Mount Assiniboine Backpacking Trip: Part II

July 28, 2021March 27, 2023 / Maria / 5 Comments

We had a pretty solid start to our trip on Day 1 (Part I), but things went downhill really fast on Day 2. It’s hard to write about, but backcountry safety and emergency preparedness in the wilderness are so important to me, so I think it’s really important to share when things go wrong. More people than ever have been exploring the backcountry during the pandemic and search and rescue tasks have been way up. Social media has exposed a lot of very beautiful locations, but people don’t always share the challenges that often come along with those experiences. I don’t want to give a false idea of what multi-day thru-hikes are like, so I think it’s really important to share the good along with the bad. In general, my entire 6 day trip to Assiniboine was extremely challenging, but Day 2 was probably one of the worst days I’ve ever had in the backcountry.

On Day 2 we had to go 14km to get to our campsite at Magog Lake. We departed shortly after 8am and it was about 1km to the lake. There’s a short uphill section that takes you partway up the mountainside and from there, it’s another 6km of relatively flat terrain that runs parallel to the lake. The trail traverses in and out of the trees, so we had a pretty good time because large parts of the trail were shaded, and the parts that weren’t shaded offered absolutely gorgeous views of Marvel Lake and the glacier covered mountains at the end of the lake. From the trail, we could just see the tip of Mount Assiniboine peaking out from behind the mountains.

Once the trail reaches the end of the lake, it starts to ascend up to Wonder Pass via a series of switchbacks. We knew the switchbacks would be challenging in the heat, so we planned a nice break before starting them. It was around 11am, so we decided to wait to have lunch and instead has some snacks. I was feeling a little tired, so I mixed myself some electrolytes to help prepare for the climb. We hit a river right before starting the ascent, so we all topped up our bladders and bottles.

I was feeling good as we started the switchbacks, but I was also worried about the others, particularly Lien, who drinks a lot of water on a normal day, much less a really hot one. I told everyone to say if they felt the least bit dizzy or nauseous and that we would stop. But one mistake I think I made was that as we climbed up the switchbacks, I was at the head of the group. We probably should have put a slower hiker at the front, but the trail goes in and out of the trees, so we were stopping for short breaks at every single shady section of the trail, so I didn’t think much of it.

I was one shady section ahead of the group taking a break when the guys called up to me that our other companion, whose name I’ve left out for privacy reasons, was feeling tired and wanted a quick break. I walked back down the trail to see her sitting on the ground leaning against her pack with her eyes closed. This was a bad sign for me and indicated to me that she probably already had heat exhaustion. I quickly mixed her a half litre of electrolytes to try and perk up her energy. The guys seemed pretty sure she’d come around quickly, but honestly for me it was a really bad omen. I’ve had first aid training since I was 16 and have treated 2 other cases of heat exhaustion in the past (1 of which resulted in a seizure), so I just had a really bad feeling.

What I wasn’t prepared for though was how quickly our companion’s health went downhill. Within minutes she was fully lying down on the trail while I continued to give her electrolytes and Brandon gave her energy chews. She kept saying she just needed a few minutes to rest up, but I was not reassured by the fact that she was lying down and knew she was likely already dehydrated and needed more than a few minutes of rest. I booted up my Inreach on the side as a precaution, but the guys wanted to give her more time. This is not unreasonable as you definitely don’t want to call for emergency assistance unless you’re sure you need it.

But shortly after that things really deteriorated and she started having severe muscle cramps in her arms and legs. At first I thought she was having a seizure, but then recognized it as heat cramps and immediately made the SOS call. This is something I hoped never to have to do when I purchased my Inreach, but of course, I also purchased it for this exact scenario. While I was making the call the guys removed her shoes and socks and anything that was creating tightness and started massaging her legs, feet, and arms. This definitely helped with the pain of the cramps, but I knew that in the long term she needed hydration. I poured water over her face and torso to try and cool her down and kept feeding her electrolytes, hoping she would not pass out because I needed to keep giving her water.

