Jade Lake Backpacking Trip

December 18, 2024December 20, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

After a rainy night at Eva Lake, we packed our bags to continue on to Jade Lake. There’s a short hike back to a junction where you can do a detour down to Miller Lake. Every lake in this park is gorgeous and it’s definitely worth the extra 1km to hike to Miller Lake. The clouds were starting to lift and we got some cool views of the vibrant blue water before heading onwards. I really wanted to swim in Eva and Miller Lakes, but I was pretty chilled from the rain, so I’ll have to return and swim in those lakes one day!

The trail to Jade Lake is absolutely phenomenal. It’s ~7km from Eva to Jade, including the side trail to Miller. Once leaving Miller Lake, you hike back to the junction and then continue up to the alpine by crossing the edge of Miller Lake along the mountainside. After a bit of uphill, you reach the alpine and cross through numerous meadows filled with wildflowers. Then there’s a steeper uphill and you eventually reach the top of the pass. I’m not sure the technical name of the pass, but we called it Jade Pass.

From Jade Pass, there are amazing views of the alpine and surrounding mountains looking down on Jade Lake. I’m sure this park is really beautiful on a clear, blue sky day, but I honestly feel lucky that we got to visit it on a cloudy day. The clouds were large and dynamic, constantly moving around the landscape, revealing the mountain range beyond. It was a very cool experience. We stopped for lunch at the top of the pass to enjoy the view. There were quite a few more day hikers around since it was a Saturday, but we didn’t see anyone heading down to the lake.

Jade Lake is stunning and absolutely worth the hike down from the pass, but I can understand why a lot of day hikers don’t do it. It adds another 2km each way, as well as 200m of elevation gain. No one wants to hike down there, just to have to turn around and hike back up. Before we left, I hiked up a little further to a nearby peak for some extra photos, before shouldering my pack again for the hike to the valley. You’re in the alpine for most of the hike down, so it’s very barren, but the views are incredible. We saw a few pikas and marmots along the way, so we intentionally kept a slow pace to just enjoy the experience.

Just before you reach the lake, you enter back into the sub-alpine and continue through the trees. There’s 4 tent sites at Jade Lake and I personally think we ended up with the best site, which overlooks the lake. However, the real star of the show at Jade Lake is the outhouse. The outhouse is elevated and built right on the rock overlooking the mountains. There’s no door, so you can sit on the toilet and enjoy the view to your heart’s content!

But my first order of business was to finally go for a swim! The lake was cold (of course), but it was a lot warmer than I was expecting for an alpine lake. I was able to stay in for a while and really enjoyed a good swim. Brandon did his customary dip and returned to the tent, but since there was no one else around, I did a quick skinny dip before drying off.

https://flic.kr/p/2qozar5

The main lake where the campsite is, is actually called Upper Jade Lake. There’s a lower lake a few hundred metres away, but there’s no trail to access it. You can almost see it from the campsite and we were feeling adventurous, so we decided to go on a little bushwacking adventure. We approached from the north side of the creek running between the two lakes. It’s a little boggy in some areas, but we were able to find our way down relatively easy. It’s a nice view, but we didn’t stay long because it was very buggy and we hadn’t brought the thermacell!

We returned to the upper lake and had our supper along the lake shore (with thermacell this time). It was a really nice evening, but we decided to head to bed early to get a headstart on the return trip. It got pretty cold and dewy overnight and the moon was very bright, so we didn’t see many stars.

We got up around 6am, just as the sun was rising over the mountains, which turned the mountain behind the lake golden. It was really beautiful and we were the only people awake to enjoy it. In fact, when we started hiking just before 8am, we were still the only people up. It is a pretty big climb to the top of the pass, so I’m glad we got up early. The sun was hidden behind a few clouds and it stayed that way the entire time we were climbing, which was awesome. It took us about an hour and the sun finally peaked out just as we reached the top of the pass.

The real benefit of getting up so early though was the wildlife. We saw a few marmots and pikas the previous day, but the area was absolutely crawling with them on our final morning! I guess they get up and enjoy the views early when it’s cool and before the crowds show up. We spent a lot of time watching them around the rocks.

