Rohr Lake Backpacking Trip

November 9, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

Rohr Lake has been on my hiking bucket list for years. I was hoping to visit in the middle of the summer, but I had bad timing and there was a wildfire in Pemberton, so I opted not to go, hiking the Heather Trail in Manning Park instead. I felt like doing one last backpacking trip over the Thanksgiving long weekend and convinced Adriana to come out with me for a 1-nighter.

After a beautiful September, the weather switched right before our trip and the mountains got their first dusting of snow the night before. Adriana claims that winter camping is too cold, but she was still excited about camping at Rohr Lake in -5 degrees Celsius, so her logic doesn’t check out, but I’m glad she was willing to join me! We got up early on Saturday morning and drove to the trailhead, just past Joffre Lakes, arriving shortly before lunch. Since we knew it would be cold, we both came prepared, meaning that my pack was feeling a little heavier than I prefer as I was carrying my winter sleeping bag.

It was a nice day, with no precipitation, but it was overcast. We weren’t sure of the condition of the access road and since we only had one car, we parked at the very bottom. The road is in really good condition for the first kilometre and I recommend driving up to the main lot, but it’s not a difficult walk, so we didn’t mind the slightly longer hike. If you have 4×4, you will be able to drive another kilometre, but I wouldn’t attempt it without. The middle lot is the safest route.

Even with the extra kilometre, I only tracked 4.5km from the bottom lot to the lake. It’s not a long hike, but it does have 500m of elevation gain, so be prepared for a climb. Once you finish the road, the trail meanders through the forest. It’s a nice hike through the trees and while there was a little bit of snow on the ground, the trail was pretty much bare from other hikers. Eventually you hit the junction for the Wendy Thompson Hut. If you’re going to the hut, follow the trail left, it’s much less steep, but if you’re going to Rohr Lake, follow the trail right.

The trail continues through the forest and gets quite a bit steeper until you emerge in a meadow. It was nice in the shelter of the forest, but once we hit the meadow, we were exposed to the wind and it got quite cold. The last part of the trail can be deceiving because it doesn’t look very long, but it travels up through a very steep boulder field, so be prepared to slow down the pace. This was particularly challenging with snow. There wasn’t a lot of snow, but the trail was much harder to follow through the boulder field and we got off track several times, having to course-correct. While it had snowed overnight, it was above zero degrees when we were hiking up, so it was quite muddy through the boulder field where the snow had melted.

We reached the top after about 2.5 hours of hiking. There were quite a few day hikers, but we didn’t expect to see many other backpackers. There was a group of 3 guys when we arrived, but that was it. The view from the lake is beautiful, but in early October, it was very cold and windy. Our first order of business was to eat lunch and then set up camp as soon as possible so that we could change out of our sweaty clothes.

That was probably the hardest part of the trip. I don’t regret camping in the Fall because there’s not actually a lot of space at the lake to pitch a tent and I hear it’s a popular destination in the summer, so if you’re going in July or August, I recommend starting early. We looked for a sheltered spot to pitch our tent in the trees, but didn’t find one, so we set up by the lake instead. We were both quite cold as we ate lunch and wanting to warm up, I changed as soon as we got the tent up. I felt a lot better after that, but in general it was a lot colder than we were anticipating.

We spent the afternoon taking it easy and doing a little bit of exploring, but I felt pretty stuck because of the conditions. In the summer, we’d planned to hike to Mount Rohr, but that wasn’t really an option with the snow and limited daylight hours. We were happy to discover that the lake has both a bear cache and an outhouse, neither of which we were expecting, so that was a nice surprise. In our search for the outhouse, we stumbled upon a campsite hidden in the trees and went through the effort to move our tent up there instead. It didn’t have a view, but it was 100% the right decision. It was noticeably warmer out of the wind and I think we both slept better because of it.