As we gave first aid, I noticed the SOS had still not sent. It often takes my inreach about 20 minutes to send messages, especially in the trees like where we were, but I didn’t want to wait for it, so Brandon offered to run it up the trail to try and get the message through. It stressed me out for us to split up, but we needed help and I had wilderness first aid training and Brandon was fast, so it made the most sense. He took his water and left. It felt like he was gone forever, during which I mostly continued to feed her electrolytes until she complained it was too much and asked me to switch to water. At that point, I started drinking the electrolytes myself because I was starting to get tired too. Lien continued to massage her limbs. She had initially been frantic because she couldn’t feel her legs or arms, but overtime, she started to regain feeling and fortunately, still never passed out. Eventually she became cold from all the water I poured on her, so I changed her into dry clothes and we put an emergency blanket under her to insulate against the cold ground.

I don’t know what the official diagnosis was for her condition, but I believe it was heat stroke, which can only be treated with medical help. The fact that she had such severe cramping and lost feeling in her limbs likely suggests that her body was starting to shut down and was taking energy away from her limbs to preserve her body’s core functions. I’m not a professional, so perhaps it wasn’t as extreme as heat stroke, but I don’t doubt she needed more help than we were able to provide on that mountain.

The sun was on the move and our shade was disappearing, so I put up my tarp to shield us all from it. Her pain had subsided so me and Lien quickly ate some food to keep up our own strength and then kept giving her water. There wasn’t much else I could do for her aside from try to replenish her fluids. Thankfully Brandon returned, having finally got the SOS to go through. He was immediately inundated with messages from Emergency Services looking for more details. Fortunately the Inreach had found the satellite and we were now able to message from our location. I’m sure the technicians were frustrated with us because it takes forever to type using the text pick on the Inreach and we gave them pretty limited info to try and get the messages out as fast as possible. They asked if we could move at all, to which I responded no, and I told them we’d wait at this location and to look for a yellow tarp. Lien tied his red ground sheet to the trees as well to make us more visible.

Once I finished the trip, I learned Inreach had called both Seth and my Mom, who were listed as my emergency contacts. They couldn’t originally get a hold of Seth, who had our entire trip plan, but the main thing they first asked my Mom was about my level of experience and whether she thought I had sent the SOS accidentally. The reason they wondered is because the GPS location showed we were directly on the trail. Mom told them she thought it was unlikely it was an accident and to please send help. By then we had got more messages through and Inreach reassured my Mom they were already on the way.

They definitely were on the way. Shortly after Brandon returned and less than an hour after the message had gone through, a helicopter circled our location and sirened at us to let us know they’d seen us. They told us after it was really easy to find us having our exact GPS location and with the tarp. They flew off and returned some time later with a guy on longline. He landed about 15metres down the trail from us and Lien accompanied him to our location. He asked our companion some questions and we filled him in on what had occurred. During this, Brandon had departed again to go back to the water source to refill our bladders and Lien began packing up the backpacks for departure. A second S&R guy was flown in on longline and they assessed whether they could bring our companion out lying down or sitting up. They decided lying down would be best for the extraction and then to transfer her to the helicopter to sit on the way to the hospital. At this point she was looking better. She was actually keeping her eyes open and giving longer responses, plus she needed to go to the bathroom twice. S&R never actually gave her any first aid on the ground and instead transferred her to hospital to go on saline.

They told us we had taken the right actions in putting up the tarp, cooling her down, and giving her lots of water and electrolytes. They took her out via longline lying down and then took Lien out by longline sitting up. They waited for Brandon to return before taking Lien so we could plan what to do next. They did indicate they would take us all via longline if we needed it, but that it wasn’t preferred as the helicopter wasn’t big enough. They needed to take Lien so he could go to the hospital, but it made no sense for them to take me and Brandon too, so we had to decide whether to go back or continue on. I felt that we should go back. We had been through something traumatic and I wanted to know she was okay after having given her first aid for 3 hours. But Brandon pointed out there was really nothing more we could do for her and we were more than a day from either trailhead, so we should just go on.

