Hozomeen Lake Backpacking Trip

July 24, 2024April 10, 2025 / Maria / 6 Comments

Disclaimer: I’ve heard that this border crossing is now closed and I don’t believe it’s possible to do this hike from the Canadian side anymore. Below recounts my experience doing the hike in 2024, I wouldn’t advise doing this hike at this time.

The thing I love about BC is that there’s something to do in every season. I love skiing and snowshoeing in the Winter, and kayaking in the Spring, but there’s no question that backpacking season is my favourite. As soon as the warm weather hits, I always get the itch to go to the mountains. But it takes the snow a lot longer to melt in the mountains than in the city, so I always have to impatiently wait until almost July for alpine hiking (though there are still opportunities at lower elevations).

It was a very poor ski season last winter, so I was expecting an early alpine season this year. Unfortunately, we ended up getting a lot of late season snow, and it’s been a cooler and rainier Spring than normal, so by the time July hit, there was still a lot of snow in the mountains. In the long run, I know this is a good thing for wildfire season, but it left me scrambling to find a trip for the Canada Day long weekend.

I monitor the snow in the mountains in several ways. First, I always check Sentinel Playground/Copernicus Browser, which has satellite imagery that allows you to check the snow levels. Availability of data depends on having a cloudless day when the satellite rolls over your area of interest, but generally you can get data on the conditions within the last 2 weeks. Second, I check AllTrails for trail reviews from other users, and finally, I search the location on instagram for recent photos. All this effort confirmed that most of the trails on my hiking list were still inundated with snow.

I spent weeks scouring the internet and maps, looking for an alternative that I hadn’t already done, wouldn’t have permits, and would be appropriate for my husband, Seth, and our dog, Sadie. After much searching, I stumbled upon a very interesting option – the Hozomeen Lake Trail.

Hozomeen Lake is located in North Cascades National Park in Washington State. It’s just south of Skagit Valley Provincial Park and east of Ross Lake. What makes this hike unique is that it’s primarily accessible from Canada, but there’s no formal border crossing. Silver Skagit Road continues through the entirety of Skagit Valley Park, and a few kilometres past the border, but it’s not a manned crossing, so there’s no border control (though there are cameras). Pre-pandemic, you could drive across the border and there were a series of frontcountry campsites located on Ross Lake. But the gate has been closed to vehicles since the pandemic and the campsites are no longer maintained.

Fortunately for us, there is a series of backcountry trails that extend all the way down to Highway 20 in the US, and it appears that they are still being maintained. It’s a 2km hike on the road to the trailhead, and then ~6km of hiking along a forest trail to Hozomeen Lake, which sits at the base of Hozomeen Mountain. Me and Brandon hiked to the base of Hozomeen Mountain via the Skyline II and Hozomeen Ridge Trail in Manning Park in 2017, so we were excited to explore the trail from the other side of the mountain.

Hozomeen Lake is beautiful and doesn’t receive many visitors, so it was a great pick for my extremely anxious dog. It does require a camping permit to stay there, which can be obtained from the National Park Service (NPS) via email. They only issue permits on the day before your trip, but the Ranger is really nice and called me the morning before the hike. I guess some other people emailed ahead of us because he told me the campsites were already full, but he kindly let us use the group site and gave us a permit for two nights.

There’s only a few campsites, maybe 3 or 4, but it turns out the group campsite is actually the nicest one! They’re all located in the trees and have tenting areas (but no pads) and eating areas with a fire pit. But the group site is the closest to the lake, which is what makes it the nicest. There’s 2 open-air pit toilets, one for the single sites and one for the group site. The campground was full on our first night, but we didn’t meet any of the campers because everyone had a dog, so we kept our distance since Sadie doesn’t like other dogs. But on the second night, there were only two women at one of the other sites and Sadie adopted them into our herd.

