Russet Lake Backpacking Trip

September 22, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 4 Comments

After a month of resting my foot from my plantar fasciitis injury on the HBC Trail, I was really determined to get back in the backcountry. To be honest, my foot was definitely not feeling 100%, but I had a two week hiking trip planned for the end of August and I really needed to test out hiking again before committing to that trip. We had permits to camp at Russet Lake in mid-August, so it was a good opportunity to test the waters. Me and Brandon bought our Whistler edge cards early this year, and the pass comes with a free summer sightseeing ride on the gondola, so our plan was to take the gondola up to the top of Whistler and hike to Russet Lake from there.

This was my first time hiking at Whistler-Blackcomb and I was totally blown away by it! I’ve never bothered to pay for the gondola up because it is expensive and I spend a lot of time there in the winter, but it is absolutely worth visiting in the summer. There are a ton of cool trails up there, as well as another entrance to Garibaldi Provincial Park. I’ve done all the other major hikes in Garibaldi Park (Garibaldi lake, Elfin lakes, Wedgemount lake, etc), so this was the last big hike in the park for me. That said, even with the gondola, Russet Lake is still a challenging hike. It’s not at all technical, but more psychologically challenging with the topography of the terrain.

There’s a few options for hiking to Russet Lake. I think the most common option is to take the gondola up the mountain and hike from either Roundhouse or Peak Chair via the High Note trail (like we did). This route is approximately 12km long, with 600m of elevation gain. However the gondola pass is just shy of $100, so the free option is to hike up from Whistler base via the Singing Pass trail. It’s only 3km longer than hiking from peak chair, but it has more than 1400m of elevation gain. That said, it’s a gentle uphill most of the way.

I didn’t do the Singing Pass trail, but the reason I say the route via High Note is psychologically challenging is because there’s a lot of up and down. Every time you finish a peak, you can see several kilometres forward to the next peak that you’re going to have to hike down and up again. We had to do this 4 times, so it some ways it felt harder. However, it’s worth noting that it’s a net downhill hike on the way to Russet Lake, so there’s more uphill on the way back. If you want to try both trails, you could hike down the Singing Pass trail on the way back instead.

Me and Brandon were joined by Carolyn and her friend Scott on this trip and they opted to hike up the Singing Pass trail. So between us we did both, but Carolyn and Scott joined us on the return trip to complete the rest of the High Note trail, which loops back to Roundhouse. I would say that Russet Lake is an ambitious hike for a single day (24km roundtrip), but the High Note trail is a great option for a day hike from the gondola. It starts at the top of the Peak chair and there’s a few cool new attractions, such as the Skybridge. From there it hikes down around the back of all the chair lifts, looping back to Roundhouse around Piccolo Summit. It’s a 10km loop option to do this trail, but I’d recommend adding on an extra 1km each way to go to the top of Flute Summit – in my opinion this was one of the best views along the entire trail.

But let’s talk about Russet Lake. The biggest thing of note when we visited was the wildfire smoke. It was perfectly clear in Vancouver the night before we did the hike, but then a lot of smoke from Kelowna started to roll in in the early morning. The closer we got to Whistler, the smokier it got. Honestly, we probably shouldn’t have gone, the smoke is really not good for your lung health, but it seems to be a fact of life in the Pacific Northwest these days, so we opted to go anyways.

Carolyn and Scott headed off on the Singing Pass trail and beat us to Russet Lake by more than 2 hours. It took me and Brandon a while to get to the top because we had to take the Blackcomb gondola, followed by the Peak to Peak gondola, followed by Peak chair. But we had the best time on the trail and the views were fantastic! You leave the resort and enter Garibaldi Provincial Park just after Flute Summit. The biggest uphill section on the way there is right before Russet Lake and when you crest the top of the pass you can see the very fancy Claire and Kees Hut looking down to the lake.

The Hut is pretty incredible. It’s managed by the ACC and requires advance booking of course. The campsite is managed by BC Parks and also requires advance booking 4 months prior to when you want to go. Permits disappear quickly, so mark your calendar in advance! The hut is gorgeous, but the campsites are right on the lake, so personally I preferred the campground. From the campsite you can look out to Fissile Peak and Overlord Glacier, so it’s pretty cool.

We went for a quick swim in the cold water immediately after arriving and then Carolyn and Scott left to head up to Whirlwind Peak for more views. Me and Brandon considered joining them, but my foot needed a break, so we ended up just climbing a short way up for a view of the lake to have our dinner instead. Carolyn and Scott opted not to go the whole way to Whirlwind Peak, but got a few more views of the area.