So we went on. I still feel a bit guilty about it, but I’m also glad that at least the trip wasn’t over for everyone. In the back of my mind though I was concerned about me and Brandon also getting heat exhaustion. Brandon had already climbed the pass once with the Inreach and I was tired from the stress of attending to the incident. One of the eeriest parts of the day was the fact that we hadn’t seen a single person besides S&R. It made us feel like we were the only people crazy enough to be out hiking, but we encountered lots of other people at Assiniboine who were day hiking up to the pass and thru-hiking in the opposite direction, so it was just a coincidence we were the only ones hiking through the pass that day.

Before moving anywhere we finally sat down and ate our lunch to get some energy back. After that we took it really slow. We crawled at a snail’s pace through the sunny sections and took a break every time we encountered shade. There was limited shade in Wonder Pass, but was it ever gorgeous! I felt like we weren’t able to properly enjoy it, but we still got some lovely photos. We debated camping in the pass since it was an extenuating circumstance, but there was so little shade to be found we ultimately decided to press on. Though we did find a single tree up there and took a break.

It was approaching 6pm when we left the pass. The top of the pass marks both the Alberta-BC border and the transition between Banff National Park and Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park. It was a relief to finally start moving downhill and we walked through a beautiful larch forest that I’m sure is super scenic in the fall. We descended past a waterfall and down to some meadows where we re-filled our bottles from the stream. In total Brandon drank a whopping 7L of water on this day!

It was still late June, so I was surprised by the amount of wildflowers we saw on the trip! We saw lots of buttercups and Indian Paintbrush, as well as the Alberta Wild Rose, forget-me-nots, and lots of other white and purple flowers I can’t identify. Eventually we arrived at Gog Lake, which still had some small bergy bits floating in it. I wanted to go for a swim in it, but it’s surrounded by wetland, so I settled for a dunk in freezing Magog Creek instead. It was only knee deep and my feet immediately started to go numb, so I quickly washed myself down before crawling back out.

We were pretty exhausted at this point, but we continued on through the meadows and couldn’t help exclaiming at the beauty of the park. We finally hit the Naiset Huts and were disappointed to learn it was still another 2km to the Magog Lake campsite. It was finally starting to cool off now though and the sun was lower in the sky, we continued along the edge of Magog Lake and were treated to the most gorgeous views of the lake. Every step hurt and when we finally rolled into the campsite it was 8pm – almost 12 hours after we had started! We were greeted by the Ranger who directed us to the shadiest campsite remaining (not very shady). But we didn’t care and trudged our way out to site number 40 at the back of a little meadow.

I have lots to write about the campsite, but this post is getting long, so I’ll save it for the next entry. We set up camp as quick as possible and I got dinner going while Brandon filtered water. We scarfed down our dinner and sent messages out to Lien and Seth to let them know we’d made it to the campsite and check on our companion. She was still in the hospital, but doing better. After that we pretty much hit the sack immediately. Unfortunately sleep was elusive. There was too much to process from the day, I just lay in bed for hours with my brain spinning. At one point I got up to pee and I could barely open my eyes or move my body I was so tired, but my mind just would not go to sleep. Eventually I drifted off late in the night with no alarms set for the next day. Click for Part III.

Half Moon Beach Backpacking Trip

June 30, 2021July 9, 2021 / Maria / 2 Comments

Is anyone else getting Deju Vu this year? I got my first dose of Pfizer in mid-May, so the year is definitely going better than last year, but in a lot of ways I feel like I am just living the same year over again. In May and June of 2020 I was waiting anxiously to see if the province was going to open up and whether I’d be able to go on the backpacking trip I’d planned to Assiniboine in early July. In 2020, my trip got cancelled and I ended up doing the North Coast Trail instead. This year I planned the same trip for the same time and fortunately it’s looking like my plans will pan out this time, so stayed tuned to hear about Assiniboine soon! In the meantime, please enjoy post that I wrote about my 1 night backpacking trip in Golden Ears Park back in early June.