It’s a pretty easy hike and the trail is super well maintained. The walk along the road is flat and easy for 2km. The first half of the trail is uphill with 400m of elevation gain, but it levels out as you get closer to the lake. It’s pretty much entirely in the trees, but it’s a nice walk and we didn’t see anyone (human or bear) on the way in or out. There was some evidence of bears on the trail, but none at the lake.

It was overcast on our first day, but very humid, so we hiked in shorts. There was rain in the forecast, so we quickly set up our tents and tarps upon arriving and me and Seth went for a little skinny dip in the lake. Campfires were allowed when we visited, so we collected some firewood to store under the tarp for the next evening. It started to drizzle during supper, but it didn’t properly rain until 11pm, which was after we had gone to bed. It’s a gorgeous lake campsite, the only downside is that there is no bear cache. It took me and Brandon a long time to set one up, and I admit, it wasn’t our best work.

It rained pretty hard all night, but tapered off around 8am when we got up. It still sprinkled a little bit while we had breakfast, but then it stopped and didn’t rain anymore on the trip. We had a slow lazy morning by the lake and me and Brandon improved our bear cache until it was acceptable. We packed up our day bags and set out on a hike around 11:30am.

The trail continues on for miles and miles and there’s a lot of backcountry to explore. We decided to hike to Willow Lake, which is approximately 3.5km further along the trail. Brandon seemed keen to go all the way to Nightmare campsite, which is another 3.5km, but we wanted to swim in the lake again later and opted not to (plus, the name didn’t sound super appealing).

Hozomeen Lake is definitely a much nicer campsite than Willow Lake, but it was a great spot to stop for lunch. If you push through some of the brush, you can walk out over the dried up flats to the edge of the lake. This may have only been possible because the water level in the lake was super low! We ate on the banks of the lake and it proved a great spot for watching wildlife. We saw tons of different birds, amphibians, and insects.

Seth and Brandon spent most of the hike back trying to identify the forest plants and we arrived back at Hozomeen Lake around 3pm. The temperature of the lake is really nice – it’s cold, but not glacier fed – so we spent a lot of time in the water. We befriended the new campers, who were also from Vancouver, and we all marveled at how awesome the campsite is and how there’s so few people!

We ate dinner by the lake and then had a campfire at the fire ring. Always practice fire safety and only collect dead wood on the ground (don’t destroy any natural habitat). There was lots of blowdown for firewood, which is another indicator the site doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Sadie was absolutely pooped after 2 days of hiking and snoozed for most of the evening.

In the morning, we packed up to head home again. It’s an easier hike on the way back and we stopped at the overgrown frontcountry site to admire the view across Ross Lake. Ross Lake is currently super low and dry for the entire 2km of road walking, but the mountains across the lake are pretty. Our new friends told us there were bats living in one of the outhouses, so that was a cool side trip on the way back.

It is a fairly long drive to get to Ross Lake, the worst part being an hour and half on gravel road from Hope to the lake. We stopped in Hope for ice cream and then weathered the long drive back on the highway with all the other long weekend warriors. But overall, we all absolutely loved this trip! It was much more chill than some of my other backpacking trips, with the lake and lack of crowds being the main highlights! I would definitely recommend!

Mamquam Lake Backpacking Trip

October 6, 2021August 27, 2021 / Maria / 3 Comments

I’m starting to lose count of the number of times I’ve been up the Elfin Lakes trail, but every time has been a very different experience so I keep going back! I’ve day hiked it to the Gargoyles, backpacked up to Opal Cone, snow camped, and taken a group of girl guides up there in very marginal conditions. On the occasion I hiked up to Opal Cone, we’d actually been aiming for Mamquam Lake, but abandoned our pursuit because it was too hot, so I was really keen to make another attempt to get to Mamquam on this trip.

Karen and Grant planned this trip for mid August and invited me to accompany them. An overnight camping pass is required for one of the 35 tent pads, so I quickly booked up one for myself and easily convinced Brandon to join me. He’d been with me on the first failed trip, so it was only fitting. Me, Karen, and Grant took Friday off to hike up and Brandon joined us later in the evening after he got off work. Not something I’d recommend, but he’s very familiar with the trail and he’s a fast hiker.