We made supper and figured we’d be heading to bed fairly early, but the guys had gotten a campfire going and after heating water for our nalgenes to act as a hot water bottle, we joined them. The fire was incredibly warm and the guys were pretty entertaining, so we had a fun time chatting with them. We would have gone to bed super early otherwise and I think the campfire really helped set us up for success overnight. My body temperature was already quite warm and toasty when I crawled into my sleeping bag, and thanks to my hot water bottle which had been warming my bed, I stayed comfy and warm all night. I do have a -30 degree bag, so that is probably to be expected, but Adriana had a -18 degree bag and a sleeping bag liner and she was nice and warm too.

All things considered, I slept pretty well. I got up to pee once overnight and the clouds had cleared out and the stars were really putting on a show. I would have loved to stargaze for a little while, but it was much too cold and I quickly crawled back into the tent. The weather forecast showed it getting down to -5 degrees overnight.

We had a lazy morning, enjoying breakfast before packing up the tent and our gear to head back to the car. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but it was still very cold. Where it had been very muddy along the waterfront the day before, everything was now frozen, including the edge of the lake. Honestly, I preferred the ground this way, much easier to walk on and much less messy. But again, I was glad we moved the tent to the forest because otherwise we would have been sleeping on ice all night.

Unsurprisingly, the hike down the boulder field was more challenging than the hike up. The trail was easier to follow on the way down, but now that all the mud had frozen, it was extremely slippery. There wasn’t any snow on the trail, but we wore our microspikes because otherwise it would have been very easy to take a slip on a frozen rock. There were quite a few day hikers coming in, some of which had microspikes, others that did not.

My criticism of this hike would be that I think it has become the overflow hike for Joffre Lakes. There were several large groups of people who did not seem equipped to be hiking at all. A few of them stopped to talk to us and ask for directions. They didn’t seem to have any idea where they were going and said that the park rangers at Joffre Lakes had suggested the hike. My hypothesis is that a lot of people show up to Joffre without the day pass and the rangers recommend Rohr Lake instead. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s very close, so it seems like an appropriate hike, but it’s a lot more technical than Joffre Lakes.

Once we got past the boulder field, the trail got much easier and we layered down, but it was still a bit challenging on the knees on the way out. I quite enjoyed the walk down the road though. You get a great view of Mount Matier on the way out and there’s a few deciduous trees along the road that had turned a beautiful shade of yellow. We got back to the car shortly after lunchtime and hightailed it into Pemberton to treat ourselves to burgers. I’d still love to come back and do this hike in the summer, but glad to cross it off my bucket list for now!

Hiking Joffre Lakes

November 3, 2021October 20, 2021 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’ve written about a lot of hikes, many of which are super popular. I found the time to write about Garibaldi Lake twice and I’ve written about Elfin Lakes a whopping 5 times, but somehow I’ve never found the time to write about one of Southwest BC’s most quintessential hikes: Joffre Lakes.

Joffre Lakes is a gem of a provincial park located about 30 minutes out of Pemberton on Duffey Lake Road. It’s a bit of a trek for a day hike from Vancouver, but every year swarms of people flock there to discover the brilliant blue glacial lakes for themselves. The park was closed through most of 2020 due to Covid-19 and re-opened in summer 2021 with a new day pass reservation system in place to manage crowds in the park. This is a free day pass that has been introduced in several of BC’s most popular parks to curb the flow of visitors. A lot of people are opposed to the day pass system and BC Parks has been widely criticized for it, but while I have many criticisms of BC Parks (mostly to do with their poor online system and cancellation policies), I have to admit I am a fan of the day passes. It keeps the crowds down and removes the stress of having to get up super early to ensure you find parking.

The first time I visited Joffre Lakes was in 2015 and while I was astounded at the beauty of the park, I had to admit that the swarms of people definitely took away from the experience. I visited on a beautiful Saturday in August, so I know there would likely be less people on a weekday, but the park only has one major trail and it’s only 11km round trip, so it’s not a lot of space for people to disburse along the trail, even on a less busy day. There were literal greyhound buses toting group tours of up to 50 people along the trail, so it was hard to get a moment to yourself anywhere on the hike. That said, a lot of people only hike to the second lake, or if they do hike to the third lake, they stop at the head of the lake. If you hike around the back of the third lake, where the campsite is, I did find it to be much less crowded.