Last year me and Emily did a 1-night backpacking trip to Viewpoint Beach during the first weekend in June. Since I’m basically living the same year over, I returned to Viewpoint Beach again this year during the exact same weekend, only this time I took more people with me! It was an easy sell for Carolyn and Brandon, but we also convinced Seth to come with us and our friends Karen and Grant! Karen and Grant aren’t big backpackers, but they did once accompany me to Elfin Lakes and are looking to get more into backpacking, so I was thrilled to have them join us for a weekend in Golden Ears.

We were all stoked for the trip, the only problem was the weather was looking really dicey. I was convinced someone was going to cancel, but I think it’s a testament to how fed up we all were about being stuck at home all the time that we decided to go anyways. It wasn’t calling for rain until overnight on Friday, so we figured as long as we got set up before the rain hit, we would be okay.

We took off early from work on Friday to try and beat the traffic, we failed, but still managed to get to the trailhead for 5pm. Carolyn was ahead of the rest of us, so she decided to hike in on her own to secure a campsite. Me, Seth, Karen, and Grant followed about an hour behind her. The official trail name is East Canyon Trail and you can hike out to Viewpoint Beach either along the Gold Creek trail or the East Canyon trail. We opted for East Canyon because it is faster. It’s only about 4km to Viewpoint Beach and it’s a forgiving trail. It’s wide and a gradual uphill for the first 3km, then it switches to downhill for the remaining 1km.

You can camp on either side of Gold Creek, just cross the bridge in advance of arriving at Viewpoint Beach if you want to camp on the far side, which is known as Hiker’s Beach. I was keen to check out Hiker’s Beach because I’d camped at Viewpoint last year, but we opted for Viewpoint again since there’s both an outhouse and bear cache on that side. The water level was also very high when we visited and it did look like Hiker’s Beach may have been a bit flooded.

Despite the poor forecast, there were still quite a few other campers at the beach. Carolyn had set up under the trees and the rest of us set up our tents on the beach. We did our best to get a tarp up so that we could have a dry breakfast the next day, but it was somewhat challenging with the limited number of trees, so we managed mostly with hiking poles.

There was a very short spurt of rain while we were getting set up, but it only lasted a few minutes, so it wasn’t a big deal. Brandon was pretty far behind us, but he rolled into the campsite a few hours later to set up his tent as well. Because of COVID we were playing it safe, so we all had our own tent, which ended up being quite luxurious. Carolyn and Brandon were both in 2p tents, and the rest of us were in 3p tents, so we had lots of room to spare. I think me and Seth had it the worst though because we had to share our space with a neurotic, wet dog.

We heated up some water for boozy hot drinks and Brandon debuted his newest fad, the hand sanitizer stove. I’ve done this one with girl guides in the past, but basically he had a little pop-can stove that he filled with liquid hand sanitizer as fuel. He had a small bottle that burned for about 20 minutes. Not the most inspiring campfire, but there are no fires allowed in the Golden Ears backcountry, so it was a nice little alterative and we all got a kick out of it! Our neighbours were all having real campfires though, so a reminder to please respect the rules and the environment when you camp. Fire bans in parks exist for a reason, usually because people pillage the area for firewood and it’s not good for the ecosystem.

After that it did start to rain in earnest, so we dropped off our smellies in the bear cache and called it a night! When I wrote about Viewpoint Beach last year I said there was no bear cache, but I think I just never discovered it. Carolyn found it right at the back of the beach. There’s no sign, but if you follow the trail into the woods, you will find a bear cache hidden back there. Easy to find in the day, but I do wish they would add some signs because it’s definitely not easy to find in the dark.

It’s always a handful to take Sadie camping, but she did reasonably well on Friday. Carolyn is the dog whisperer and there were no other dogs camping on the beach, so she handled herself well. She gets really excited when you first get in the tent, which makes it challenging to get into pyjamas, but once you turn off your headlamp she settles down pretty fast. It rained on and off through the night, but she slept well until 7am. Usually she lets us sleep later than that, but she wanted out, so I got up at 7am with her and let Seth sleep a bit longer.

