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!

Larrabee and Ecola State Parks

July 27, 2022August 20, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

This year I decided to celebrate Canada Day by… leaving Canada. It felt a bit ironic to go to America for Canada Day, but I’m not really into celebrating the holiday with what’s going on with residential schools and indigenous groups asking us to recognize it as a day of mourning instead. So I was happy to forgo any celebrations, though I made sure to get out of America before Independence Day because I’m also not into celebrating what’s going on with reproductive rights in the states. So politically, not a great weekend for either country.

But it was a good weekend to hightail it down to Oregon instead! I’ve only been to Oregon once in 2014 when I went on a road trip from Vancouver to San Francisco. We blew through Oregon pretty quickly though and just spent one day in Portland and one day at Crater Lake. I’ve been wanting to re-visit Portland ever since and finally made the time for it 8 years later (what is time?!). Crossing the border can be very slow on long weekends, so we decided to cross after work on Thursday to get ahead of the Friday morning rush. This turned out to be a great decision and it only took us about 5 minutes to cross.

Brandon was driving and Lien had booked us some campsites for the weekend. It was a last minute plan, so there wasn’t a whole lot available, but he did manage to score us what turned out to be a pretty amazing site! We drove through Bellingham and then exited the I-5 to drive down along the coast to Larrabee State Park. It made for a really nice scenic coastal drive and Larrabee Park has amazing views of Bellingham Bay and the San Juan Islands. We got there just in time to set up our tents and then we walked down to the coast to watch the sunset! It was a totally clear day and the water was really calm. I enjoyed a hot chocolate as we watched the sun light the sky up orange.

We hit the sack after that because we wanted to get an early start the next morning. We had the car all packed up and ready to go again at 8am and had a lot of driving to get to Oregon. We had decided to wait another day before going to Portland and were heading down to Cannon Beach instead. Unfortunately traffic wasn’t great on the drive down and we crawled through Tacoma. Cannon Beach definitely added a few more hours of driving onto our day, so we hoped it was worth it.

We stopped for lunch after crossing into Oregon and then continued on to Ecola State Park. Between the traffic and the food stops, the drive ended up taking longer than we’d hoped (stretching 5 hours of driving into almost 8 hours) and we arrived at Ecola State Park at 4pm. Ecola State Park is just north of Cannon Beach and has several other beaches and trails that you can explore. We didn’t have the time for any substantial hiking, but we decided it was worth checking out some of the other beaches.

First we hit up Indian Beach and watched people trying to surf. We walked the length of the beach and did a little exploring before driving back to Ecola viewpoint. The beach is mostly sandy with some rocks and the water was really cold, but you can see a ton of sea stacks at the end of the beach. You can’t access any of the beaches from Ecola point, but it has a beautiful view of Crescent and Cannon Beach. It’s about 2km to hike down to Crescent Beach, so we decided to go for it.

The trail is advertised as for experienced hikers only, it wasn’t too challenging, but it does have a fair bit of washout and mud along the trail, which you have to walk through or around. It’s a pretty steep descent along switchbacks at the end to get to the beach, so be prepared for a climb on the return. The hike took us about 35 minutes and the whole time I was considering whether it was really worth it or if we should have just went straight to Cannon Beach. When we finally got to Crescent Beach though, it was an easy answer, it was definitely worth it!

It was around 6pm and we had the entire kilometer long beach to ourselves! It was an overcast day, but the sun did its best to try and peak out while we were there. There’s a big cluster of sea stacks at the end of the beach and because the tide was on its way out, we got a beautiful reflection of the stacks in the water. We walked the entire length of the beach, running in and out of the cold water. No one showed up the entire time we were there and I found several sand dollars buried in the sand. Fortunately, the return trip was easier than anticipated and we headed down towards Cannon Beach when we got back to the car.