We had the pass entirely to ourselves, as well as the hike back through the alpine to Miller Lake. We didn’t encounter a single person until a few kilometres past the junction to Eva Lake. I wonder if the gate to the parkway opens at a specific time, because as soon as we passed the first group of hikers, it was a steady stream of people the rest of the day. Arguably, it was the nicest day of our trip, so we got to enjoy the nice views along the trail that we’d completely missed on the way in.

It was 10.5km back to the parking lot from Jade Lake and we didn’t take any breaks. We continued at a pretty solid pace because we still had to drive all the way back to Vancouver on the same day. It’s not really ideal, but there was enough time for it. We got back to the car around noon and the parking lot looked very different from when we had started in the pouring rain.

We were a bit too early for the good restaurants in Revelstoke, so we decided to have lunch in Salmon Arm so that we could get bison burgers. They were just okay, but we made a stop to Fruit World in Sicamous along the way (which we discovered on our trip last year). We stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies and enjoyed an ice cream cone. Otherwise, it was a long drive back to Vancouver. But in my opinion, it was worth it and I would totally do the same trip again.

I’m glad we had the ranger cabin at Eva Lake on our rainy day, if I could do the trip again in nice weather, I would probably reverse it and do Eva Lake on the second day so that I could have a shorter distance to hike on the way out. The permits are released really early in the year (March) for the entire season, so you have to be on the ball with bookings if you want to go on a weekend. But if you get the chance, this is a beautiful hike in what is in my opinion, a bit of an under-hyped National Park.

Eva Lake Backpacking Trip

December 11, 2024December 20, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’ve driven through Mount Revelstoke National Park many times, but I’ve never actually done any of the attractions in the park. It’s a pretty large park, but a lot of the wilderness is inaccessible. I think most visitors drive up the Meadows in the Sky Parkway to the top of the mountain and do some short hikes through the meadows, without exploring deeper into the backcountry.

Eva and Jade Lakes entered my radar over the past few years when I’ve been booking permits in the Rockies, and I impulsively decided to purchase tenting permits for 2 nights in August at the start of the season. You can visit both Eva and Jade Lakes as a day trip, but it’s just over 20km, so it makes for a big day. There were a fair amount of day hikers in the park when the weather was nice, but I think most people either just visit Eva Lake, or only hike as far as the top of the pass on the way to Jade Lake (not wanting to hike up and down the pass to the lake on the same day).

If you have the time, I’d definitely recommend going overnight. There’s only 4 tent pad sites at each lake, so it’s a really special experience when the crowds thin out and you have the National Park mostly to yourself for the evening. My permits were for Eva Lake on a Friday Night and Jade Lake on Saturday Night.

This did make for a very big trip out of Vancouver though. Brandon and I took Friday off and left Vancouver right after work on Thursday. Leaving on Thursday helped a lot with the traffic and it was pretty smooth sailing leaving the city. We stopped once for a pee break and made it to Costco in Kamloops just before closing to fill up the gas tank. It would be nice to book a hotel in Kamloops, but we’ve entered our BC Rec Sites era and decided to hit up one of the many free provincial rec sites instead!

The Harper Lake Rec Site suited our needs best and we drove in a long gravel road in the dark to get to the site. I could imagine that this might be a bit of a party site on the weekends, but it was completely empty on a Thursday night and we quickly set up the tent and went to bed. We were pleasantly surprised with the view in the morning – there’s a gorgeous lake with a little dock – but we didn’t have much time to enjoy it. We took off again early to get to Revelstoke to start our hike.

We stopped in the town of Revelstoke to pick up some sandwiches for lunch, and then drove to the top of Meadows in the Sky Parkway. Another reason I’m glad we started on Friday is that we were easily able to find parking. There’s not very much space in the top parking lot and when we returned to the car on Sunday, there was a steady stream of cars parking along the edge of the road. We arrived around noon and didn’t have any trouble.

But there was another contributing factor to the lack of crowds. As we climbed up the mountain, it slowly started to rain, and by the time we parked the car, it had escalated to a full on torrential downpour. I’ve never been less excited to start a hike. I don’t mind hiking out in the rain, but it’s a real bummer starting a hike in the rain. If we hadn’t driven 6 hours to get there, I may have said, “let’s try again next year”. We reminded ourselves that it was supposed to be much nicer the next two days, and slowly prepared ourselves for the hike.