Fortunately the rain had cleared off in the morning and we were able to enjoy our breakfast in the dry! Pretty much everyone was up by 8am and we had a nice lazy morning. Our goal for the day was to hike 6km further along the trail to Half Moon Beach. One day I’d like to camp there, but our plan was just to check it out as a day hike and have lunch. There was a quick downpour just before we left at 10am, so we huddled under the tarp before setting out for the day.

It stayed dry for most of the hike out to Half Moon. The trail starts super easy, but it deteriorates the farther you go. I’ve heard the trail to Hector Fergusson Lake (which is past Half Moon Beach) is notoriously bad, but this section of the trail is pretty reasonable. There’s definitely some obstacles, but overall, not too bad. There’s just one confusing spot about 2.5km in where the trail markers seemingly go in multiple directions. Most of us followed the route on my GPS, which I think is the official route, but it was very muddy and wet, so I suspect the other routes exist as a bypass when the river is high. Carolyn and Brandon took that route and we were all reminded how easy it is to get separated when you split up, even if only for a short time.

Eventually we met up again on the trail, but for a short period of time we did lose voice contact with each other because the trails diverged. We were all on marked trails, so everyone was reluctant to leave the trail they were on and eventually they did catch up. In our case, both me and Carolyn had inreach and GPS, so I wasn’t overly concerned, but I did mark the location where our paths diverged just in case.

Even in the drizzle, it’s a lovely trail! Golden Ears is so green and though you’re in the canopy for most of the trail, it follows Gold Creek and has some gorgeous views looking up the valley. Eventually we arrived at Half Moon Beach and happily set up by the river to enjoy our lunch. But we had about 3 minutes to enjoy it before the clouds finally opened rain on us. It poured and we hastily ran back to the cover of the trees. We hadn’t brought the tarp, so we huddled until the canopy while we ate our lunch.

The tree cover didn’t really help us and we still got pretty wet. We hung around for a little bit in case it did clear up, but it didn’t really seem like it was going to stop, so we decided to head back. It did rain for the remainder of the hike and it took us about 2 hours each way. The trail accumulates water fast, so it was generally a lot wetter on the way back and by the time we finally strolled into camp, my pants were soaked through and my feet we were wet.

We’d anticipated this, so we decided to just pack up and abandon our plans to stay a second night (we’d been hopeful, but kind of knew from the start we would likely only stay 1 night). Honestly, if it wasn’t for Sadie, I might have been willing to stay, but camping with a wet dog isn’t really the most appealing. Once we stopped hiking she got really cold from the rain; plus our new neighbours both had dogs and Sadie is not friendly to stranger dogs.

Unfortunately, it rained the entire time we took down camp, but we all changed into dry clothes first anyways. We took the tent down in the pouring rain, but left the tarp up until the last minute to provide some shelter. Once all our bags were packed, we hastily pulled the tarp down. But of course, the second we took the tarp down the rain slowed and I kid you not, the sun came out just as we were hiking out from the beach. It was still raining, but the sun brightened up the whole scene and all our neighbours emerged jubilantly from their tents. We snapped a few photos, but knew the rain would be back and continued on.

It did thunder on the trek back to the car, but the rain slowed considerably to the point where my second set of clothing fortunately didn’t get wet. With the 12km day hike and the return trip, it ended up being 16km of hiking, which was a considerable day for all of us and Sadie. We arrived at the parking lot around 5pm, ending exactly 24 hours in the park. Somehow it felt like so much longer!

The weather continued to improve as we approached the city and I wondered if maybe we could have stayed, but then in poured all day Sunday, so in the end I didn’t regret it when I woke up in my cozy bed after having slept for 11 hours! Despite the rain, we all agreed that we still had a great time! I wouldn’t go back in the rain, but I am still keen to return again one day in the sun and this time camp at Half Moon Beach!

