Hiking Winchester Mountain

December 20, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

In my humble opinion, one of the most underrated National Parks in America is North Cascades National Park. This is likely because of its remote location in the north of the country, but neighbouring Mt. Baker-Snoquolmie National Forest / Mt. Baker National Recreation Area is only a ~2 hour drive from Vancouver (and is more or less an extension of the park), so I’ve made a few trips down there over the years and I’ve yet to do a hike that wasn’t jaw-droppingly beautiful. It can get fairly busy, but compared to other National rec sites, it receives relatively few visitors (and half of those visitors are likely Canadian).

For some reason, almost all the hikes I’ve done in the North Cascades have been in the Fall, though I have done Artist Point twice in the winter. I first visited in 2018, and even in the last 5 years, the area has definitely grown in popularity in the Fall. When we crossed the border on this visit, the border agent asked where we were going, and when we said “hiking near mount baker”, he said, “you and every other Canadian that’s crossed the border today”.

This was my first time going down to the US for a hike since before the pandemic and it only cemented the idea that I need to visit more. To date, I’ve done the Skyline Divide, Yellow Aster Butte, and Chain Lakes, and they’re all beautiful. I honestly can’t pick a favourite between any of them. We added Winchester Mountain to the list over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and it was another stunning hike! I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface on the plethora of hikes in this area, so I’m determined to visit even more next year.

Like I said, it’s only about a 2 hour drive from Vancouver, unless there’s a long wait at the border, which is not uncommon. We always cross the border at Sumas and take Highway 542 towards Mount Baker Ski Area. You don’t need to do much pre-planning, except to get a $5 parking pass for the National Forest. These aren’t limited or reservation based, so just pick one up online before crossing the border to leave in your car. If you forget to get one online, you can get one from the Visitor Center, but their hours are very limited and it’s not always open.

If you’re visiting in the Fall, Yellow Aster Butte is by far the most popular hike (followed closely by the Chain Lake trail). The hillside turns bright yellow and attracts a lot of visitors, so I recommend arriving super early for this hike as parking is limited for the hordes of people that want to do the hike. I hiked the trail with Lien several years ago and parking wasn’t too much of a problem, but we had to drive past the Yellow Aster trailhead on our way to Winchester this year and it was an absolute gong show! There were hundreds of cars blocking the road and you more or less had to park half way down the mountain if you arrived mid morning (like we did).

This was the main downside of going to Winchester Mountain. The trailhead to Winchester is located several kilometres uphill past Yellow Aster Butte, but it requires 4WD to get to the top, so it considerably thins out the crowds. Some people will hike all the way up from the Yellow Aster parking lot (which in my opinion is still worth it), but it was nice to be able to drive right to the trailhead in Brandon’s 4Runner. In my opinion, Winchester is a more scenic and easier hike than Yellow Aster Butte. The key reason for this is because you do a lot of the elevation gain in the car, so by the time you reach the trailhead, you’re already in the sub-alpine and the entire hike has incredible views of the backcountry.

Parking is at Twin Lakes, which is aptly named for the pair of lakes at the base of Winchester Mountain. There are actually several rec sites that are first come-first serve at the lakes (and are gorgeous), so we’re keen to come back some time in the summer to stay overnight. Fortunately we didn’t have trouble finding parking at Winchester and even on Thanksgiving weekend, there were lots of empty campsites.

The entire hike up to Winchester Lookout is less than 6km round trip, but it is steep and covers ~400m in elevation gain from top to bottom. It’s a steady climb, but it’s one of the most colourful fall hikes I’ve ever done on the west coast! I personally liked it better than Yellow Aster Butte, but I did have better weather than when I did Yellow Aster. On this day, it was beautiful, warm, and sunny, with blue skies all day. I thought we were done for summer weather since it was October, but I was glad I packed a pair of shorts just in case. This is very subjective though because I did Yellow Aster and Chain Lakes at the exact same time of year and needed my parka on both of those occasions (though I also did the Skyline Divide in shorts in late October).

It took us under 2 hours to hike to the top and we stopped a lot to take photos and videos. Lien had a rough start to the hike – he unwisely had a dairy-heavy breakfast at the cafe we stopped at, and his lactose intolerance punished him for it. He disappeared up the trail while the rest of us were still packing our bags and we couldn’t find him (which is very out of character for Lien). We were surprised he’d gone so far ahead without us, but he eventually stumbled out of the bushes looking for my trowel and I force-fed him some pepto-bismal and he eventually recovered, lol.