Cannon Beach is pretty popular, but since it was Canada Day and Americans were still working, our timing was good and it wasn’t busy at all. A few of Brandon’s friends met us at the beach in the evening and we had a seafood dinner on the patio at Mo’s overlooking the beach! We didn’t end up doing that much exploring along Cannon Beach, but we did go for a nice post-supper walk before heading to our campsite.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find a site on the beach, so we had booked one an hour away at L.L. Stub Memorial Park. It was a pain to have to drive there late on Friday night, but it saved us an hour on our drive into Portland the following day. It took us a while to find the site in the dark because Lien had accidentally booked a full service site, so we ended up setting up our 2 tiny tents surrounded by huge RV’s that were clearly spending the entire summer at the park. The one nice thing though was that this park at least had free showers! Something we couldn’t say about Larrabee State Park.

ECT Series: Motion Path Backpacking Trip

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

The last few years I’ve been home I’ve brought all my camping gear with me in hopes of getting in an overnight on the East Coast Trail. Last year I was finally successful with Cape Broyle Head Trail and this year we were lucky enough to hike Motion Path overnight!

I feel like a broken record, but this may be one of my all time favourite sections! It’s definitely up there with the Spout and since they share the same coastline I hope to one day do them back to back. Together Motion Path and The Spout make up ~31km of continuous coastline between Petty Harbour and Bay Bulls – this is the longest uninterrupted stretch on the entire trail and there are two campsites, one on each path. I’m assuming they’ve been broken up into 2 trails due to the length, with Shoal Bay Road delineating between them. Shoal Bay Road is an old overgrown ATV road that runs from the Goulds to the midpoint of the trails. It’s not considered official ECT, so it adds ~7km to whichever hike you’re doing.

We didn’t have enough time to do the whole thing, so we just did Motion Path, which runs from Shoal Bay Road to Petty Harbour, totaling ~21km. I went with Emily and because she’s working all week, we only had one shot at the trail and prayed the weather would cooperate. She worked until 3pm on Friday and then we picked her up and our Dad dropped us off at the entrance to Shoal Bay Road in the Goulds. We’ve both done Shoal Bay Road before when we day hiked The Spout and Emily has also done Motion Path as an overnight once before. So we knew what to expect with Shoal Bay Road. It’s completely in the woods with a lot of loose gravel and water ponding. It’s not difficult, but 7km of boring access road does feel like a slog. It’s usually very wet, but it hadn’t rained all week, so it was pretty dry and we only had to detour around large puddles twice.

It was a really nice day and the sun was shining as we set out on the trail. It was around 4pm when we started and it took us about an hour and a half to reach the coast. It started to cloud over along the way and we could see the fog hanging out offshore as we started the 2km of coastal trail to the campsite at Miner’s Point. This section wasn’t particularly scenic, but we did see a few waterfalls and get some nice views looking north towards Heart’s Point.

It took us another hour to get to the campsite and we strolled into the sheltered birch forest where it’s located around 6:30pm. We fully expected to be the only people camping there, but there were two guys already set up and another couple showed up shortly after up – so pretty busy for the ECT! There is one premium camping spot, which the guys had snagged, but it’s pretty slim pickings after that. A lot of the ECT campsites have tent pads, but Miner’s Point just has some flat grassy spots. We counted 5 or 6 of them, but they were all pretty small and bumpy except for the one good one. Fortunately it was grassy though, so it made for a soft bed!

We picked the best place to pitch the tent and then spent the rest of the night taking it easy and making supper. The fog rolled in really thick right after we arrived, but the wind kept changing direction and sent it rolling in and out of the campsite. When it was sunny, it was quite nice with the birch trees. There is a small stream running through the campsite, but it’s definitely not the best water source and I could see it running dry if there was a particular dry spell (although that’s pretty rare in NL). We were able to find one section that was running decent, but you definitely need a filter. If you continue on towards motion point, you will cross some better sources.

It took us a little while to get warm overnight with the fog and we must have been on a slope because we woke up with both of us bunched to one side of the tent. It was an early wake up call because the sun was out in full force in the morning and it felt like we were being cooked inside the tent! I woke up at 6:30am and opened up the vestibules to get some air flowing, but we were both up and making breakfast shortly after 7am.