Hiking Cheam Peak

September 9, 2020October 2, 2020 / Maria / Leave a comment

One of my favourite local hikes to date is Cheam Peak – which is interesting because the first time I hiked it was in 2018 and in much less than ideal conditions. Cheam Peak is a well known hike in the Fraser Valley, whose sharp peak dominates the skyline as you drive out Highway 1 past Chilliwack. Though you can easily see the mountain from the Highway, you have to enter the trail from the South on Chilliwack Lake Road. I wasn’t expecting it to be a busy hike because you need 4WD to access to the trail head, and it was a pretty smoky day when we hiked it in 2018, so I was shocked when we arrived at the trailhead to find the parking lot packed with trucks and SUVs. As far as 4WD hikes go – I can also assume this is one of the more popular since the mountain peak is so iconic.

5 of us piled into Brandon’s 4Runner to get to the trailhead – a drive that was a lot more fun for Brandon than the rest of us. The higher we drove along the road, the worse the visibility got. 2018 was one of the worst summers for forest fires and the city was filled with smoke for weeks on end, making it hard to do much of anything outdoors without coughing up a lung. The smoke hadn’t peaked yet, but it was also an overcast day and we were high enough to be up in the clouds – so the smoke and fog together made for some really terrible visibility.

The conditions didn’t impact my enjoyment of Mount Cheam though and even with the poor visibility, between the alpine meadows and cute little Spoon Lake, I was in hiking heaven. The meadows start pretty much at the trailhead and are gorgeous and green, with this tiny little swimming hole that looks like it’s been punched out of the landscape. Plus there’s lots of wildflowers if you go at the right time of year. From the meadow, I think you can see up most of the mountain, but unfortunately for us, the meadow was the only part of the trail not shrouded in fog. As we started to ascend, we immediately entered the clouds and lost all sight of anything around us. I’ve hiked a few times in the fog, but this was definitely the worst. The closer we got to the top, the worse it got. It’s not the longest trail, only 9km round trip, but you tackle a lot of elevation gain in that hike, approximately 650m. So it’s pretty steep for most of the hike, with lots of switchbacks and at times I literally couldn’t see my friends if they were more than 6 feet away.

We weaved our way up the mountain until we reached the ridgeline along the top. It was super creepy in the conditions because the fog was getting caught up on the other side of the ridge (towards the highway), so we could see down the ridge a little bit, but the highway side was just a bank of milky white fog. It’s made weirder by the fact that when you reach the top, you get over the mountain sound barrier, so all of sudden you can hear all the traffic from down on the highway. From the peak, Mount Cheam looks down on the highway, but since we were hiking it from the back, we were totally surrounded by the backcountry. Since you can’t see any of the traffic on the way up, you feel like you’re in the middle of the wilderness, it makes for a really weird experience.

We hung out at the bottom of the ridgeline for a bit and had our lunch. We figured there was no use racing to the top when we couldn’t see anything anyways, so we took our time. The fog did eventually start to thin, so we continued on to the very top, but we never did get a view down into the Fraser Valley. We hung out for a long time taking funny pictures of the fog and messing around, but we eventually gave up on our hope of catching the view and started to head back down again. Despite all the fog and not being able to see the view, I still had a great time on the hike, which I attribute to my companions, who had just as much fun taking photos in the fog as we would have with an amazing view!

The fog continued to thin as we made our way back down again. We could see more of the mountain around us and eventually the fog got high enough that we could see all the way down to the meadow. This was my favourite part of the hike and it made for a nice, scenic walk back. Me and Lien are a bit obsessed with swimming, so we had big plans to take a dip in the little hobbit pond, formally known as Spoon Lake, at the bottom. We didn’t waste any time and both dove right into the water as soon as we got there. It’s a small waterbody and it was the middle of the summer, so it was actually really warm and we had a great time swimming around. From Spoon Lake, it’s just a short walk back out of the meadow and about a kilometre along a gravel road back to the parking lot. So even though the weather conditions weren’t the best, we still had a great time on the hike and will have to keep in on our bucket lists to return on a clearer day!

