Squamish, Shannon Falls, Stawamus Chief Trails & Alice Lakes

The bed situation in our camper van is going to take some getting used to. It’s either having the ceiling about 3 inches from your face or the significant risk of falling out, Which may not seem bad but it’s about 5 feet to fall. So not an ideal wake up. After both waking up at about 3am and not able to get back to sleep we were both super excited to climb a mountain. But before that excitement we had our favourite task of flushing the waste pipe. We learnt a very good lesson that morning. Wear rubber gloves. I won’t say any more... Shannon falls wa s epic, it’s huge, many tourists taking selfies at the viewpoints. It’s a really short walk from the car park so really no reason to not go have a gander. The Stawamus Chief Trails on the other hand are not a short walk. It’s only about 1.5km but the elevation gain is almost 600m so there are many many steep steps, ladders, chains to abseil up and relatively steep rock faces to overcome before getting to the top. Which is definitely worth it because the views across Squamish are amazing. We also got to meet Colin the chipmunk. Don’t know if he actually was a chipmunk but let’s say it was. Very cute.

The way back down was much more enjoyable than the trek up, on which my face was just ridiculously sweaty, must have looked like I’d been swimming, and very satisfying watching people struggle up the other way. From there we jumped back in the camper, which we really need to name at some point, to head to our next campsite at Alice Lakes. 

Alice Lakes is essentially a forest with 4 lakes, the largest of which is Alice Lake where there’s lots of activities to do and were some very noisy kids going canoeing. Was a bit cold for that so we didn’t partake. The showers there were an absolute delight. A review I read somewhere said they were ‘too hot’, which is ridiculous because they’re exactly what you need after a long day of hiking, we’re even hot enough for Amelia. We opted for a hook up site (can connect to electricity so we don’t run down the battery) because it was only $8 more expensive than not, and then we could charge every device possible before slumming it the next night.