Garibaldi Lake
After leaving Alice Lakes behind us we headed over to Garibaldi Lake for a short walk to see another bit of scenery, without knowing what we had let ourselves in for. We obviously missed the turnoff, to maintain our streak of taking a wrong turn every day. This time it was definitely not our fault, the signs were just very wrong and no signs when you actually get there. Good one Canada. I digress. Once we got there we read that it’s a 18km walk with a pretty steep gradient, but fine, we climbed a mountain yesterday, how hard could this be?
Not to give anything away to anyone that wants to do the hike, but the first 6km is a slog. It’s a relatively steep path that winds between beautiful forest with no view out at all. Especially demoralising when you trudge through the clouds and they miss out certain km markers to really throw you off how far you’ve made it. Once again, my ridiculously sweaty face stuck again. At least this time I could unconvincingly blame the condensation from the fog. We stopped for a spot of lunch at the ‘6km junction’. Basically the spot you reach and then evaluate your life decisions that led to you going on this walk (especially the speed that Amelia powers up hills at).
However persevere and you finally get a taste of what’s to come. When the clouds parted we could finally visualise how far we had climbed. Then a pearly blue lake appears through the trees, which we did think was the actual lake, which could have been slightly disappointing, but no that’s the smaller brother of the main Garibaldi Lake. However when you finally scramble down that last path you get to a genuinely stunning clear blue lake, with a backdrop of fairytale mountains. People hike up here to camp which, when I mentioned how amazing that would be to Amelia she immediately shot me down. There are also some absolutely grim toilets there, just to balance out that really nice picture we we’re painting.
Descending was far less arduous and we got back to the camper (now named Kevin) before dark (Amelia’s scared bears will come out and eat us in the dark) and headed of to Cal Cheak Campsite where I couldn’t sleep because of nightmares of the Kevin (the camper) being washed away by the river next to us. Good times.
Not to give anything away to anyone that wants to do the hike, but the first 6km is a slog. It’s a relatively steep path that winds between beautiful forest with no view out at all. Especially demoralising when you trudge through the clouds and they miss out certain km markers to really throw you off how far you’ve made it. Once again, my ridiculously sweaty face stuck again. At least this time I could unconvincingly blame the condensation from the fog. We stopped for a spot of lunch at the ‘6km junction’. Basically the spot you reach and then evaluate your life decisions that led to you going on this walk (especially the speed that Amelia powers up hills at).
However persevere and you finally get a taste of what’s to come. When the clouds parted we could finally visualise how far we had climbed. Then a pearly blue lake appears through the trees, which we did think was the actual lake, which could have been slightly disappointing, but no that’s the smaller brother of the main Garibaldi Lake. However when you finally scramble down that last path you get to a genuinely stunning clear blue lake, with a backdrop of fairytale mountains. People hike up here to camp which, when I mentioned how amazing that would be to Amelia she immediately shot me down. There are also some absolutely grim toilets there, just to balance out that really nice picture we we’re painting.
Descending was far less arduous and we got back to the camper (now named Kevin) before dark (Amelia’s scared bears will come out and eat us in the dark) and headed of to Cal Cheak Campsite where I couldn’t sleep because of nightmares of the Kevin (the camper) being washed away by the river next to us. Good times.
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