Brandywine Meadows

The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began… Lucky we’ve got friends who have a 4×4!

We did some cheating cheapskate camping last weekend. Brandywine Meadows is about 1400m above sea level. If you have a normal car, you have to walk up from 800m, but we were able to drive most of the way and only had to walk for 30 minutes on fairly level ground before arriving.

The meadows are a popular spot for camping. They are in “Crown Land”, which means you are free to camp for up to 14 consecutive days. There are lots of backcountry camp sites in the BC parks which have level areas, outhouses and bear caches, but you have to book them a long way in advance. This free option is great, as long as you remember to bring a poop-trowel and a bear-proof method to store your food.

We arrived pretty early on Saturday (as we had barely had to walk at all) and bagsied a great spot next to the glacial river. We set up the tents and had some well deserved lunch before thinking about doing some proper walking.

Our friends Tom and Maria had recommended camping here and then walking/scrambling up to Brandywine Mountain. They had done it a couple of years back with a group of their friends. After the meadows, there was no trail as such, just some steep rocky and scree-y slopes to make your way up to a ridge. The views from here where amazing, so most people were calling it a day and heading back down at that point. We weren’t tired yet, so we followed the ridge and did a bit of minor rock climbing to get to the top.

At the summit, we found a tube with a visitor book in. By some magical coincidence, it was already open to the page with Tom and Maria’s entry from their trip a couple of years ago!

On the way back down the mountain, Rosie was getting a bit over confident and thought she was more mountain goat than meadow cow. She was put back in her place when she slipped on a dusty patch and bruised her bum AGAIN. She also hurt two of her fingers which got caught up in the hiking pole. Luckily we had glacial-river-cooled wine back at camp to take her mind of it, it was partially successful in stopping the moaning.

We thoroughly enjoyed our evening back at camp. There didn’t seem to be many bugs which was a miracle and we saw the tail end of the perseid meteor shower through the mesh of our tent (it was hot enough to sleep without the fly sheet). Definitely worth the inconvenient poop situation!

Here are some bonus panorama shots:

Ollie went to Whistler bike park on Thursday. He reported back to Rosie…’It was knarly. Thom and I hucked a 20 foot drop, pulled off a loose kicker and were pretty pinned on a rad trail. His wheel is tacoed.’

Hopefully you’ve forgotten about the video of our new apartment by now…