I met Karen and Grant downtown and we drove together to the trailhead outside of Squamish. You only need 2WD to get up the road in the summer, but I was a bit surprised at the condition for such a popular hike – it’s seems to have deteriorated quite a bit in the last few years. Parks staff met us on the road on the way up to check our passes and warned us there were a lot of black bear sightings and even one grizzly sighting. There’s a lot of berries on the trail, so make sure to bring spray and a horn if you visit (not bangers though as they present a fire risk).

It was a really dicey forecast for the weekend, so we weren’t really sure what to expect. It had rained on and off on the drive up and it was looking pretty grey when we arrived. We made good time on the old road up to Red Heather hut, but it did start raining pretty early into the hike. It rained solid for about 15 minutes, but then fortunately it slowed down and mostly just drizzled on and off after that.

We stopped briefly at the hut for a snack and I picked a handful of blueberries before continuing on. The rain had mostly stopped, but the clouds were super low and we knew we weren’t going to get any view, so we took the bike path up. I thought the bike path was in better condition than the hiking path, which often gets muddy, but I learned on the way down it’s been completely redone with crushed rock, so I definitely recommend the hiking path!

We dried off pretty fast after that and made a good pace to the campsite, but unfortunately we didn’t see any views at all. We were clearly right in the cloud and it was super foggy, so there wasn’t much to take photos of on the way in. We didn’t mind though because we were just so happy to be able to put our tents up in dry weather! I had taken my new Gossamer Gear tent for the trip and thanks to Carolyn, executed what is quite possibly her best idea ever and most brilliant tent pad hack! Since my tent is only set up with hiking poles and relies on tension to keep it upright, it’s hard to set up on wooden pads because it relies on being staked. The solution was a pack of 8 tiny wood screws that you could hand screw right into the tent pad! It worked so great and I was thrilled with how easy it was to set up!

Side note: for those of you who care, I’m still testing out my Gossamer Gear tent and assessing whether the single-walled design and subsequent condensation build-up on the inside are something I can deal with. On the first morning the tent was absolutely drenched, but so was Karen and Grant’s normal tent, whereas the second night it held up very well in the wind and rain and had minimal condensation in the morning. So I guess it is super dependent on weather conditions and I’m slowly learning how to deal with it.

Overall it took us just over 3 hours to do the 11km hike up to the hut. It was after 5pm when we arrived so we went to the cookhut to make dinner after setting up our bedrolls. Because of the extreme high risk of wildfires, BC Parks is requiring all cooking to be done in the shelter. While I agree this is prudent, I’m a little annoyed that they closed the sleeping hut for the season because of covid. I get you don’t want people sleeping there, but eliminating access to it and then forcing everyone to cook inside one tiny cook hut while it is still a pandemic seems counterproductive. Anyways, how busy the hut was varied and fortunately it wasn’t busy on Friday night. Despite all the tent pads being sold out, only about half were actually in use, so I think BC Parks booking system and cancellation policy could use a little updating too.

Anyways, that’s my rant for this post. We had a real treat during dinner when the clouds finally started to break up and give us a view! At first we’d just get the odd glimpse of a mountain through a hole in the clouds, but eventually they broke up completely and we got the most beautiful cloud inversion down into the valley! We hung out and watched the sun set over the mountains before returning to Karen and Grant’s tent for a few rounds of cards while waiting for Brandon to show up. Fortunately he arrived shortly before 10pm and we quickly hit the sack in preparation for an early rise the next morning.

Day 2 was pretty unreal. Karen and Grant woke up at 6am and the sky was completely void of clouds and they were all sitting down in the valley. But when I got up at 7am the entire campsite was shrouded in fog. It cleared out again during our breakfast, but by the time we departed the campsite, it had rolled it once more. So we figured it was just going to be one of those days where you never know what you’re going to get and just have to hope for the best. At least we didn’t have to battle the heat!