There’s an old fire lookout at the top of the trail, which I’ve seen featured on instagram several times. There’s one bed inside that you can claim if you’re lucky – I’m not sure how popular that option is though because no one was using it on this beautiful sunny day. Like all the hikes in this area, there are gorgeous views of Mount Baker and this particular lookout points north towards Canadian Border Peak. There’s another trail that leaves from the base called High Pass trail and goes up towards Larabee Peak that I’d definitely be keen to visit on another occasion.

We hung out at the top for an hour or so before heading back down. It’s all downhill on the way back, so it makes for a pretty quick day hike. The pay-off for the level of effort expended is very high, but most of the hike is exposed, so if you have a fear of heights, this might not be the best choice. If you don’t have 4WD, the distance from the lower lot is ~3.5km each way, so I still think it’s worth it to climb up, and odds are you might be able to hitch a ride with some other hikers. We would definitely have picked some people up if we didn’t already have 5 adults and an anxious dog in the car.

We finished the hike with a swim in Twin Lakes at the end. Actually, I should say, me and Lien finished the hike this way. Everyone else chickened out because the water was quite cold, but I’ll swim in pretty much anything, and Lien was keen for a bath. But in conclusion, it’s an absolutely fantastic hike and I’d love to spend some more time in this area in the next few years. If you’ve spent a lot of time near Mount Baker, please let me know your favourite hikes!

Tetrahedron Park Backpacking Trip Part II

December 13, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

The first half of our trip centered around Mount Steele (featured in Part I), so the second half of the trip was about McNair Lake. Like I said in my last post – there are 4 cabins in the park. Edwards Cabin is the most central and could be used as a home base for day hiking. Bachelor Cabin is located the closest to the parking lot and is really popular among both families and partiers because of the short hike for hauling in children or booze, depending on your desires, I guess. These two crowds probably don’t mesh very well, so my opinion is to leave this cabin for the families!

I think Mount Steele is the most popular hut because of it’s location for skiing, and I’d heard McNair Cabin is one of the least frequented in the park. It’s certainly the hardest to get to. You’d think that Mount Steele would be the most challenging because of the hike up the mountain, but it’s a longer hike to McNair Lake and while the terrain is flatter – it’s more technical. In the shoulder season, it can get very muddy on the trail to McNair and there are several detours around boggy areas.

It was another gorgeous day when we departed Mount Steele and we hiked our way back towards Edwards Cabin. Just before you get to the cabin, there’s a branch towards McNair Lake. We weren’t ready for lunch yet, so we skipped Edwards and immediately carried on towards McNair. It’s a nice forested trail at the beginning, but it does deteriorate as you continue on. It’s not really in bad condition, but there’s a collapsed bridge and a detour before Chapman Lake that were pretty muddy.

Eventually our hunger caught up with us, but it’s pretty swampy and we didn’t see many places to stop. We decided to aim for Chapman Lake for lunch and we did find a small dry spot right at the head of the lake to take a break, but overall there’s not many good places to stop at the lake either. We didn’t see anyone on the trail except for one father and son who were leaving the cabin. Apparently on this particular weekend McNair Cabin had been the party cabin and they told us they had a great time participating in “beer olympics” with a bunch of partiers the previous night. They were crowned champions at the end of the night as the only ones not blackout drunk.

The partiers must have gotten up early though, because we didn’t see them. There are some large meadows just before the cabin and a short climb to get up to the top of the hill. The Cabin is still a few hundred metres from the lake, so you can’t see it, but there is a really beautiful view looking down to the meadows. The father-son duo told us they had seen a bunch of elk down there the previous day, so we kept our eyes peeled for them. We saw lots of evidence of where they had been bedded down, but unfortunately we didn’t see them.

We were the only people at the Cabin when we arrived and it ended up staying that way all night. We loved meeting new people at Steele, but it was nice to have the cabin to ourselves at McNair. I don’t know how McNair got its reputation as the least popular cabin though, because we absolutely loved it! Don’t skip it if you’re visiting the park, it’s definitely worth the muddy trek out there! Someone has strung lights around the edge of the cabin that can be plugged into a power bank, so it has a really great atmosphere!

We made a trek down to check out the lake as the clouds moved in for the evening. It’s a pretty small lake and if you’re feeling adventurous, there is another day hike that can be done up to Panther Peak. Definitely do your research for this one though as there’s no marked trail and it wasn’t even shown on my GPS. Instead, we hung out at the cabin and ate supper and had a cribbage tournament. Girls vs. Boys and me and Adriana absolutely smoked the boys!

The hut is very similar to Mount Steele, but McNair has a little balcony on the front of the cabin, which is a nice spot to hang out. I didn’t sleep well though because I woke up in the middle of the night and was absolutely convinced I had forgotten my rain pants at Mount Steele when I’d been repacking my bag in the morning. I only recently bought rain pants after a very wet episode at Lake O’Hara and I was feeling dejected thinking that I wouldn’t have them for the following day.

