Lion’s Share of the Hiking

We were supposed to be doing a famous multi-day hike in the Rockies this week, but it was cancelled as the trail is closed. It was flooded earlier in the year, thanks to excessive snow/glacial melt during the heat wave, and is still being repaired. We were actually happy to cancel our trip as there is still so much to see around here, without having to drive 8 hours first!

On Saturday we finally made it up to the Lions – having admired their twin bumps from our old apartment windows for several months.

It was one of the longest days of walking we have done, we left the car park at Cypress ski hill at 8.20am and didn’t get back until 6pm. The Howe Sound Crest Trail is a popular 30km route along the coastal mountains. Lots of people complete it in a couple of days, camping along the way. We didn’t envy everyone with their huge backpacks as there are several mountains to climb along the way.

The first mountain is St Mark’s summit, which is very popular as a trip by itself. The trail didn’t seem too busy, but once we got to the top there were crowds of people! We didn’t hang around too long here.

After St Marks, you go down a little bit and then up lots more to Unnecessary Mountain, which was literally named because it is in the way when you are trying to get to the Lions. It makes the climb up much easier if you say “urgh this is so unnecessary” lots of times. The top was actually one of our favourites so far though, gorgeous views (between the clouds) and lots of rocks to climb over.

Unnecessary Mountain actually has three peaks. After going over those, there was another decent and ascent to get up to the base of the West Lion. The East Lion is in the watershed (where Vancouver’s drinking water comes from) so you are not allowed to go there. Even if you were allowed – it would require a lot of technical skill and probably some rope.

Reaching the actual summit of the West Lion is not at all easy either. It involves climbing up a near vertical rock face with a great deal of exposure. Sadly, several people have died attempting it, including someone in the last few weeks. Although we saw some people successfully make it up (see if you can spot them in picture #2), we knew we didn’t have the skills or experience, so were perfectly happy to admire the summit from a safe distance!

The clouds lifted quite a lot on the way back, which helped with moral after we remembered we now had to climb over all the Unnecessary peaks again, followed by St Marks – which was even busier once we got back there.

The next day, some friends invited us to climb a very popular peak about 2 hours from Vancouver, Cheam Peak. To access the trail, you have to tackle a notoriously bad forest service road with huge ditches and many many pot holes to cross – their 4×4 and driving skills were easily up to the job. It was obvious straight away why it is so popular. There were views the whole way up and tonnes of wild blueberries to eat. At the top, in one direction you can see mountains for miles into the USA. In the other direction you can see tiny farms, buildings and cars in the populated Fraser Valley. We spend a good few hours on the mountain, even though it is only a short walk. By the time we were going down, there were hundreds of people coming up. The drive back done was more challenging due to line of cars parked at the edge of the road.

We hope this was enough mountain pictures for you. Monday is “Labour Day” and we don’t have to labour, so we will probably go camping somewhere this weekend. The weather is probably going to betray us… so we aren’t committing yet.