we managed to go for a quick swim and had an awkward time cooking supper along the slope. I couldn’t even set up my camp chair because there was nowhere flat enough. So if you hike all the way to the lake, don’t assume you’ll be able to get down to the water, and if you try, definitely be very careful. I think it could be easy to get into trouble here or cause a small rockslide. I did not feel comfortable when we were bumbling around in the forest trying to find a way down, which is why we came back.

Otherwise it was a pretty chill trip. We hiked back to the campsite, arriving around 8pm and hanging out for an hour before going to bed. There is an outhouse and a bear cache, though the outhouse is a bit hidden in the trees. When you arrive at the main sign, it’s up through the trees to the right. I spent some time reading before bed and slept well with the sound of the river next to my tent.

It took us another 2.5 hours to hike back to the parking lot the following day. I would have liked to go for a swim at Lightning Lake before driving home, but I had Sadie with me and she’s a lot to manage when there’s people around, so we opted to skip it. Overall, I did enjoy the trail, in spite of the blowdown. The hike is primarily in the trees and not one of the more breathtaking hikes in Manning Park, so I probably wouldn’t choose to do it in the middle of the summer, but it was a perfect early season hike! Manning is still my favourite provincial park in BC and I love any time I get to recreate there.

Keats Island Backpacking Trip

July 4, 2026June 25, 2026 / Maria / 1 Comment

Now that it’s July, we’re firmly into backpacking season, which is by far my favourite time of the year! Usually I spend most of the Spring kayaking, but I wasn’t able to do that much this year because Seth hasn’t been available on the weekends, so instead, I spent most of June exploring some new low elevation backpacking trails that I’d never done before. Keats Island was particularly special because I went there with my Girl Guide unit!

Keats Island is a small island in Howe Sound, located between Bowen Island and the Sunshine Coast. In order to get there, you have to take the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale, followed by a water taxi to Keats Island. Plumper Cove Marine Park is located on the north side of Keats Island, with a large campground, that we thought sounded like a promising trip for beginner, teenage backpackers. I think the campground is most popularly used by boaters in the summer, but we opted to follow the 2.5km trail from Keats Landing instead.

After a thrilling ride on the ferry and the water taxi, we arrived at the north end of the island. The water taxi leaves from a dock right next to the Langdale ferry, but they only take cash payment or coupons, which can be purchased in Horseshoe Bay. The coupons are discounted, but they can only be purchased in a pack of 10 (convenient for a group like us, but maybe not if you’re traveling solo). It was a beautiful day at the very end of May when we went on our trip.

It’s a short hike, but it’s not flat. Once you get dropped at the dock, you start by hiking uphill along the road, followed by more uphill through the forest. There are a lot of small offshoot trails that I’ve heard can be confusing if you try and follow google maps, but it is very well signed, so follow the signs or a proper trail app like Gaia. The girls were in good spirits, but they did have fairly heavy packs and were happy when we reached the halfway point, because after that the trail was all downhill. There’s not really any views along the trail, but it is at least in the shade.

Overall it took us 1 hour, as a group of 8 people, to reach the campsite. The park is gorgeous and much larger than I was expecting. There’s a large dock where boats can tie up and some people paddle ashore. There’s a large sloping green field heading down towards the beach and a central water pump. There was only one other group of campers when we arrived, so we had premium choice for our campsites and selected the two sites closest to the main beach. I was surprised at how large the campground was, there were 20 campsites and lots of room for overflow, though there is a ranger located on site, so I’m not sure if overflow camping is allowed. A few more people showed up by boat later in the day, but the campground was still less than half full.

I was keen to do a little day hike as there are lots of short trails from the campground, including a trail to a lookout, but the girl guides were not interested in hiking further and we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beach. It was relatively quiet in the afternoon and the girls had fun looking for beach glass at low tide.