When the park re-opened this summer, I thought it might be time to finally re-visit it since Canada is still mostly closed to international tourists. Emily and my parents visited during the first week of September and we decided to make the trek out there on a week day to hopefully find a bit of solitude on the trail. There’s no question that with the day pass, parking was much easier. I think they’ve added an overflow lot since my last visit and we had no trouble finding somewhere to park. It was still quite busy for a week day in September, but much less crowded than my first experience.

Like I mentioned, the trail is only 11km round trip if you go all the way to the campsite (which lots of people don’t), and has about 400m of elevation gain. It’s a very well maintained trail, so it is good for beginners. There are 3 beautiful lakes located in the park, making it easy to customize your trip. The first lake is only about 5 minutes in along the trail, so it makes for a good pit stop if you’re just passing through and want to stretch your legs. From there, the trail continues up through a boulder field (the trail is backfilled though, so easy walking) with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. This is where most of the elevation gain is done along the hike and is the longest stretch between lakes.

Eventually you pop out of the woods along the edge of the second lake, which I would say is the most popular of the three. The water is a gorgeous green hue and Matier Glacier is framed through the trees at the end of the lake. I’ve visited the park 3 times in total and always opt to eat my lunch at the second lake to bask in the views. On this occasion, I convinced my mom to take a quick dip in the water with me. I’ve swam in a lot of alpine lakes over the years and Joffre is definitely one of the coldest! It is numbing, so if you opt to swim, be prepared for a quick dip in and out.

One of the other highlights of the second lake for me is that at the back of the lake there is a beautiful stepped waterfall cascading down from the third lake. It’s only a short hike between the second and third lakes, so I definitely recommend going up to the third lake, even if you opt not to hike around the lake to the campsite. The third lake has incredible views looking up at Matier Glacier.

On this trip, we ended at the base of the third lake (which is a round trip distance of 8km), but on my first visit Seth and I opted to hike the entire way around to the campsite. If you continue past the campsite you can hike up onto the big rock overlooking the lake, which is my second favourite view in the park after the second lake. From there, the surrounding mountains come into view on the opposite side of the lake, making for beautiful photos.

All in all, it took me about 5 hours return trip on both visits. It’s a beautiful park that’s 100% worth ticking off your bucket list, but I don’t think it would even rate top 10 on my list of trails overall. It’s just too crowded. If you choose to visit, please treat the area with respect – take all your garbage with you and make sure to leave no trace. Sadly the area often gets trashed due to its popularity and we want to preserve this beautiful park for generations to come!

The view from the back of the third lake – only photo from my 2015 visit

Semaphore Lakes Backpacking Trip

May 10, 2019 / Maria / 4 Comments

I already wrote about my one night backpacking trip to Tenquille Lake, but I also did one night at Semaphore Lakes in the same trip. I decided to split up the trip into 2 blogs though because the two trails are not actually related and writing about them together would make for one really long post. We visited Tenquille Lake and Semaphore Lakes on the Canada Day long weekend in 2016. In hindsight, we easily could have spent 2 days exploring around Tenquille Lake, but instead we hiked out from Tenquille on the second day and did Semaphore for the second night.

The reason we picked Semaphore Lakes for the second night is that it’s super close to the Tenquille Lake trailhead. Instead of having to drive on the 4WD Branch 12 road though, it’s located just off the Hurley Forest Service Road, shortly past where the Branch 12 side road is (see my Tenquille Lake blog for more detailed directions). So you can get to this trailhead with 2WD.

