I think this may be one of my favourite things I’ve ever done with my Girl Guide unit (although our Elfin Lakes trip was a close second). I love whitewater rafting, but obviously I don’t do it very much because it’s very expensive. To date, I’ve done it in Peru, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and several different locations in Canada. Me and Seth even rafted the same river a few years ago, but I had much nicer weather on this occasion and it was at the perfect time for peak flows, so this experience was much more memorable.

Even though we were just doing a day trip, we decided to turn it into a full 2 night camp. We booked two campsites at Alice Lake and drove out to Squamish on Friday after school. Vancouver had the nicest weather in May and it didn’t rain for about 3 and a half weeks, but of course, the rain returned just in time for our camp. It rained our whole drive out, but fortunately it stopped when we arrived at the campsite and we were able to get our pop-ups and tents set up while it was relatively dry. We had a propane campfire and were in bed before the rain fully started overnight.

We’d been planning to hike the Chief on Saturday, which is on a bunch of our member’s bucket lists, but it was still raining when we got up, so we decided to go with our back-up plan instead. The Chief can get very slippery when it’s wet and we could see that the summit was still in the clouds, so we opted to visit Brohm Lake instead.

Fortunately the rained stopped when we got to the lake, and though it remained cloudy for the rest of the day, the rain stayed away. We started with a hike around the lake, which was a lot more hilly than I was expecting, before hiking up to the Tantalus Viewpoint. I think this was a good alternative trail to the Chief, because it was still challenging, without being too dangerous. I did the hike once 8 or 9 years ago and I’d pretty much entirely forgotten what the terrain was like. It’s a bit more technical than I remembered, so it was good for us to build up our skills.

There’s about 200m of elevation gain up to the viewpoint and it is pretty steep. Everyone did really well and we eventually made it up to the summit. I thought the views were still really nice and it looked kind of cool with the clouds moving around the trees. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the Tantalus Range, but we had a nice lunch break along the ridge before heading back down to the lake.

We returned to our campsite in the afternoon before a very fun pizza night at Joe Pesto’s in Squamish. We spent the evening playing some games and enjoying the views around Alice Lake before heading to bed.

Sunday was all about whitewater rafting. We went with Canadian Outback and we had such a blast! It was their first time rafting for all of the girl guides, so they were a little nervous, especially when the event started with a 20 minute discussion about safety. I could see them all looking a little bit apprehensive, but I was so psyched to get in the raft and tried to pump them all up. I needn’t have worried though because as soon as we started going down the rapids, they all had a blast! We were able to do a little bit of swimming in some of the gentle rapids, and I got the chance to try “driving” the raft while some of the girls balanced at the front.

The Elaho is a very special river. We started pretty far back in the backcountry and after about an hour it merges with the Squamish River. One of my favourite sections of the river is right at the start, you go down a set of rapids called Devil’s Elbow because of the sharp 110 degree bend in the river. It’s characterized by steep canyon walls which are incredibly scenic.

After that, you get amazing views of Mount Cayley, which I learned is the sister mountain to Mount Garibaldi because they are both dormant volcanoes with distinctive peaks. Once you merge into the Squamish River, you can see Mount Cayley behind you and the Weeping Wall ahead. The Weeping Wall is named because it’s a shear rockface and in the height of the snow melt (which was mid-June, the exact time we were visiting), you get dozens of cascading waterfalls coming down the rockface. It’s a beautiful site and considered sacred to the local first nations.

The snow melt also contributed to a very eventful day on the river. Our guides told us that the Saturday and Sunday trips we’re the best ones they’d run all season because the river was running at peak flow and we got some truly epic rapids. The rapids build up until you reach Steamroller, which is one of the most intense rapids on the river and our absolute favourite. We got smoked by wave after wave, but Trex had so much fun!

After the last rapid, there’s a bit of a leisurely paddle through what’s known as “the braids” before you get to the take-out spot. It’s not as thrilling as the rapids, but it was a gorgeous sunny day and we had beautiful views of the surrounding mountains.

We were much later getting back to the rafting camp then we anticipated and then we got stuck in traffic on the way back to Vancouver, but it was such an epic day, I’m sure the girls will all remember it for a long time. If you have the time and capital to try whitewater rafting, definitely do it, we had an incredible time!