If you’re hiking in, rather than boating, there are a few extra things you should consider. There was a bear on the island when we visited and there is no bear cache. I assume most of the marine users store their food on their boats, but we had to do a bear hang. We brought a full pulley system with us to practice, which we put to good use! In addition, there’s no running water source, only the pump. Groundwater is not as good quality as stream water and it had a boil water order in effect, so we ended up filtering and boiling it. It was a good decision because there was quite a lot of grit in the water and filtering alone won’t remove viruses, so we boiled it too, which did require a lot of fuel.

We didn’t do a lot at the campsite, but the weather was so nice and the views so beautiful that no one minded! The girls had a lot of fun hanging out at the beach and since it was early in the season, we were able to have a campfire in the evening. You also need cash to pay the ranger for the campsite, which doesn’t have any reservations, it’s all first-come-first-serve, pay on site. We also got the firewood from the ranger, which is sold for $10 a bundle.

The final highlight of the evening was that once it got dark, we went out on the dock to drag a stick through the water and we were able to see bioluminescence! It wasn’t the strongest bioluminescence I’ve ever seen, but still a very cool experience and it should be a lot stronger later in the summer. We did see a coyote hanging around at dusk, so be cautious if you have a dog with you.

The following day we packed up all our gear to head back to the water taxi. BC Ferries does post a schedule for the water taxi, however, it only runs by request. So make sure you call them in the morning and tell them you want a pick-up, because otherwise they may not come. We returned to Langdale and had some time to kill, so we enjoyed our lunch on the beach before taking the ferry back to Horseshoe Bay. It’s an easy trip and it made for a very enjoyable weekend. I’m keen to go back and camp with my kayak one day!

Hut Series: A.O. Wheeler

March 14, 2026March 13, 2026 / Maria / 1 Comment

Last winter I set myself a goal of visiting more huts, planning 3 separate trips across the season. As is often the case in winter, the avalanche conditions didn’t align with my trips and I ended up bailing on two of three huts. Fortunately, I had a fantastic time at the Elfin Hut, but was left feeling a bit disappointed about the other trips.

This winter I planned 4 hut trips! The first trip was a bust again, due to weather, and one trip has yet to happen, but I was successful in visiting two of the ACC huts in mid February! The ACC is the Alpine Club of Canada, which is a great organization if you’re looking to grow your mountaineering skills. It has an annual membership, but one of the unique features of being a member is access to a large network of huts throughout BC and Alberta, as well as the ability to participate in trainings, trips, and events. You can still stay in the huts if you are not a member, but you get priority booking as a member (and a small discount on the cost), so it can be hard to book some of the huts without having the advance booking privileges.

I’m no stranger to snow camping and have spent many trips sleeping in the snow in a tent. But since I’ve taken up ski touring, I have to admit, there’s a certain advantage to staying in huts and being able to travel with a smaller pack. It’s much harder to ski with a full pack that includes a -30 degree sleeping bag and a winter tent, so we’ve largely switched to hut camping in the winter.

Since most of the ACC huts are located in the Rocky Mountains, this year I decided to plan a whole trip around skiing in the Rockies. I took one week off work and planned to do a few days resort skiing at Revelstoke with friends, before doing some ski touring with Brandon to the A.O. Wheeler Hut in Glacier National Park and the Elizabeth Parker Hut in Yoho National Park. We planned to finish with a day of resort skiing at Kicking Horse, but I ended up bailing on that day to rest and watch some of the Olympic finals.

After 3 days in Revelstoke, Brandon and I overpacked his 4runner to drive an hour to the Wheeler trailhead in Glacier National Park. I am, of course, talking about the Glacier Park located in BC, and not the one located in Montana. I feel like this park is hugely underrated and I’ve been wanting to explore more of it, so we booked one night at the Wheeler Hut to check it out.

The Wheeler Hut is one of the ACC’s most accessible huts and it’s a great option in the winter especially. In the summer, it’s basically located at the parking lot next to Illecillewaet Campground, but in the winter, you have to use the winter lot, so it’s a flat 1.5km hike to the hut instead. There’s a small picnic shelter and outhouse located at the trailhead. It’s a short walk up through the trees, and then it’s dead flat for 1.5km on a wide winter road. There’s no avalanche risk along the road, so you can feel pretty confident in visiting it at any time of year, regardless of your skill level.