Semaphore Lakes is a much shorter trail, it’s about 5km round trip to the lakes and back, but don’t be deceived because there is still 300 metres in elevation gain in the short 2.5km, so it does make for a pretty steep hike up to the top. With our packs, it probably took us about an hour and a half to reach. We had a bit of a late start hiking in to Semaphore because we had a personal issue come up that required us to drive back to Pemberton between the two trails. Then when we finally got back to the Semaphore Lakes trailhead in the late afternoon (and had all our packs on ready to go), Brandon realized he left his REALLY NICE Nikon DSLR camera on the side of the road at the Tenquille Lake trailhead when we were packing up the car. So we had to drive back up and down the 4WD access road, but fortunately his camera was still sitting there patiently waiting for us!

So I think it was after 5pm by the time we finally started hiking in to Semaphore and it started to rain on us in the last half hour. In my early backpacking days I had a bit of a “rain” phobia because I was terrified of my clothes and sleeping bag getting wet and being stuck freezing cold in the mountains. Actually, this is totally a valid fear and one I go to great lengths to protect myself from. I actually carried an umbrella with me on the entire 50km Juan de Fuca trail because I was afraid of the rain getting my clothes wet on the first day of our 4 day hike. I’ve since chilled out because I’ve acquired some better gear to protect me against these scenarios, but I remember when it started raining on the way to Semaphore I pretty much ran the last 20 mins to the lakes because I was terrified that our tent would get wet because Seth had failed to purchase himself a backpack cover. He thought a garbage bag on top of his pack would work fine – spoiler alert: it didn’t.

Anyways, in retrospect, the rain was a bit of a joke. It was really just sun showers and not a proper downpour, but when we got to the lakes we pretty much threw the tent up as fast as possible and chucked all our gear inside. Me and Seth were still using my parents ancient tent at this point, which is a tee-pee style tent and not very spacious, and I have this really funny memory of the two of us just sitting in the tent staring at each other waiting for the rain to stop because there wasn’t enough room to do anything else.

Brandon travels in style ALL the time, so he and Carolyn were next door happily setting up their mansion while we just stared at each other in angst – me because I was annoyed about the rain and Seth because he never really wanted any part of the trip to begin with. Eventually Carolyn and Brandon got their house all set up and invited us over for dinner, as if we had anything better to do LOL, and we climbed into their nice space and cooked supper poking out through the vestibule. This is like textbook ‘what-not-to-do’ because you don’t want your tent to smell like your dinner and attract bears. I want to say, “but we were rookies and didn’t know any better”, but we did know better, so I really have no excuse. I’ve since purchased a lightweight tarp for future trips, so problem solved next time.

Anyways, the rain did let loose after that. Fortunately we were all set up by that point, so none of our gear got wet, but it did result in a pretty early night. We failed to bring cards, so I ended up reading a bedtime story to everyone instead. I basically yelled at Carolyn and Brandon for 30 mins between the tents so that they could hear me over the sound of the rain, and those kweens just fell asleep on me in like the first 5 minutes, rude.

So our evening at Semaphore left a little to be desired after our awesome night and campfire at Tenquille, but I have no regrets because the rain moved on overnight and the clouds cleared out in the morning. So I woke to the sun shining on me and the most beautiful view of the lake through my tent door. I was afraid of the clouds rolling back in again, so I got up pretty early and me, Carolyn, and Brandon went for a little exploratory morning walk around the area. You could absolutely spend 2 nights at Semaphore Lakes as well because there’s so many other mountains nearby to explore during the day. Since it was only the first weekend in July and we were at a pretty high elevation, there was still a lot of snow around, so we just explored the immediate area, but it had some truly lovely views of the lakes and surrounding mountains.

One of the benefits to Semaphore Lakes was that it has a lot less people. Don’t get me wrong, there were still other campers, but there was a lot less than Tenquille and they were a lot more spread out, so it didn’t feel crowded at all. It also had significantly less mosquitoes than Tenquille Lake, so that was a blessed relief. The clouds did roll in again pretty quickly though, so we didn’t stay too long and packed up our gear after a quick breakfast.

Overall, it was a great foray into backcountry camping and though we had some challenges, they were not enough to deter me from wanting to try it again and I ended up doing 2 other backcountry trips that summer! I would definitely love to go back to both of these trails as a more experienced hiker and check out some of the other surrounding trails in the area.