Like I said, this was my second time on the trail to Opal Cone. Overall the entire trail from the parking lot to Mamquam isn’t particularly difficult. It’s not technical at all, but the trail has a lot of cobble sized rocks, so it does get tiring on the ankles and feet after a while. The trail meanders up and down for the first couple kilometres and then it drops down to the river at the base of Mount Garibaldi before climbing slowly back up the side of Opal Cone. There’s a lot of ascent, but it’s very gradual, so it’s not a bad trail for newer hikers. We couldn’t see Mount Garibaldi or Opal Cone on this hike, but we worked our way up the side of the mountain until we eventually reached the trail branch for the Opal Cone summit.

We’d planned to go up to the cone, but it was still very foggy and we could tell based on the elevation of the clouds that it would be cloudy at the top, so we decided to continue on and hope for the best on the way back. Karen and Grant had initially been thinking they might only go as far as Opal Cone (which is 6.5km one way), but everyone was feeling good, so we continued down into the glacial flat as a group. I don’t know if glacial flat is the correct term, but that’s what it looks like to me. There’s a big glacier behind Opal Cone that melts into a lake surrounded by rocky moraines from the historical glaciers. The whole area is really one big volcanic desert, with lots of dust and little vegetation, it can be brutal on a hot day.

The other side of the glacial lake was as far as Brandon and I made it on our last trip, so we were now moving into new territory. It was almost as if the weather knew it and as soon as we started making our way into the next valley, the clouds lifted and a few streaks of sun shone through. It never lifted off completely, but we were rewarded with some beautiful dusty views looking down the valley. There were several wash outs along the trail, 2 were before Opal Cone, but the most difficult one is on the way to Rampart Ponds (pictured below), which is the next campsite on the trail, located between Opal and Mamquam Lake.

My favourite part of this valley was the river that runs through the center. When you cross over it, the bridge is actually located at the merging of two rivers. The main river is incredibly chalky and silty, while the other is beautiful clear freshwater. So we stopped here to replenish our water bladders before climbing the last pass up to the campsite. You arrive at the campsite pretty much as soon as you crest the pass and there are several tent pads and ponds. I figured this would be my last trip to Elfin if I made it to Mamquam, but now me and Brandon are determined to return once more and stay at Rampart Ponds! Although I’d caution against it on a particularly hot day since there’s absolutely zero shade to be found.

From Rampart Ponds, you continue up another few minutes to the top of the pass, where you have the most incredible 360 degree view of Opal Cone and Mount Garibaldi on one side (on a clear day) and a view down to Mamquam Lake on the other. Rampart Ponds is 3.5km from Opal Cone and it’s a final 1.5km to Mamquam. The only problem is it’s a pretty big descent to get down to Mamquam, so even though it sounds short, it’s a big climb on the return trip.

Either way, we were so close we were determined to get there for lunch. We trundled on and I really enjoyed this section of the trail. It was still cloudy, but they had lifted up a bit and me and Karen both loved the terrain. Everything we’d hiked that morning had been desert, but the hike down to Mamquam is proper alpine greenery and meadows, so it made for a nice change of pace. We arrived shortly after 1pm to grumbling tummies.

As much as I wanted to eat my lunch, I’d been struck by the urge to swim and knew if I didn’t do it right away, I wouldn’t do it at all. It was not a warm day. I hiked in pants all day and while I only wore a t-shirt, it was chilly when you weren’t moving. So I stripped down to my swimsuit and went in. It’s a beautiful large lake with sloping mountain walls, but it’s very shallow at the foot of the lake. Fortunately, it’s also pretty sandy, so even though I had to walk out a fair way without shoes, it wasn’t painful. At first it felt cold, but I warmed up really quick because the water was actually warmer than the air. I convinced Grant and Brandon to join me and I ended up swimming for the better part of 15-20 minutes, which is substantially longer than I can usually stand to swim in alpine lakes. After I got out I got cold fast though. So I quickly bundled up in my puffy. Surprisingly the guys never got cold and it made for a funny contrast with me in my puffy while they ate their lunches shirtless.

