Garibaldi Lake, Panorama Ridge — Saturday, Jul. 15, 2006

After getting home from Saturday's hike on Church Mountain, I remained restless and around 2AM, I left on a whim, headed for British Colombia and the Garibaldi Provincial Park. I was really in the mood for something new. After a little nosing around, I eventually made it to the trailhead between Squamish and Whistler a little before 5AM, just as it was light enough to see there in the valley. This area is interesting for many reasons, the excellent scenery of course, but the geology seems really peculiar to me. Striking an imposing presence during the early part of the hike is a feature called ""The Barrier"" which I guess formed from a lava flow that ran into a glacier and cooled, resulting in its face being unnaturally steep, and therefore unstable. Very odd looking I must say. Still this lava dam holds in Garibaldi Lake which is very unusually large for a subalpine lake, and is around 1000 feet deep. Also, is this the Cascades or the BC Coast Range? Geographically, it's the coast range since it's north of the Fraser River, but geologically, the volcanism around Garibaldi is very closely related to the Cascade stratovolcanoes. Anyway, the trails in this part of the provincial park get lots of use and are excellently maintained. Everywhere that I could see was in full summer shape (bridges in, blowdowns removed) except for my route to Panorama Ridge, which required a little bit of snow travel. That famous view from the ridge is why I made the trip out there in the first place. It wasn't particularly easy to get up there though since, in my rush to get out of the house, I forgot both my sunscreen and sunglasses, as well as my bug spray and any means for water purification. For this reason I had been hauling ass all morning to try and get up and down before the sun was really high in the sky baking me and making me snowblind. As far as I can tell so far, it worked. Hopefully I don't come down with giardia in a couple weeks... The view from the ridge did live up to expectations, although if I really wanted to do any serious photography up there I would have to camp at Taylor Meadows and get a super early start. I will definetely say that there's lots of glacier ice remaining up in BC. The way down was uneventful though I was definetely feeling the 28 miles I had hiked since I last slept. The drive home was a little nerve racking, I was really too tired. This area is definetely highly recommended by me, particularly on a week day (today was a little crowded for my tastes). I don't know about everybody else, but when considering where to go on a trip, I don't usually think about BC, but there's really no reason not to, especially living here in Bellingham. Now my binge continues... My days off are over, and I have to return to ""work"" tomorrow, heading up to Goat Flats for a helicopter survey Monday and Tuesday, then another one up on Ptarmigan Ridge on Baker on Wednesday - Friday. I'm going to be beat by the weekend...