Snowshoeing Artist Point

April 1, 2019June 26, 2024 / Maria / 4 Comments

The weather has finally started improving over the last few weeks, so I’ve been getting ready to start posting more about Spring and Summer hikes, but I have one last winter-related post to share. After our ski trip to Apex and our snow camping adventure at Keyhole hot spring, I decided it was time to pack away my skis and snowshoes for the season. However, the weather was so nice in mid-march that my friend Lien convinced me to get the snowshoes out for one last spring snowshoe adventure.

Apparently Lien’s exhausted everything within 2 hours driving distance of Vancouver, so he’s started exploring south of the border to get his mountain fix. We’d both seen a few posts throughout the winter of people snowshoeing at Artist Point, near the Mount Baker ski resort, and it looked like it had the most picturesque views, so we decided to check in out. We did our first Washington State hike a few months earlier (before the snow), in late October, and had a blast, so we were optimistic about Artist Point. My sister Emily moved to Vancouver in January of this year, so she decided to join us for the adventure.

You never know how long it’s going to take crossing the border, but we crossed in Abbotsford, so it didn’t take long at all. Artist Point is located right at the Mount Baker ski lodge, so it was about a 2 hour drive in total from my house in New Westminster. Like I said, we’ve only just started exploring the North Cascades region over the past few months, but it is incredibly gorgeous and I expect we’ll be spending more time there in the future!

Artist Point was a little overwhelming at first. Follow the main highway out to Baker and then continue past the first ski lodge up to the second parking lot. Again, continue through this parking lot and you’ll come to another parking lot in the recreation area (outside the paid ski hill). I say it was overwhelming because there were just so many people there! I was expecting it to be busy at the ski resort, but it was just as busy in the rec area. Artist Point is popular among both snowshoers and backcountry skiers as there’s a lot to explore in the area. I’ve never really been interested in backcountry skiing or ski touring because it seems like a lot of work and a bit intimidating. Whenever I’ve seen skiers while snowshoeing, I haven’t thought it looked any more fun than snowshoeing. But Artist Point was one trail where it was sorely tempting to take up backcountry skiing!

The trail is both straightforward and somewhat confusing. I say that because it appears that there are a ton of different trails going in every direction, but most of them end up at the same place, they just take different routes of varying difficulty to get there. The only thing to avoid is to make sure you don’t hike into the big ski bowl at the very beginning. Follow the trail up along the edge of the ski slope and you’ll be fine. It’s marked with boundary markers for the skiers at Baker and you can just follow along the side. Some skiers were skiing in the bowl, but it is higher avalanche risk in there, so if you want to explore, make sure you have your AST training and the proper gear.

Since we had neither of those things, we stuck to the marked trail. The rest of the trail is fairly low avalanche risk, but again, make sure to check the level online before you go hiking. Also, a friendly reminder to always give someone your trip plan, especially if you’re crossing the border. But I would definitely highly recommend the Artist Point Trail! I think it’s actually a great trail for beginners because it’s not very long, only about 6km in total, and the elevation gain is reasonable at about 300m. Plus the payoff for level of effort expended is unbelievable! Even the views hiking up the edge of the ski slope are great, but once you reach the top of the plateau, it’s a 360 degree panoramic view!

I thought we were looking at Baker as we were walking up because it’s where the ski resort is, but I learned on this trip that the Mount Baker ski resort isn’t actually on Mount Baker, it’s on Mount Shuksan. Logically this makes sense because Mount Baker is really too large and inhospitable an environment to have a ski resort, but I guess I never really thought about it before. Once we reached the top of the plateau, I realized we hadn’t been looking at Mount Baker on the way up because Mount Baker was actually located on the other side of the ridge. From the top of Artist Point, you can see the jagged peaks of Shuksan on one side and the flat volcanic top of Baker on the other.

We ate lunch as soon as we hit the ridge because we were pretty hungry and then we did some more exploring afterwards. When you hit the ridge, you’ll be able to see Table Mountain on the right and then another hill on the left. The hill of the left is actually Artist’s Point and this is where I’d recommend exploring. There’s a ton of great views up there and it’s a great place to start your ski back down. There were some people snowshoeing Table Mountain, but it’s a very steep ascent to the top and it has a higher risk of avalanches, so we opted to skip it. In the summer you can actually drive right up to the top of the ridge, so we may have to come back in warmer weather to explore further!

There was a crazy amount of people exploring around Artist Point, but it is a wide open area, so it never felt too crowded. It was busy, but not so crowded on the peaks that you couldn’t get nice photos. I find it’s always hard to know whether or not to wear snowshoes or spikes on heavily crowded trails, but this is one trail where I would recommend snowshoes, even with the heavily packed trail start. Emily and Lien wore snowshoes, but I decided to take the risk of wearing spikes. It made for a much more enjoyable ascent, but when it opens up at the top, snowshoes are definitely better because there’s still a lot of fresh powder up there. I managed with the spikes, but snowshoes would give you a bit more freedom.