When we visited, literally everyone in the cabin was on touring skis, most of which were planning to ski some bigger terrain nearby, but this would still be a good hut to visit on snowshoes or cross country skis. It was the middle of the week, so I think the hut likely attracts more families on weekends. I didn’t have any trouble booking the hut for a weeknight, and it wasn’t full, but I believe it’s very popular on the weekends. Booking through the ACC, you get access to bookings 6 months ahead of your travel date if you are a member, or 3 months ahead of your travel date if you are not a member.

In addition to the hut booking, there are several permits that are required from Parks Canada. You will need the standard Parks Canada Pass to leave in your vehicle, which is currently free in the summer, but still comes for a fee in the winter. You can buy it as an annual pass for your party, which we already had, or you can buy a day pass for each person on the trip. If you’re going to spend more than a week with 2 people in National Parks, I recommend the annual pass.

In addition to the Parks Pass, you are also required to obtain a free Winter Permit from Parks Canada if you are recreating in Glacier National Park. It’s a really interesting park because the Trans Canada Highway runs through the middle, which is extremely mountainous and potentially dangerous in the winter. The road passes through Rogers Pass, which has a bit of a reputation locally. Because the highway runs straight through the mountains, there is considerable avalanche risk, which is managed using explosives. In fact, Glacier National Park is home to the world’s largest mobile avalanche control program.

As a result, sections of the park are regularly shut down for avalanche control and it is completely illegal and extremely dangerous to be in those sections of the park when they are closed (as they will be setting off explosives and triggering avalanches). In order to manage the risk and ensure that people know how to check where they should and shouldn’t be, Parks Canada requires every single visitor recreating in the park to obtain a free Winter Permit every winter. In order to get the permit, you have to learn about the avalanche control program and complete a 30 minute quiz. It’s not difficult, but at the end you will receive a winter permit and parking pass.

If you’re staying at the Wheeler Hut, you’ll require a hut booking, the standard National Park Pass, the Winter Permit, the Winter Pemit Parking Pass, and an Overnight Parking Pass, which you can obtain from emailing Parks Canada (instructions are included as part of the Winter Permit process). It does sound quite complicated, but once you complete the Winter Permit quiz, the requirements will become much more obvious.

Once you’ve obtained all the appropriate permits, you’re ready for a fun trip to the hut. I was on touring skis and Brandon was on a splitboard, so it didn’t take us too long to get to the hut. The trail looks flat, but I think it might be ever so slightly uphill on the way there, because we were a lot faster on the way out. We arrived at the hut around 12:30pm and it was completely empty because all the current residents were out ski touring for the day. We had lunch and set up our beds before getting ready to go out and do a little exploring of our own.

I’m not super knowledgeable on the terrain around the Wheeler Hut, so I’ll just give a quick overview. If you don’t have Avalanche Safety Training, you’ll want to stick pretty close to the hut when exploring, but there are a few relatively safe options to check out. There are two trails from the hut, which includes the Perley Rock/Sir Donald Trail and the Asulkan Valley Trail. I didn’t do the Perley Rock Trail, which is closest to the hut, but you can follow it along the river in simple terrain for 1-2km. Stick to flat terrain – once the trail starts to get steeper or exposed to open mountain slopes, it’s time to turn around.

We opted to take the Asulkan Valley Trail, which starts in a meadow as opposed to the trees. We followed the trail until we hit a branch, where we took the left fork onto the Great Glacier Trail. We followed that trail for ~1km, until we hit the Illecelliwaet River, where there is a great view of some really big mountain terrain. That’s where we opted to turn around because we didn’t want to expose ourselves to any risk and the avalanche forecast was considerable.