We really enjoyed the lake, especially because we were the only people there. In general, we didn’t see a lot of people while hiking and Rampart Ponds had actually been completely empty when we hiked through. The slog back up out of the valley wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. The forest was filled will blueberries, so we all did some picking and snacking on the way up.

After that though it was a pretty long slog back. I didn’t mind the hike back to Opal Cone too much, me and Brandon mostly fantasized about where we would explore on our next trip, but the section from Opal back to Elfin was brutal. Opal was clouded in again on our return, so we skipped it, which I don’t regret. My feet were pounding by the time we got there, so we just did our best to get to Elfin. In total it was 22km of hiking, which is a lot to do in one day and the most I’ve done this season. We were all starving when we got back and happily settled in to have our supper.

We crammed ourselves into Karen and Grant’s tent for a few games of cards before bed, but we were all exhausted, so we called it shortly before 10pm. Unfortunately, it started pouring just as we finished. We didn’t know how long it would last, so we all ran around like banshees trying to do our nightly routines and get in our tents… only for the rain to stop about 10 minutes after we were done. If only we’d played one more round of cards we would have missed it.

Everything was wet in the morning, but the tents actually dried out pretty good before we packed them and nothing was too wet when we took down camp. It was a brisk morning and we all kept our rain jackets on for the return hike. In general the clouds were higher on the way back than the way in and we did catch a glimpse of some views. There’s more uphill on the way back than I remember, but nothing too bad. Once we reached the Red Heather Hut we totally powered down the last 5km and back to the car. We finished with pizza and beer at Backcountry Brewing, which is quickly becoming our new tradition!

Zoa Peak Snow Camping

March 17, 2021April 23, 2021 / Maria / 3 Comments

It hasn’t been the best year for winter activities. Between the pandemic restrictions and the avalanche ratings, it’s been hard to get out and enjoy the snow. We went snow camping at Lightning Lakes in late January and we’ve been trying to fit in a second trip ever since. The avalanche ratings have been pretty consistently at ‘Considerable’ and ‘High’ throughout the last month and we ended up cancelling our trip twice. But we finally got decent conditions this past weekend and decided to go for it as one last snow activity to close out the season.

Zoa is popular among backcountry skiers because it’s a relatively easy hike up an old forestry road and thanks to the low incline, most of the hike is in simple terrain. Interestingly, the first time Carolyn and I ever snow camped was at the base of the Zoa Peak trail. We’d intended to go to Manning, but a wrong turn on the highway landed us in the Coquihalla Rec Area and we decided to snowshoe 1km in to the Zoa Peak/Falls Lake trailhead and camp on the summer parking lot (which isn’t plowed in the winter). So we felt like we’d come full circle by returning to this area and hiking up to Zoa.

It was a busy day on the trail with both skiers and snowshoers, but we were the only ones staying overnight and the crowds quickly thinned out when we reached the top. However, it was a very challenging hike up the mountain. Because it was mid-March, it wasn’t really ideal snow conditions for any kind of activity. We debated for ages whether we should wear snowshoes or spikes and ended up with me and Brandon hiking in spikes and Carolyn and Steve in snowshoes. There was really no right answer, but in retrospect, I think snowshoes were overall the better choice.

The first kilometre along the access road was very well packed and I had no problem in spikes, but once we started climbing up the old forestry road, snowshoes were preferable. It was really sunny, so the snow became a bit slushy and while we weren’t punching through the snow with spikes, it was a bit like walking on sand and made for a very draining hike up. Most of the elevation gain is done on the forestry road and with the sun beating down on us and reflecting off the snow, it ate up a lot of our energy. We all wore sunscreen on our faces, but I ended up getting burned on the underside of my chin from the reflection off the snow!