Overall we really lucked out on this hike. It was around mid march when we did it and we got clear blue skies. It was about 10 degrees on the mountain but it felt quite hot with he sun constantly bearing down on you. There’s no shade anywhere, so bring sun protection no matter one time of year you go. There wasn’t a lick of wind when we visited, but in different conditions it could be pretty rough up on the ridge with blowing snow. I’m going to have to add it to my list of places I want to snow camp though because there is so much wide open space up there and such amazing views, it would be incredible to sleep up there and get to watch the sun set and rise over the mountains.

Keyhole Hot Springs Snow Camping Trip

March 22, 2019 / Maria / Leave a comment

I went on two snow camping trips this year. My first trip was to Elfin Lakes in February in temperatures of -20 below, the second trip was to Keyhole hot springs, in much more manageable temperatures! I’ve been trying to visit Keyhole hot springs since 2016 and had two failed trips before finally making it there this year. In summer 2016, me, Brandon, and Carolyn planned to visit over the Canada Day long weekend, but were dismayed to hear that the trail was being closed due to an aggressive grizzly bear (more on this later). Then me and Brandon tried to visit again in winter of 2017, but only made it halfway there because a semi-truck had jack-knifed across the forestry road and was blocking traffic in both directions.

So this was our third attempt, and I’m pleased to say we were finally successful! We wanted to go on a second snow camping trip before the end of the season and Carolyn’s been working on visiting all the hot springs in the area, so we decided to visit and stay overnight to try and avoid some of the crowds. Like I said, our first trip was to Elfin Lakes and the temperature dropped to -20 degrees celsius overnight, so we were thrilled to see that the forecast for Keyhole was calling for 7 degrees during the day and -6 degrees overnight. I ditched my double sleeping bag system for this trip and packed in my bag liner and new backcountry blanket instead.

Keyhole hot springs has become insanely popular in the last ~5 years. It used to only be accessible with 4WD, but the road was upgraded in 2014 because of a new hydro construction project in the area and the hot spring blew up on social media, making it a really popular destination for backcountry lovers and drunk partiers alike. I have really mixed feelings about the hot spring because I do believe everyone should have the right to appreciate natural wonders like this, but it’s also been severely disrespected by some of its visitors and it’s very upsetting to many of the locals.

It’s only a 2km hike to the hot spring and due to the excessive number of visitors, and the fact that it’s not a park (so it’s not managed by any rangers), a lot of garbage started collecting around the area, which of course, started attracting bears to the area. Keyhole is located on a forestry road out past Pemberton, so there are grizzly bears in the area and they started becoming aggressive towards visitors, so the province closed the trail in 2016 between April and November to stop the bears from becoming habituated to food and people. Since then, the trail is only open in the winter, hence why we decided to visit in March.

We drove out on Saturday morning, with the intention of staying for one night. We knew it would be really busy on a Saturday, so we were happy to stay overnight in hopes of avoiding some of the crowds later in the evening. We were right about how busy it would be during the day, but we wrongly assumed we’d be the only one’s camping. Since the road has been upgraded and is kept plowed for the construction project, 4WD is no longer required to get to the trailhead, although winter tires are definitely a must. We arrived around 1pm and I counted over 20 vehicles in the parking lot at that time.

We chatted with some of the day hikers on their way out and a lot of them expressed an admiration for the beauty of the trail, but told us they didn’t end up going in the hot spring at all because there were just too many people around. I would echo the sentiment about the trail. Granted, we had gorgeous blue sky and sunny weather when we visited, but the trail itself is worth visiting and ended up being the highlight of the trip for me. In winter, the trail ends up being about 3km because you can’t make it all the way to the trailhead and you do have to walk an extra km along the road, but the rest of the trail follows the river, which looks gorgeous in the winter with huge pillows of snow on every rock.

It’s easy to find the parking lot, you just follow the Lillooet Forest Service Road for about 40km until you reach a parking lot. The road becomes a “private road” at the end of the parking lot, so you’ll know you’ve found the right place. There is a branch in the road at the parking lot and a separate road continues up the hill. The road is plowed, so it’s possible you could drive up it, but the snow was very soft by this time of year, so everyone was parking at the bottom and walking up the road. The only tricky part is it’s not clear when you have to exit the road into the woods. You walk for a couple hundred metres and you’ll eventually see another side road, if you follow it into the trees, you’ll find the path heading directly down to the river.