Another option is to continue further up the Asulkan Valley Trail, from what I understand, you can go another half a kilometre up that trail until you hit a bridge, after which point it’s time to turn around. So overall, there are 3 potential routes, which are all ~3km round trip from the hut. When we visited the hut, we were the only people visiting for just 1 night. Everyone else was staying for multiple nights to go ski touring, with the most popular route being to tour the whole way up the Asulkan Valley Trail, where there is a second ACC hut, the Asulkan Cabin. I hadn’t done enough research to be comfortable with this route at the time, so we played it safe. I talked to a few skiers that did the trail and I think with a bit more background, this would be a good option for me in the future.

In spite of the higher avalanche conditions, the weather was quite nice. It was overcast all day, but it also snowed all day, leaving a nice layer of fresh powder to ski. We seemed to be the only people to take the Great Glacier Trail on that day, so there was several cms of fresh snow, which was nice. We returned to the hut for supper and the atmosphere was much livelier as people rolled in from their day of exploring. There was a large group staying at the hut, which is often annoying, but I will credit this group with being really respectful of hut norms. They took care of most of the hut chores, chopping a ton of firewood, keeping the woodstoves going, and making sure there was always a steady rotation of drinking water available in the large pots. So Brandon and I had it quite easy!

There is a creek near the hut where you can get drinking water. I’m not sure if the creek is normally open year round, but it was when we visited, which made water supply a lot easier. It’s so much faster than having to melt snow and a much nicer quality for drinking as well. Overall, the Wheeler hut is pretty swanky and exceeded all my expectations. It’s a large hut and it did feel busy, but it was under capacity on the night we stayed there, with lots of empty beds.

You enter from the back of the hut and there’s a small room to take off your boots, followed by the first of 3 main rooms. The first room has a woodstove and a table, but I would consider it to primarily be the gear drying room. There’s a bunch of racks for boots and lots of places to hang gear. The middle room is a large kitchen and cooking area. You don’t need to bring a stove or fuel, as there are several propane burners. You also don’t need to bring any dishes or utensils. We opted to bring our own small pot because we were just cooking dehydrated food and the provided pots tend to be quite large, but we didn’t need any other kitchen equipment, aside from some camp suds and a hand towel.

The last room is the main eating and hang out room and has a large fireplace. This is where we spent the rest of the evening. The large group was at one table, and most of the other smaller groups were at the other table. We had a nice chat with 2 brothers who were visiting from Ontario in order to go touring, and a group of 3 from Calgary. They saw me teaching Brandon how to play crib and recognized a fellow card lover, so I ended up joining them for several rounds of cards. I’ve already forgotten the name of the game. I only planned to play a few rounds before going to bed, but got sucked in when I couldn’t win a single hand. I ended up losing spectacularly, but I had a great time!

In addition to the three rooms on the main floor, there are 3 rooms of bunks upstairs, so it’s a very large capacity hut. Sleeping mats are provided, but I opted to bring my thermarest anyways because my quilt and thermarest together weigh less than my full size sleeping bag (and I didn’t want to lay directly on the mats in my quilt). Brandon brought his thermarest too because he was concerned about being cold on the mats, but it’s plenty warm in the hut with 2 woodstoves, so that wasn’t a concern.

It’s a nice set-up for sleeping, but I didn’t get much sleep because as soon as everyone went to bed, the symphony of snores started. This is to be expected at a hut and I did have earplugs, but it was so loud even that couldn’t drown them out. In future I would probably bring earbuds so that I could put on some music, I think that would have been more effective.

We were up early because we had to ski out, drive to Field, and then ski 12km up to Lake O’Hara on the same day. We were the first people to get up and the fire had gone out completely, so we got it re-started and then had a quick breakfast before heading out again. It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of blue sky on our early morning hike out. One night at the hut did seem a bit short, but it was a good length for what we planned to do, especially since we arrived early on the first day. In any case, Elizabeth Parker Hut was the real highlight of our trip, so tune back in next week to learn about that hut!