After about 2.5km, you need to exit the road and hike into the woods. The summer trail exits the road earlier, but in the winter it’s better to continue further up since the grade is lower there. There is some pink flagging tape to mark the turn-off, but it’s easy to miss so I recommend being on the lookout and using a GPS. From there you hike up through the woods until you reach the ridge. It’s still steep, but the trail is more packed through the trees, so my spikes worked better here. It can be a bit confusing because the skiers take all kinds of different paths down through the trees, but as long as you keep going up, you really can’t go wrong and will eventually reach the ridge.

Snowshoeing along the ridge up to the sub-peak is gorgeous! I did part of Zoa in the fall once, but it’s much more scenic in the winter because the snow lifts you up higher among the trees, resulting in a better view and not confining you to a single area. In the summer, the brush makes it impossible to travel along the entire ridge and the trees limit a lot of the view, so I much preferred the winter views.

In total, it’s about 5km from the highway to Zoa Peak. We decided from the beginning that we would cut off a kilometre and only hike as far as the sub-peak. This is because after the sub-peak the trail gets steeper and the avalanche terrain changes from ‘simple’ to ‘challenging’. The avalanche risk on the day we went was ‘moderate’ in the treeline and ‘considerable’ in the alpine. Zoa seems to be kind of on the cusp between treeline and alpine, so we decided to play it safe and camp at the sub-peak.

By the time we reached the ridgeline, we were all exhausted, so we decided to camp just below the sub-peak. It was calling for a bit of wind overnight and we wanted to be sheltered, plus the views are gorgeous all along the ridge. So we found a good looking spot and got right to work on setting up camp. Unfortunately, stopping triggered a few issues for me and after a few minutes of shoveling I found myself getting really lightheaded. I think I was dehydrated, so I took a break and tried to re-hydrate with some electrolytes. We all suffered some mild dehydration throughout the hike, so it was a good reminder to drink lots of water prior to a hike as well. Fortunately we had lots of electrolytes and were all able to recover.

So Brandon did a lot of the shoveling for our set up and eventually I got to work on a snow kitchen. The snow was really sticky so it was good for setting up a kitchen and we didn’t have to pack it down too much. There were 4 of us, so Brandon and I shared one tent and Carolyn and Steve shared another. We had a great view of what I think was Thar, Nak, and the back of Yak Peak and enjoyed hanging out watching the mountains. One of the benefits of going so late in the season was that we had a bit more daylight in which to enjoy the view.

Brandon made us miso soup to help with rehydrating and then we all got to work on melting snow for dinner. I shared Brandon’s classic thai curry chicken, which is my absolute favourite backcountry meal! My parents had sent me some chocolate from Newfoundland Chocolate Company, which we enjoyed as a treat for dessert.

Usually when we go snow camping, we go to bed super early because it gets so cold and dark, but it was a warmer evening and the clouds had completely cleared out, leaving a beautiful view of the stars! So we stayed up much later than we usually do and I took star photos while Steve messed around with his radio to get us some tunes. Two night hikers passed us right after it got dark, but otherwise we were the only ones around and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. It ended up being 9:45pm by the time I finally crawled into the tent for bed, which is by far the latest I’ve ever stayed up snow camping!

I didn’t get the best night’s sleep as the wind picked up overnight and shook us around a bit. Nothing to be concerned about, but it did make it a little harder to sleep. I made an egg and bacon hash for breakfast and then Brandon and I hiked the last few metres up to the sub-peak to check out the view. Otherwise we just took down camp and packed up again to head home. It was a lot easier on the second day because the sun stayed behind the clouds, meaning the slush had become more solid and was easier to hike out in spikes. We didn’t see as much traffic and powered down the trail in just an hour and a half (versus the 3 hours it took us to hike up).

So overall it was definitely one of the more challenging hikes, but the weather and views from the top were amazing and we ended up having a great time!