Fortunately, I lost sleep over nothing and found them in the bottom of my bag the following morning. It wasn’t raining when we woke up, but it started while we were having breakfast. I wouldn’t say it was heavy rain, but it rained consistently throughout the entire day. We had a nice breakfast before packing up for the hike back to the car. We made for a colourful crew with our rain jackets and pack covers!

As muddy as the trail had been the previous day, it was much worse in the rain. In the very first meadow I went calf deep in the mud and got my shoe wet and Brandon took a tumble backwards into the mud. It continued to rain on us all morning and it was a slow hike back to Edwards. Adriana was very worried about crossing the broken bridge and she did take a little tumble off it right at the start, but was otherwise okay. Eventually we made it back to Edwards for lunch and were thrilled to find 3 other guys there who were getting ready to leave, but had a fire going.

I was pleased with my new rain pants, which were only $15 from value village, but kept me quite dry on the trail. We stripped off all our wet layers and enjoyed our lunch warming up by the remnants of the fire. Brandon literally had steam pouring off him as we dried out our gear as much as possible.

Given the rain, it would have been an easy choice for me to skip Bachelor Cabin on the way back. It’s a slight detour (~2km) to get there and we skipped in on the way in to secure spots at Mount Steele. But I’m glad Eddie was there because he was determined to check out Bachelor Cabin to come back in the future with his family. So he convinced us to detour and now I can say I’ve been to all 4 cabins! Bachelor Cabin is located in the woods, but not far from Bachelor Lake. We didn’t stop for too long and it was only a short hike back to the car after that.

It was pouring by the time we finally got to the car, which made for an interesting dynamic of 4 people trying to change into dry clothes! We had a ferry booking for 8pm, which was the only sailing with reservations left, but we were hoping to get on one of the earlier sailings. We checked the ferry status as soon as we got service, but even though it was only 3pm, the ferry was already ticketing for 8pm, so we just kept our reservation. Instead, we got to enjoy some time in Gibsons and had a delicious meal at Lunitas Mexican Eatery, followed by ice cream!

So overall, I think it was a very successful trip and had a great time backpacking with some different friends than I usually go with. My love for the Sunshine Coast stays alive and well and I hope to be back one day on skis!

Tetrahedron Park Backpacking Trip Part I

December 6, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 6 Comments

I think I fall a little more in love with the Sunshine Coast every time I visit. This was my third trip to the coast for the year and I was really excited to explore a new provincial park. The Sunshine Coast has a pretty extensive network of huts and I was keen to check out some more after having such a great time on the Sunshine Coast Trail last year.

Tetrahedron Park is a year round destination and my friend Eddie proposed that we check out the park in late September, with the goal of doing a bit of reconnaissance to come back in the winter on skis. So I obviously said yes and we were joined on the trip by Brandon (of course) and his friend Adriana. It was a long weekend, so we set off early on Saturday morning to catch the ferry and drive up to the trailhead.

Tetrahedron Park is located on the north part of the lower Sunshine Coast, nestled between Sechelt Inlet and Howe Sound. You have to drive all the way to Sechelt and then continue up past Porpoise Bay Provincial Park towards Tuwanek. From there you get on the Grey Creek Service Road and head up towards the park. The road starts with a pretty steep climb up Suicide Hill, but I don’t think you need 4WD or high clearance for it (though winter is probably a different story).

After a few kilometres on gravel road, you hit a branch, with the left branch going up towards Richardson Lake, and the right branch continuing to the trailhead for Tetrahedron. There’s a lower parking lot, which was empty when we arrived, and then 1.7km further, the upper lot. The upper lot is definitely intended for 4WD, so just stick with the lower lot if you don’t have the right vehicle. There were a few other cars in the upper lot when we arrived, but there’s 4 huts in the Park, so we figured it wouldn’t be too busy.

The huts in Tetrahedron Provincial Park are managed and cared for by the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club. You can visit their website here and you should e-transfer them the fee for the huts before you go. It’s $15 per person to stay overnight in the huts, or $10 per person if you’re a member. Brandon got the membership, but the rest of us just paid $30 for two nights. We didn’t know there’s also a facebook group for the park, but we learned from other campers that it’s common courtesy when visiting the huts to post your details in the facebook group so that the cabins don’t get too crowded.

The park isn’t set up as a thru hike like the Sunshine Coast Trail, but more of a loop of huts extending to different points of interest around the park. We could only stay in 2 huts, but we were keen to visit all 4 and planned our trip accordingly. A few other important things to know before visiting though is that most of the park is located in the watershed. As a result, dogs are not allowed in the park and you’re not allowed to swim in the watershed either. You’re also not supposed to do any tenting in the park and all overnights should be limited to the huts. This is to minimize impacts to the natural environment and preserve the quality of the watershed.