The trail was easy to follow when we visited because there were so many people ahead of us and it hadn’t snowed in a while. But if you were the first one to visit after a fresh snowfall, it might be a challenge because the trail is not marked. Be careful visiting in March because the sun was softening up the snow and it would be easy to punch through the trail in some locations. Given the hot weather we’re getting this week, the trail will start deteriorating pretty fast as the snow melts, and remember, it closes for the season on April 1. But we really enjoyed the hike along the river and there were some really gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains.

We were wrong about being the only snow campers. There were at least 4 other groups camping that we saw and I think another large group arrived after us. I’m not sure if they were really prepared for the sub-zero temperatures though because they were all packed up and gone by the time we finally crawled out of our tent in the morning. We found a nice little private place to camp and it didn’t feel that crowded at the campsite. Overall though, the hot spring was a bit of a letdown for us. I think it would be a lot nicer on a weekday with smaller crowds and I personally wouldn’t return on a weekend again. There were just too many people and there was one group that hogged the pools for at least 3 hours and were still there after we’d come and gone.

The set-up of the pools is really something. The hot water flows down from a stream above the Lillooet River and trickles into a man made, but natural-looking rock pool. From there the water cascades into two other pools. Unfortunately the first pool is too hot to get in and the second pool is bearable, but still quite hot. The third pool is a perfect temperature and as such, the most popular of the 3. This is where the one group were hanging out. We went down to the pools around 4pm, but it was still busy, so we came back again a little later. We were able to get into the second pool and hung out in there for a little while as the sun set. But the one group insisted on blocking up the bottom pool and stayed into the night drinking, so we did get to visit, but overall it was a little frustrating. We debated getting up early to visit again, but decided to let it be in favour of a lie in, which I definitely don’t regret!

So overall, it was nice, but I would personally recommend going on a weekday if at all possible. Also, don’t be the group that gets drunk in the bottom pool all night. I was impressed that I actually didn’t see any garbage around the hot springs, so hopefully people are learning. But if you decide to visit Keyhole, as either a day hiker or an overnighter, make sure you practice leave no trace camping! Don’t leave anything behind – take everything out with you, including your toilet paper! There’s no facilities at all, so make sure you dig a hole if you’re going #2. The hot springs really are a natural wonder and they are beautiful, so lets do our best to take care of them!

So that’s my rant on the hot springs. I didn’t want to glamourize it because social media does enough of that already. I do think everyone has a right to the hot springs, we just need to protect them. I know keyhole isn’t the only place suffering from overuse, Garibaldi Lake, Joffre Lakes, and other popular destinations also suffer from a huge amount of overuse, with people leaving a ton of garbage behind and destroying the natural landscape in search of firewood. The overuse just seems a little more pronounced at Keyhole because of its small size.

But we still had a great time camping! It was crazy warm during the day when we were hiking in because the sun was shining on us the whole time, but it still got quite cold overnight. On a warmer day, like the day we visited, I think it would be easy to underestimate how cold it can get overnight. I debated how much gear I should actually bring. In addition to my winter jacket and snow pants, I brought my -15 sleeping bag, my sleeping bag liner, a camp blanket, a winter pad, and a lightweight down jacket to sleep in. I thought the blanket and extra jacket might be overkill, but I ended up using both, so I don’t regret it. I probably would have been fine with less gear, but I was so cozy overnight, it was worth it!

We had some more lessons learned when it comes to water though. The last two places we’ve stayed have both had pretty clean snow to melt for water, but because it was later in the season, there wasn’t as much fresh snow and most of it had pine needles in it because the campsite was located in the woods and the needles fall from the canopy. I had to walk a distance to find good snow to melt for water and even then, it still had some dirt in it. We’ve discovered that melted snow tastes extremely gross, so if you’re only going for one night, it might be worth taking a bit of extra water with you for drinking to see you through the trip. But if that’s not possible, which often its not because you don’t want to carry the extra weight and even if you did, the water could easily freeze overnight anyways, so we decided next time we will probably take Brandon’s gravity filter with us. That way we can melt the snow and then put it through the filter to remove any dirt and hopefully improve the taste a little.

Overall, it was still a fun trip, but it is a long drive (~4 hours) and because of the crowds it doesn’t stick out in my mind as much as the other snow camping trips we’ve done. But we tried something new and now we can finally cross it off the bucket list after all our other failed attempts!

Ski Resort Series: Silver Star

March 12, 2019March 31, 2021 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’m almost caught up to this year with my ski trip posts, but one more to go before I can write about this year. In 2016, we spent Easter weekend at Big White and in 2017, we spent St. Paddy’s Day weekend at Sun Peaks. In 2018, we decided to time our trip with the Family Day holiday in order to make use of the long weekend and take less holiday time. Similar to our trip to Sun Peaks, most of our party drove out after work on Friday, but I decided to make it a half day again to avoid driving out in the dark. This year we went just before Valentine’s Day, so we had a bit of a Valentine’s party when we arrived. Since I’m always one of the first people to arrive, I’ve started a bit of a “welcome drinks” tradition, with green drinks for St. Paddy’s day in 2017 and pink drinks for Valentine’s day in 2018.