My foot was definitely tired when we got to Russet Lake, but overall doing well. I made a point to stop once an hour on the way there to roll it on a ball and stretch it. Regular breaks makes a huge difference and since then it’s become a part of my hiking regimen to make sure I stop every 5km to rest it.

The rest of our evening was spent lying out enjoying the views and being a bit giddy about being out in the backcountry again. We were eventually driven back to our beds as it got colder. It was pretty cool overnight, but warmed up quickly again with the sun in the morning.

Unfortunately, the smoke was worse in the morning and there was a real smell of bonfire in the air. When you’re out in it for too long, it definitely gets in your sinuses and I had a bit of a persistent cough for the next week, which is why I don’t recommend it. It helps to wear a wet mask, but it’s hard to hike uphill with a mask on. At one point even my eyes were watering from the smoke.

Carolyn and Scott joined us on the hike back to Roundhouse because we all wanted to go to the Umbrella Bar. It’s more uphill on the way back, but I actually preferred it because I find going uphill easier on my foot than going down. There’s a few cute lakes on the way back and you hike through the actual ski resort, so it was cool to compare the terrain in the summer to terrain that I’m very familiar with in the winter because it looks like a different world depending on the season.

The Umbrella Bar turned out to be a bit of a bust. You can get drinks, but there’s very limited food, so we opted to download the gondola and eat in the village instead. We treated ourselves to burgers to celebrate a successful trip. For me, I was celebrating that my injury hadn’t prevented me from doing the trip and looking forward to heading to the Rockies just 1 week later. Overall it was an eye-opening trip for me – I feel like there’s a whole world of hiking at Whistler that I didn’t know about. So if you get the chance, definitely check it out!

Kayaking Pender Harbour

September 13, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

Me and Seth frequent the same places over and over on our kayaks, so it’s always a special thrill to visit someplace new. We were heading over to the Sunshine Coast in early August for our friends wedding, so we figured it was a good nice to paddle somewhere different.

The wedding was in Pender Harbour, which I’d never been to before, so I didn’t feel much need to go further for paddling. The Sunshine Coast is an interesting place because it’s a great place to paddle, but it does get pretty windy along the exposed coastline. Every time I drive through Sechelt I’m always surprised by how windy it gets along the main beach. Pender Harbour is a lot more sheltered, so there’s a few more areas to explore.

Our friend’s family manages one of the private marinas, so we were able to put in there, but according to BC Marine Trails, you can also launch from Welbourn Cove (behind the hotel) or Bargain Harbour Drive. If you have the time, there’s a nice roundabout route around the Francis Peninsula (just west of Pender Harbour) to see all of the area, but you have to get your timing right. Francis Peninsula only has 1 small canal that you can pass through to go from the south to north harbour. We were told you can pass through in a kayak, but not when the tide is really low. The tide was super low when we were there, so we didn’t attempt it, but it would be a nice challenge when passable. (our route is shown in red, with the canal circled in blue – but remember you can’t launch where we did, it’s a private marina)

Instead of going around the peninsula, we just explored the harbour. Seth recently took up crabbing, so he was keen to drop his crab pots. It was too shallow near the launch, but if you go out a little way (near Gerrans Bay) we could see several other crab pots. It was about 15-17m in depth, so we dropped his pot and then continued on.

Our goal for the day was to paddle around the point to Francis Point Ecological Reserve, where there’s a short hike. The water was extremely flat in the harbour, but the wind picked up a lot when we rounded the peninsula. It wasn’t too windy to be out, but we could see some white caps around the corner which indicated a more turbulent area, so we decided to abort and stop at Martin’s Cove instead. I’d still like to visit Francis Point though, so I’ll have to return for it another day.

Since it was too windy for a round trip and the tide too low to connect through, we returned the way we’d come. Even though there’s lots of people living along the edge of the harbour, we still saw a fair bit of wildlife. As always, we saw several seals, but we also saw a few herons, a kingfisher, and our personal favourite, black oystercatchers!

We didn’t have high hopes for the crab pot because we’d only dropped it for 90 minutes, but it turned out to be quite lucrative! Before this trip, Seth had only crabbed out of Belcarra, which is a very frequented area. He always catches crabs, but most of them are too small or female and have to be thrown back. In Pender Harbour, he only caught 2 crabs, but they were both male and large enough to take home! So you can really tell the difference when you leave the lower mainland – just make sure you have a license and report your catch.

So overall we were only paddling for a little over 2 hours, but it was really nice to get out and explore somewhere new. There’s so many places to paddle on the Sunshine Coast, I know we’ll be back again!

HBC Trail Backpacking Trip Part III

August 30, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

This is the final saga of my experience on the HBC Heritage Trail. See Part I and Part II for the full story.