There were some people breaking these rules (we saw some dogs), but we opted to follow them, which for me mostly meant no swimming. However, when I examined the map at McNair Cabin, it looks like McNair Lake is actually outside of the watershed, so potentially you are allowed to swim at this one, but we still refrained because we weren’t certain.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and I really wanted to stay at Mount Steele Hut, so we decided to hightail it up the mountain for our first night. On the way in you have the option to detour to Bachelor Cabin, but we opted to postpone that visit and head straight to Edwards Cabin first instead. The hike starts on an inclined gravel road and then progresses into the forest where it flattens out. It’s approximately 5km to Edwards Cabin, which is the most central hut in the park. If you’re not a fan of backpacking, this would be a great place to camp because from here, you’re ideally situated to day trip to both McNair Cabin and Mount Steele.

It’s a nice enough cabin and we stopped and ate lunch on the front deck. There’s a wasp nest there currently, so definitely exercise caution. From Edwards, we started our ascent up to Mount Steele. It’s another ~3.5km to the Mount Steele Cabin, but it’s all uphill and covers 400m in elevation gain. You pass through some meadows 1km before the top and we stopped again to fill up our water bottles from the creek. We assumed there would be a water source at the top, but I wasn’t sure how stagnant it would be, so I took advantage of the creek (but fortunately the source at the top was also a nice running creek).

In terms of reconnaissance for a winter trip, the climb up through the woods is steep, but it’s all in the trees, so I think I’d be comfortable there in the winter. The only part I didn’t really like is after the meadow there’s a steep edge section at the top of a potential terrain trap. I’m not sure I’d be quite ready to hike up on skis, though it might look different in the winter.

The hut itself is really cool though. Most of the hike is in the forest, but shortly before the top you poke out into the sub alpine and get lovely views of the surrounding mountains. The hut isn’t located at the very top of the mountain, but rather at the base of the peak, so I assume in the winter that skiers run laps up and down the peak. The hut seemed more tailored to winter use than summer use, but I also assume it gets really popular on a nice, snowy weekend.

That said, I still loved the Mount Steele Cabin! It had gorgeous views in all directions and it was totally empty when we arrived. Like most huts, all the cabins in this park had communal kitchen space and tables on the main floor and a sleeping loft above. The huts are advertised as sleeping 12 people and I thought this was very accurate. There’s a wood stove on the main floor, but they have to helicopter in the wood, so it’s only intended for winter use. Mount Steele had a brand new outhouse that was in fantastic condition and one thing I really liked is how they’ve set up the grey water.

There’s a double sink that drains into buckets in the cabin and then another sink in the outhouse that drains into the pit. So you essentially dump all your water in the outhouse, which is a pretty elegant solution to managing food bits and scents.

20230930_144006 — The view from the cabin

We were the first to arrive to the cabin, but we were joined shortly after by a mom and 3 boys. They live in the area and were super friendly and huge fans of the cabin, so it was nice to meet them. Later on in the evening 2 other guys showed up, followed by a trio very late at night. So the total number of people in the cabin was 13. 11 people slept upstairs and the 2 guys slept downstairs because they were planning to leave really early in the morning.

We hung around the cabin in the afternoon and around 5pm packed our bags to hike up to the summit. Me and Brandon have gotten in the habit of hiking up to viewpoints for supper, so we brought all our food with us and figured it would be the optimal spot for sunset. There is a clear path up the to top of the summit, but Eddie and Brandon wanted to try another route and we reluctantly followed them. For the most part it wasn’t too bad, but it did involve a little bit of bushwacking around some steeper sections, so I wouldn’t recommend. Just follow the trail.

The view from the top is incredible though! On one side, you can see the whole park out to Tetrahedron Peak, while on the other side you can see down to Sechelt Inlet. Brandon made us thai curry chicken at the top and we enjoyed the view. It was a bit windy and cold up there, so Eddie and Adriana held out until the sunset and then started to head back. Me and Brandon stayed a bit longer and started to make our way down closer to dusk. We got most of the way without headlamps, but needed them for the last 10 minutes.

Eddie taught us to play Wizard to end the night. It ended up being a lot longer than we expected and we were all very tired, so we didn’t end up finishing, but when we called it quits at 10pm I was comfortably in the lead! One nice thing about the huts is that you don’t have to bring a thermarest if you don’t want to because there are mats in the loft. I brought mine anyways because I wasn’t sure how busy it would be, and I ended up doubling up because the hut mattresses are pretty soft. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep with so many people in the loft, but it was nice and warm with all that body heat!

Check back next week for Part 2!