In more recent years we’ve had a harder time picking a resort because our group has really grown and a lot of the resorts don’t have group accommodations available on site. We’ve been wanting to go to Revelstoke for several years, but we just can’t seem to make it happen because of the accommodations. In 2018 we decided to rent two condos at Silver Star to accommodate what ended up being a group of 13 people. It did create a bit of a different vibe being separated into two groups, but both condos were located on the same floor, so we dragged the table from the smaller condo into the bigger condo so that we could all eat together. The added benefit with two condos was also that we had two hot tubs!

Silver Star has a pretty small ski village, but a lot of the accommodations border the slopes, including ours, so we had excellent ski-out access. What’s interesting about Silver Star is that the mountain is very clearly delineated between the “front side” and the “back side”. The front side is pretty clearly divided into 3 sections, two upper slopes and one lower slope, while the back side just has one main lift. I wish I could comment on the back side of the mountain, but I didn’t ski a single slope of the backside. The entire back side of the mountain is all black diamonds serviced by one lift. I’m not a high risk taker when it comes to skiing, so I tend to stick to blue and green runs on bigger mountains. That said, Silver Star is a smaller mountain and none of the slopes were that intense, so I think I probably would have done okay on the black diamonds. But some of our group tried one run on the back side on the first day and said the snow was awful and icy on that side of the mountain because of the cold conditions leading up to our trip, so I decided to skip it.

The other side of the mountain was a different story. Like I’ve said in some of my other posts, the direction of the slopes and the sun can make a huge difference on the quality of the runs. Our first day skiing Silver Star was absolutely gorgeous, with sun and blue skies the whole day! For this reason, I had a blast skiing the front side of the mountain and thought the conditions were pretty good. We started on the Comet Chair and I absolutely fell in love with this part of the mountain. The Trails were in great shape and the trees are pretty spacey in the upper area, so it’s really easy to do some fun glade runs. I honestly could have spent most of the trip on this chair and I would have had a great time!

The major downside to going skiing on the family day weekend is of course, the crowds. Silver Star isn’t the biggest ski resort, so the line-up for the Comet Chair was pretty huge and annoying to wait in at times. I was willing to wait because I enjoyed the runs so much, but a lot of the group didn’t want to waste the day in the line-ups, so we moved on to the Silver Woods chair, which is located on the lower section of the mountain. This part of the resort was okay, certainly better than the backside, but the elevation was a little bit too low and the conditions were not really good down there either. I did spend some time there and did most of the runs because they are shorter, but eventually we split into two groups, with one group staying on the lower runs, while I decided to join a group willing to wait for the Comet Chair.

Later in the day, we decided to give the Attridge Chair a try and I ended up spending the rest of the first day and a good portion of the second day on this part of the mountain. It was much less busy, but still had pretty good snow conditions. The slopes were a bit more technical on the Attridge side, but again, the trees were pretty spaced out, so there was lots of room to explore and try some new things. There was a lot of powder on this part of the mountain, so I took the opportunity to work on my powder skiing. I found it more challenging, but it was the good kind of challenging that makes you a better skier. I ended up having a pretty good time trying out some new runs and learning some better control on my skis. That said, at the end of the day, Comet Chair was still my favourite!

So it was a bit of a mixed bag at Silver Star in that many of the runs weren’t in great condition, but a lot of them were fantastic. There was the downside of huge crowds at the Comet Chair, but if you are willing to try some new things and check out the other parts of the mountain, the lift waits weren’t actually that bad. With 13 people, we didn’t ski together as a group, but I did a lot of hopping around between groups and I think I found a pretty good balance. A lot of people are definitely more adventurous than me, but my skiing is good enough that I can hold my own with most of the skiers and take the opportunities to get a little better myself. Good powder conditions definitely helped improve my confidence on Attridge Chair, whereas I was less inclined to take risks on the icy conditions.

We’ve kept our traditions going and I cooked Jiggs Dinner for the group again! It’s definitely a lot to manage, cooking for so many people, but it’s one of the few times I get to eat Jiggs Dinner throughout the course of the year, so I’m willing to keep doing it. I love coming together with friends over food, and when you’re the chef, there’s the added benefit of never having to do the dishes!

As a word of warning, Silver Star Ski Resort is located just outside of Vernon and can be reached from Vancouver traveling through either Kamloops or Kelowna. We drove through Kamloops on the way there and Kelowna on the way back. They are pretty much the same distance, I think driving time just varies depending on traffic and weather conditions. Having driven both routes, I would definitely recommend driving through Kelowna. It’s mostly highway driving with multiple lanes, which Kamloops to Vernon is not, so it makes for a nicer driving experience.