It was such a relief on Monday morning to look out the tent and see an overcast sky! I love the sun, but it was so hot on this trip and with the general fatigue from the previous 2 days, I was looking for a bit of relief.

Carolyn was anxious to get going early in hopes of getting home a bit earlier, so we were quick in having breakfast and packing down the tent. My foot was generally feeling better, but I was still getting arch pain when putting my full weight on my right foot – not as pronounced as the previous day, but I wasn’t sure what 22km of walking would do to it.

We were finished with the bulk of the trail, but arguably, we had some of the toughest sections ahead. We left the campsite at around 7:30am and started with almost 800m of elevation loss over 5km. It was pretty steep in parts, but I wasn’t feeling too bad and we were having good conversation, so we flew through the first section to Sowaqua River. Sowaqua River was our last river crossing of the trip and even though the trail was relatively flat for the next 7km between Sowaqua and Colville Camp, we knew we were going to encounter some blowdown.

Rivers are a central cause of problems in a flood, so we weren’t surprised to encounter a lot of blowdown immediately after the river. This was probably the most concentrated area of blowdown across the entire trail, but fortunately it wasn’t too long. The trail was tricky to follow in some parts, but after the first kilometre, it got a lot easier. Had I not been experiencing foot problems, I think this would have been an enjoyable trail walk, but the monotony of the flat sections turned out to be the most challenging on my foot.

When we finally got home I was able to diagnose the problem as plantar fasciitis, which was confirmed by an ER doctor and in my case was caused by putting too much stress on my foot. Plantar fasca is the connective tissue that runs along the length of your foot and I triggered the problem generally by pushing too far without proper training. So I definitely learned my lesson. But unfortunately, the longer I hiked on it, the more painful it got, and flat sections were the hardest because it was harder to distribute my weight to other parts of my foot and there was nothing else to distract from the pain. It also started to rain a little bit, but honestly it was a nice relief from the sun and it wasn’t enough to actually get wet, except for our feet, which had no hope with all the wet blowdown anyways.

So my pace definitely slowed down towards Colville Camp and I was relieved when we finally got there for lunch around noon. Colville Camp was a pretty cool forest campsite, but it had a lot of blowdown and pretty limited campsites, so it probably wouldn’t be one of my first picks for where to stay. We took a break for about an hour, which actually helped my foot a lot, before continuing on to the hardest part of the day.

We had a 3km climb up to the top of Manson’s Ridge, but it was also ~550m of elevation gain, so it was a bit of a slog. The first part of the climb isn’t too bad until you hit Fool’s Pass, which is a small relief in terms of elevation gain, but a mental slog! There were a few big trees down in the pass and there’s a few small declines you know you’ll have to ascend again, so it was pretty torturous at this point in the day. The last part of the climb up to Manson’s Ridge is really steep, but I honestly preferred it because it distracted from my foot pain. I was pretty slow, but eventually we made it to the top and it was all downhill from there. Unfortunately there’s no view unless you do an extra 400m to the summit, which normally I would do, but on this day I just didn’t have it in me.

The section between Manson’s Ridge and Manson’s Camp is only 2kms, but you undo all of the previous 500m of elevation gain and there were several huge trees down on the path, so it was also a slow descent. We knew the trail had been cleared by volunteers after Manson’s Camp, so our focus was solely on that reward.

We made it to Manson’s Camp shortly after 4pm. Manson’s Camp is really nice! It’s not very big – pretty much just a small plateau with enough space for a few tents – but it has a really nice view of the surrounding mountains. We will thrilled to sit down on the benches and planned a short stop before the last 6km. I was definitely hurting, but feeling in better spirits knowing we were approaching the end.

Unfortunately we still had a few roadblocks standing between us and the trailhead, we just didn’t know that yet. This was one section of trail where we should have done a bit more research, but in our defense, when I did the research after, it was still very difficult to access the right information.

I rely heavily on GaiaGPS when in the wilderness and my Gaia showed two options for finishing the trail: the “new route” and the “old route”. Pretty self explanatory, but we knew from the facebook group that the route had been cleared and we were confused when we could not find the entrance to the new route (where indicated on Gaia). Carolyn bushwacked through some trees and then found some flagging tape in the woods, but it was definitely not cleared and we were getting a funny feeling about it, so we returned to the campsite.

The “old route” is very obvious and leaves from the back of the campsite, so we decided to take our chances on that. To be honest, it didn’t really look cleared either because there was a lot of shrubbery growing into the trail, but there was no blowdown, so it could have been a lot worse. A couple hundred metres into the “old route” we came across a sign pointing down into the woods for the new trail “to be completed in 2022”. In my opinion, this is the biggest shortcoming on the entire trail. The “to be completed” was very foreboding to me and I can’t guess why anyone would install an official looking sign before actually finishing the trial. Our guess was that the trail never actually got finished because of the 2021 flood and we decided to stick with the “old route”. This was the right call and was exactly the case. The new trail was flooded before it was completed and they are still working to re-establish it, so please please please, someone take this sign down!