I haven’t done much overnighting in Newfoundland, but Emily would agree with me in saying we’ve never had such a warm morning on the trail in Newfoundland! There wasn’t any wind in the trees and the sun was shining right down on us, so I immediately put on shorts and sunscreen. Unfortunately the lack of wind also brought the flies, so it gave us the motivation for a quick breakfast and pack-up. We were all done and ready to hike at 8:30am, which must be a new record for us.

Our plan for the rest of the day was to hike the 11.5km back along Motion Path to Petty Harbour. You leave the birch forest and then pretty much the entire rest of the hike is exposed along the coast. It would be brutal in the rain, but on a sunny day like we had, it was an absolute dream! 11.5km of unbroken coastal views!

I can see this trail being a bit challenging as a day hike due to the length, but as an overnight it makes for a really great day of hiking. There’s a few short climbs, but overall it’s an easy trail, you just need extra time to accommodate photographing all the amazing views along the way! There’s a few water sources right after the campsite and then you start climbing up towards Heart’s Point. From there you can see all the way back to the lighthouse in Bay Bulls and the trail undulates up and down once you get to the top of the bluff.

My favourite part of the trail is coming down from Heart’s Point towards Lower Cove – you can see all the way out to Motion Point and it is really cool to see the ponds sitting so close to the ocean. On a nice day, I would love to try swimming in Lower Pond, but even though it was sunny, it was quite windy and we would get cold whenever we stopped (though it was comfortable in shorts when we were moving). The trail loops right around Motion Head and we were super enthused to hear some whales surfacing when we stopped for a snack break!

It took us a little while to find them, but we could see several offshore, which meant the caplin had finally arrived. I wasn’t expecting to see whales in mid-June, so I felt lucky to see them just as they arrived and I was getting ready to leave. Right before we hit Lower Cove Head we were treated to a real show! The trail descends pretty close to the water in this section and there just so happened to be a few whales fishing right off the coast! We think they were minke whales and saw a mama and calf from a very close distance!

We passed 2 other hikers going in the other direction around Motion Head and anther trio close to the end of the trail, otherwise we didn’t see anyone else on the trail on day. We made pretty slow progress in the morning, but picked up the pace around Motion Head, where the trail is really flat and easy. At Motion Head we had the privilege of seeing a humpback whale breaching way off in the distance, but after we turned the corner towards Petty Harbour we didn’t see any more whales and the weather started to shift.

The day had started out with blue skies and not a cloud to be seen, but things don’t often stay that way in Newfoundland and the clouds were blowing in over the trail. We still weren’t too concerned as we continued along Motion Bay and stopped for lunch at Merrymeeting Point. Unfortunately the wind was picking up, so it was chilly and we made it a quick break before starting the last climb into Petty Harbour. We made pretty quick time on the hike up because some pretty ugly looking rain clouds were rolling in and we quickly alerted Dad to come and pick us up before the rain began.

If you’re not used to climbing, this is definitely the most challenging part of the trail. The trail ascends about 120m up over the head, where there’s a short flat section and the final descent into Petty Harbour. It’s a bit steeper on the Petty Harbour side and more gradual going out towards Motion Head if that influences your decision about which direction to hike the trail. We didn’t like the steep drop into Petty Harbour, but it is very short and only took us about 10 minutes. It did start to drizzle as we were descending, but it was only a small amount of rain. Normally that wouldn’t both me, but I had a flight back to Vancouver early the next morning and didn’t want wet gear, so I put on my pack cover and hurried down the trail.

We hit Petty Harbour after 4 hours of hiking and only had to wait 5 minutes for Dad to pick us up. The rain picked up right after we finished and it was a good reminder how quickly the weather can change! But lucky for us, we were dry at home after an excellent overnight trip. I’m so glad I got to squeeze this trail in and hope to return one day and do the entire section from Petty Harbour to Bay Bulls. It’s a bit on the long side for a day hike, but if you’re looking to try overnighting, this is a great trail! Super scenic and not too difficult, I’d recommend.