We ate lunch in the car to postpone the inevitable, and then finally set forth in our full rain gear. My rain gear worked great, as did my boots, but it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience. It’s ~1km uphill from the parking lot to the top of the mountain, where there are a ton of other alpine meadow trails to enjoy (the “Meadows in the Sky” Parkway is very aptly named). The rain did lighten up after a while, but it was still extremely cloudy and we didn’t see any views. This resulted in us making pretty quick time along the 7km trail to Eva Lake and we arrived in the mid afternoon.

I’m so glad I picked Eva Lake for our first night! While we didn’t get to enjoy any of the views from Eva Lake, this campsite does have a small Ranger cabin that is over 100 years old. This was an absolute godsend on a rainy day! We had brought a tarp, but it was so lovely to be able to hang out in the cabin all evening rather than have to tough it out in the cold.

Like I said, there’s only 4 tent sites, and with the rain, the lake was pretty empty. There was one solo female camper from Salmon Arm already there when we arrived, as well as a small family. A group of 3 women showed up later in the evening and we all hung out in the cabin getting to know each other and hoping the rain would let up. We hung everything up to dry, but it was so humid everything remained pretty damp. It never really stopped raining, but it made for a cozy evening and reminded me a lot of the trip Brandon and I made to Lake O’Hara last year, where we spent the better part of the day sheltering in the O’Hara store while it poured and poured.

Fortunately, things improved the following morning. It was still completely clouded in when we woke up, but the rain had finally moved on overnight. We didn’t have too much hiking ahead of us, so we had a lazy start and enjoyed our breakfast by the lake. The clouds were moving around a lot and creating cool shapes. We got a few glimpses of the mountains overshadowing the lake, but never got a view of the mountains looking out from the lake. From other photos, it looks like it’s an amazing view, so something to come back for another time! But we did enjoy the 1km walk that’s available around the edge of the Lake. Check back next week to hear about the second part of our trip to Jade Lake!

Torres del Paine Backpacking Trip Part I

May 22, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

Torres del Paine National Park was the inspiration for our entire trip to Patagonia. I’m not sure when I first learned about this park, but it’s been on my bucket list for at least 5 years. There are 2 popular treks in the park: The W-trek and the O-trek. The O-trek is a loop trail that encircles the entire park, taking 8-10 days to complete. The W-trek is the southern half of the O-trek, taking 4-5 days to complete and generally done as a thru-hike.

I would have loved to do the O-trek, but we picked the W-trek for many reasons and I think it was the right choice for us. Seth is willing to backpack, but he definitely doesn’t love it the way I do, so the shorter hike was a good compromise. It freed up more time in our itinerary to visit El Chalten and Ushuaia, which we wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d spent 10 days of the trip in Torres del Paine alone. It was a much more well-rounded trip and I felt really satisfied with our choice when we finished the trek.

But let’s start at the beginning! Our bus left Puerto Natales at 7am, so it was an early rise for us to walk to the bus depot. It’s a 2-hour drive to the Torres del Paine park entrance, where the bus stops for everyone to get their National Park Pass. If you’re doing the O-trek or just visiting for the day, you would start your adventure here. But we were starting our trek at the opposite end of the park, so we still had another 45-minute bus ride, followed by an hour long catamaran journey across Lago Pehoe to Paine Grande.

What’s interesting about Torres del Paine, is that you don’t actually have to do any camping if you don’t want to. Unlike the Sendero al Fitz Roy, Chile has sunk a lot of money and resources into developing the park into a tourist destination. The park is much more developed, but it’s also a lot better protected. You have to obtain a park pass to enter the park and get camping reservations to stay there overnight. There are rangers patrolling the park and they have very strict rules about going off trail. There are absolutely no fires or smoking permitted anywhere in the park, and all cooking must be done in the designated shelters.