The old route continues through the woods for a while along a very gentle decline until you eventually pop out on a forestry road. The forestry road is now defunct because of washout from the 2021 flood, so it has a pretty unique feel of a place that’s been reclaimed by nature. The grass is growing up through the old road after 2 years of no use and it would have been a leisurely walk had my foot not been throbbing with every step.

It’s only 6km from Manson’s Camp to the end, but the road blocks continued. It’s easy walking until 3km before the end where there’s some flagging tape and a sign saying that the road is washed out and to follow the detour. We didn’t actually get to see the road washout, but I can assume it’s pretty bad because the detour takes you all the way up in the woods to navigate around the creek where the washout occurred. Fortunately this is the only detour, but it was already 6:30pm at this point and I was so done with walking. It was discouraging to have to walk way up into the forest and because we didn’t even know if we were on the correct trail (since we didn’t know the new route was still not complete), we were nervous there would be more road blocks or detours that would prevent us from finishing the trail.

There was a lot more washout after the detour, but you’re able to walk through it. It’s definitely creepy though. There’s a large uphill slope on the right side of the road and a steep embankment going down the left side. None of the banks looked particularly stable and the road is littered with giant boulder debris that was knocked down during the flood. After a very hot weekend, the sky was finally threatening rain and as the dark clouds moved in, we rushed through the landslide areas out of caution.

Within the last kilometre of trail, we tried calling a cab to come pick us up. We’d read that a lot of cars get broken into on the Hope side of the trail, so we had parked at the Hope Visitor Centre and decided to call a taxi. It took us a while to get a signal, but eventually we got through and they gave us a 30 minute wait time. It started to sprinkle as we were doing the last 500m of the trail and as we exited the trailhead, it started to absolutely pour! We were dreading having to wait in the pouring rain for 30 minutes and were ecstatic to see a shelter at the trailhead where we could stay dry while killing some time.

This was where we made our final error of the trip. We didn’t realize that the taxi’s don’t actually come all the way up to the trailhead. There’s a gravel road for ~2-3km from the highway to the trailhead that they don’t like to drive on (understandably). We were supposed to walk all the way to the road, which led to a very confused driver calling us to find out where we were. Fortunately he was a gem of a human being and drove his Prius all the way up to the end of the road to pick up 2 soaking wet, dirty, smelly hikers! We thanked him profusely and gave him a very generous tip – but please learn from our mistakes and just walk to the highway!

So overall it was almost 7:30pm when we finished the hike, resulting in another 11.5 hour day of hiking, with a total of 24.5km. All of which I suffered through with an injured foot. As I said, it turned out to be plantar fasciitis, and since then I have been out hiking again. It hurt to bear weight on it for a full week after the hike and after that I had to build up my hiking distance again. I went to physio as soon as possible and have been doing exercises twice a day ever since. It still gets tired and I’m weary not to stress it too much, but I have been able to work it up enough not to lose an entire season.

I was upset to have to cancel on my girl guides though. I was supposed to go on a 4 day trip to Garibaldi with my girl guide unit 2 weeks later that I had to bail on (though they were still able to go without me). I did a few nature walks and day hikes in early August, but I didn’t attempt any more backpacking for a month. I just went on my first backpacking trip since the injury in late August – it was only a 1 night and I hiked ~12km each day. I took precautions to take care of my foot and stopped every hour to roll it on a ball and that seemed to work, so I am going to attempt a 4 day trip very soon (with much more moderate distances than this trip).

So as usual, I learned a lot from this trip. No matter how many trips I go on, there always seems to be some kind of challenge that arises. You’d think that would be a deterrent, but I think it’s a part of what makes the trips so addicting. There’s always a large sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a particularly difficult trail. I felt a little bit invincible after solo-hiking the Sunshine Coast Trail last year, so it was a good reminder to always be re-assessing your abilities and boundaries. I think it’s important to tell yourself you can do something and build confidence, but be realistic about your abilities as not all injuries can be healed with a few days of rest.

If you’re thinking of doing this trail, I’d definitely encourage you to go for it, but be aware that the trail is in rough shape and there is a lot of uphill and downhill with relatively few views. I love forest hiking, so it was still a winner for me, but I know not everyone does and it’s a long trail for ~4km of truly scenic alpine hiking. Thrilled to finally have completed this small piece of BC’s history!