Fast forward to 2020. 2 years after our first hike to Mount Cheam, we decided to return and see if we could actually catch the view. It was Sunday morning back in mid July and it was one of the hottest days of the summer. Me and Emily spent all Saturday trying to get into any of the lakes in the lower mainland and were rejected from Buntzen and Sasamat, so we figured cute little Spoon Lake would make for a great end of hike swim the next day.

Even though I never saw the view the first time, I’d loved everything about Mount Cheam, particularly swimming in Spoon Lake, which looks like its been carved out of the hillside. So I was excited to return, this time with Emily, Seth, and Sadie in tow. We drove separately and then all piled into Brandon’s 4×4 for the 9km ride up to the trailhead. I remembered there being some pretty bad waterbars along the forestry road the first time, but I also remembered us driving up it pretty fast. I don’t know if I mis-remembered or if the road has gotten worse, but it seemed in much poorer condition then the last time. It ended up taking us over an hour just to go the 9km! I wasn’t sure how well Sadie would do on the drive. As a puppy she had really bad car sickness, but has mostly grown out of it. Fortunately she seemed to love the 4×4 road! She was running back and forth across me, Seth, and Lien in the back seat to look out the windows as we drove up.

It was a slow year for the snowpack melting, so there was still quite a bit of snow on the trail when we visited in mid-July. Fortunately we had microspikes, but since the snow was so sporadic, it’s a pain constantly taking them on and off, so we mostly went without. Sunglasses are a must with so much snow though – Emily sunburned her eyes crossing the snow fields. Walking into the meadow from the parking lot we could see there was a fair amount of snow left and we were concerned the lake might still be frozen. You can’t see it until you’re pretty much on top of it, so we were anxious as we approached, praying we’d be able to swim in it. Unfortunately, the lake was a real mess. The whole area coming down to the lake looked more or less in shambles. Since our last visit, it looked like there’d been an avalanche in the area. There’s several trees knocked down and a ton of debris coming down into the lake. It looked like there was a bunch of debris from the slide that had been knocked into the lake and was now covered with snow and dirt. We were convinced it would never be swimable again, but I’ve since seen photos of the lake on Instagram later in the summer, and it looks totally fine now, so most of it must have been snow, or the debris suck to the bottom. So we were quite sad at the time, but thrilled to see it more or less seems to have recovered.

The hike ended up being more challenging than I remembered. Like I said above, it’s a short hike, but has a lot of elevation gain. I’m not sure if I was having a bad day or if I’m just out of shape from the pandemic, but it was a challenging hike, even after completing the NCT. I’m inclined to blame it on the heat though because it was well over 30 degrees. From the lake it’s a steady climb for the rest of the hike, the main difference being that this time we got to enjoy the views! A lot of the hike is going back and forth across exposed boulder fields, some of which were still under snow, so caution is definitely advised. On our way down we saw a few people trying to take shortcuts up the boulder field, don’t do this, it’s deceivingly hard, it’s dangerous (loose rock and steeper) and it damages the landscape.

It was a slog, but we reached the top to gorgeous blue sky views of the surrounding area. Looking north you can see Highway 1 all the way out to Harrison Lake, and south is a cacophony of snowy peaked mountains all the way to the States. We sat at the very peak to enjoy our lunch before heading back down again. This was Sadie’s first major hike, so we weren’t sure what to expect, but she LOVED it. She’s definitely an outdoor dog and has a ton of energy. She thrives on steep difficult trails, so she was right in her element on Cheam. Also, she’s obsessed with the snow and loves playing it. I’m not sure if it’s just because it was so hot, but she couldn’t get enough of running around throughout the snow fields. She was totally pooped by the end of the hike though. She was all wet and muddy from running around and we didn’t want her sitting in our laps, so we made her sit on the floor in the back seat and she immediately lay down and fell asleep for most of the car ride back (a feat for Sadie who rarely settles down).

So despite the setbacks with the lake, it was still a great day! It’s a challenge to get to, but well worth the visit, my only recommendation is to leave early to avoid the crowds and go prepared for any condition because you will be a long way from help! Happy hiking everyone!