There is a mixture of campgrounds and refugios spread throughout the park. The refugios are basically hostels, with shared bedrooms, washrooms, and a huge dining room. They are more expensive than your average hostel, but they’re very popular because they eliminate the need for a tent. We decided to avail of the refugios where possible and ended up booking rooms for our first two nights on the trail, followed by campsites for the last nights. However, to eliminate the need to bring our tent, we paid extra for pre-set tents and sleeping pads at our campsites. We still had to bring our sleeping bags, but we were able to lighten our packs by leaving our tent and thermarests at home.

Our trek started from Paine Grande, but our final destination was Refugio Grey at Grey Glacier, which is 11km away. As far as the terrain goes, it was a pretty easy day of hiking and in normal circumstances, I think it would have taken us less than 4 hours. Unfortunately, as I alluded to in my previous post, Seth got hit with a bout of traveler’s sickness from the ceviche he ate the night before, and it hit him on the catamaran to the trailhead. He spent most of the boat ride in the bathroom, followed by a visit to the refugio toilets, so we were some of the last people to start hiking for the day.

Fortunately, he wasn’t totally incapacitated and did start to feel better as it left his system, but it definitely resulted in a slow pace on day 1. Even so, Torres del Paine National Park is immediately a very striking place. There are several famous features in the park, one of which is known as “the horns”. It’s a set of sharp granite peaks on Cuernos del Paine mountain that can be seen throughout most of the park. We got our first glimpse of them on the catamaran, and there’s an incredible view from Paine Grande. The weather was fairly moody when we arrived, with dark clouds hanging over the horns, but it never rained and I thought it made for pretty scenic photos.

The trail to Grey Glacier starts with a gentle hike up through a small canyon, around the west side of Cerro Paine Grande. It’s a steady uphill, but not overly challenging. I decided to set Laguna los Patos as our first milestone; it’s only 3km away, but it felt like it took forever! In reality, it was only 90 minutes, but poor Seth was really struggling. We stopped for lunch when we finally arrived at the lake, but it wasn’t super restful because we got our first introduction to the infamous Patagonian wind!

Torres del Paine is super well known for its blustery conditions and it didn’t disappoint on our first 3 days. It was moderate wind on the first day, but it was forecasted to get much worse on the following two days (and it did). After our lunch break, we continued on, setting Mirador Lago Grey as our second milestone. It’s located just past the halfway mark and is the highest point on the trail for the first day. It has an incredible view of Lago Grey and the glacier, but it’s a steady uphill the whole way there, so our slow pace continued.

Fortunately, it was downhill after the mirador and our pace improved, but overall, it was a rough first day and I admit that I resented Seth a little. We arrived at the refugio shortly after 5pm, after 5+ hours of hiking, so you might be wondering what was the rush? The rush for me was that after Refugio Grey, there is a day hike to a series of suspensions bridges with a viewpoint, and I really wanted to do them. We were scheduled to go kayaking the following morning, and with rain in the forecast for later, I really wanted to hike to the viewpoint on Day 1.

So I was silently cursed Seth for most of the afternoon because I’d been dreaming of this hike for so many years and I was determined to see every highlight. I’ve had several of my big hikes interrupted over the past few years due to other people or circumstances outside of my control. But all of those hikes were in British Columbia and easy to come back for in the future. I felt like I only had this one shot at Torres del Paine. I think I was pretty supportive earlier in the day, but the more the clock counted down the remaining daylight hours, the more impatient I got. I’m sure it was very annoying.

Fortunately, my resentment dissipated with our arrival at the refugio and it didn’t return for the rest of the trip. The refugio is very cool! Each one is different and Refugio Grey is basically a big log cabin, with toasty woodstoves to dry your clothes. The rooms vary in size, but ours had 2 bunkbeds, sleeping 4 people. It says online that you have to bring your own sleeping bag (which is the case at other refugios), but this one actually provided bedding, so it felt like a proper hotel. I really liked it and Seth was stoked to have access to flush toilets and a place to lie down.

I quickly re-arranged my pack and decided to make a go at hiking to the suspension bridges and viewpoint alone. I did hiking math on the trail and determined that, as long as I started the day hike by 6pm, I could make it back to the refugio before the 9pm sunset. Just in case, I took all my essentials, including my headlamp and inreach. Seth knew where I was going and we agreed on a set time to raise the alarm if I didn’t return. Check back next week to learn if I was successful or not in Part II!