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Day Hike in BC(56K caution, lotsa pics)

6

6shooter

Joined
Sep 12, 2009
Messages
1,268
The weather was great today, so I decided to get out with my dog and hike up to a lake on a mountain near my house. I got to the trail at about 1:30pm, much later than I had planned, but I guess you gotta roll with it.


The marker at the start of the trail, it estimates about 2 hours time to the lake, with a total 700m elevation gain. I figure the highest point is probably about 725-750m, as you pass a 700m marker and continue up a little ways, before descending a little bit before the lake.
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A cool cliff a few minutes into the trail, there's lots of these around. I need to remember to take pics from another place I head up fairly often, it's really neat.
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A little bit past the halfway point, a rocky area where I stopped to sit and take a drink.
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Further on, there's a lookout point called the South View Lookout Loop. For any Vancouverites, if you look at the very tip of the tree to the right in the foreground, in the background is the Lions Gate Bridge.
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Another pic from the lookout:
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I saw a few different types of mushrooms, but I know absolutely nothing about plant recognition.
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The 2 hour estimate at the beginning of the trail was pretty accurate, it took me about 2:20 to get to the lake, but I stopped quite a bit to rest and take pictures. The trail up was way harder then I expected, it was fairly steep uphill pretty much the whole way, except probably the last 15 minutes to the lake, where it flattened out. I was definitely happy to see the lake:
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Some of the surrounding area:
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My hiking partner, Kya:
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Unfortunately, I got off to a way later start than I had planned, so I didn't have time for any knife shenannigans, as day light was going to become an issue soon. But, I did get the obligatory knife pic. My measely collection as of now, a Gerber LMFII, and Kabar/Dozier Folding Hunter:
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On the way out from the lake, I found a fresh track, I believe it's a bear track. It measured about 4x4".
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Next to my Kabar folder, for reference. My dog had just stepped near the top of the track, sqishing it down a little bit:
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I was disappointed about not being able to spend more time at the lake, but hey, that's what you get for sleeping in:rolleyes:. We had to leave to make sure we didn't end up hiking down by headlight, not something I'd really wanna do.

On the way down, there was this cool tree.
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As I got close to the start of the trail, I still had enough daylight left to stop and play around a little bit. I found a decent size log, maybe 3-4" in diameter, and had at it. The wood was quite hard on the outside, but not so much on the inside, so it ended up just breaking after chopping for a bit.
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And of course, some batoning:
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The Gerber LMF is obviously far from a dedicated chopper, but it'll work if you need it to. The handle allows you to hold it closer to the bottom while still maintaining a solid grip, to get more momentum into your chops.

About 20 minutes more down the trail, and we were back at the truck. (It wasn't as dark as it appears in this pic, I just had to use the flash to get a non-blurry shot).
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All in all a day well spent, I'm glad I know what to expect for next time, rather than spending the whole way up thinking "It's gotta be soon, it's gotta be soon...". It took about 5 hours from start to finish, including stops and walking around the lake a little bit.


A note, after the rather leg-intensive way up, my legs were pretty worn out, and walking around the lake allowed them to cool off. Very soon after starting down, I started to get some brutal leg cramps, particularily in the quads. It was getting to point that they were becoming debilitating, and I wasn't going to be able to continue without getting them to loosen up. I had some of those two-pack handwarmers in my bag, so I used them as "heat pads". I opened a roll of Kerlix from my FAK, went once around my leg(as I've read you aren't supposed to put the heat pads directly on your skin), placed the handwarmer over the affected area, went a couple more times around with the Kerlix, and taped it up tight with duct tape.

After a couple minutes of letting the handwarmers heat up, and getting the blood flowing through the muscles again, this worked spectacularily, with a couple of small things that would've made it better. First of all, put a layer of tape directly over the handwarmer, to hold it in place on the Kerlix(or whatever it is you're using to wrap it). The handwarmers have a tendency to slide out from the wrapping. Also, the entire wrap started to slide down my leg over my knee a couple of times. This was quickly fixed buy re-taping it extra tight, but it would hold in place much better if you taped directly to your leg, rather than just over the Kerlix like I'd done(I wasn't about to go through the pain of ripping duct tape off my hairy ass legs). I thought about it, if you have a shave-sharp knife, you could shave a small patch of hair off and tape there to hold it up, which would save some pain when removing it.
 
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Yeah that's the one, up Burke mountain. Parked on Quarry Rd and went from there. I'd like to get up to check out Dennet(Google spelt it wrong) Lake one day as well.


I'll be there this weekend for sure, assuming I can feel my legs by then:p
 
i love camping at munro. havent been there in a while. you can also catch some small-medium sized brookies in that lake. all wild no stockies in there. they taste pretty good actually. thanks for the pics.


also, great truck :D
 
Yeah, I'd love to spend a night out there before the weather gets too cold, but we'll see. I was wondering about fishing as well, I assume you do it with a fly rod?



The trucks great, but it's due for a trip to the shop when I get some cashflow going.

:EDIT: CID25, check out the Canadian section in the regional forums about local meetups, jca told me about em a few days ago.
 
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