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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1321 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2008 : 4:21 PM
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A VOC group walked around Garibaldi Lake last weekend. This is a cross post from the VOC message board, so sorry if you don't understand a few references etc. I don't really have time to re-write it, but I thought I might as well share it with you as well.
More photos available in larger sizes, with better comments, here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sewebster/sets/72157606825795255/
          
Here is my version of events:
We all seemed to arrive at the parking lot at a reasonable time, around 8am. I went to pay at the machine. My goal was to be fully honest with the machine and pay it as much money as it demanded. Camping or parking was the first question. I selected camping. Then it asked me for the number of days. Initially I thought I should put in two days, since this was a Saturday/Sunday trip, but then I realized that you couldn't "camp" for one day, so this must really be asking me how many nights I was going camping for, the usual way you specify camping stays. So I entered one. Then the machine flashed up a "Get ready for payment!" message. Wow, good thing they warned me. It then listed the price, $5. Interesting. Four people (in my car) going camping was only $5. A bargain. I put in my credit card and it spit out a ticket. Looking at the ticket, it expired Sunday morning at 9am. What the heck? How was I supposed to camp and get back to the car by 9am the next day? I guess most people who camp at the lake get up and leave early or something. Oh well, I put the ticket on the dashboard.
There was an enormous line up at the outhouse, but people were impatient so when I was the only one left in line everyone else started up the trail. This seemed fine, I was sure I could catch up. Eventually my business there was complete and I started hoofing it up the trail. I was making pretty good time, but seemed tired. I think the fact that I had been out at Kirin with Jeff + family the night before and had consumed too much tea had affected my sleep. Eventually I started seeing glimpses of our party on the switchbacks above me. I finally caught up to Anne after about an hour or so.
Anne wasn't doing so well. Her feet were falling asleep as she walked. Apparently the angle of the trail was perfect for causing her some sort of problem that cut off circulation to her feet. She alternated walking backwards, stopping and moving her ankles around etc. Thankfully this problem disappeared entirely after the monotonous switchback portion of the trip.
We made it to Taylor Meadows in good time, around two hours. Beautiful views of the Tusk and Tantalus range. Stopped to refill water at a stream, it was very hot. It was difficult to keep up with the group. How did these people get so fast? Made our way over to the Cinder flats... I realized that I'd never actually been here before. Neat. We turned right off the trail and started following the creek up to the toe of the Helm Glacier. We crossed the creek a few times, which was refreshing for the feet. Just before the glacier we stopped to filter some more water from a non-silty stream. I guess in retrospect this was a little dumb, because there was tons of water running around on the glacier, but I wasn't sure if there would be. Maybe I wasn't thinking straight due to exhaustion. The group continued on without us, possibly because they didn't know that we were going to pump water, or maybe because they wanted to start putting on crampons etc.
After the water was acquired we headed off where the rest of the group had gone. Except we didn't see them. I was wondering why they didn't just head onto the glacier as it seemed that it would be easy travel (bare ice, basically no crevasses). Oh well, I guess they were hiking up the side to minimize glacier time. So we headed up the side too. I could see where you'd need to go on the glacier, it was just behind a small hill. I assume that the group was there and just out of view. It was a little surprising that they'd managed to get all that way in the brief time we pumped water, but it was a fast group. All the time I was looking around to see if they'd actually gone somewhere else. No signs of anyone.
Eventually we got to the other side of the little hill. No one. Lame. Apparently the group was somewhere else. I couldn't figure out where they had gone. The only thing I could think of was that they had gone into the hills to try and avoid the glacier entirely. That seemed really dumb though. Waited a few minutes to try to figure out what to do. Eventually I saw some people on the glacier way back at the bottom. Ack! Where had they been hiding way back down there? We'd just walked right beside the glacier all the way from the bottom. Oh well. I then stood around in view, waving around to make sure they'd seen us. No signs of being noticed. Well, they were coming up the glacier, so I guess we'd better get our glacier stuff in action too. We dropped over behind the hill and put on crampons and harnesses. I then walked out onto the glacier and waved around some more so they could see us. I could see two people wandering around off the glacier on the hills, presumably looking for us. They didn't seem to see me for some reason and then disappeared off in the opposite direction. Eventually apparently someone from the main group saw us and whistled to the searchers. We waited around on the glacier for the group to make their way up to us. They had apparently been waiting around for a while at the bottom for us, but we never showed up. Sigh. Well, glad to be a part of the gong show! As it turns out I think walking up the side of the glacier was a faster than walking on the ice, since cramponing slows things down and the rubble on the side was easy travel.
We got to snow and roped up using the cowboy 7-person rope team technique. Shockingly fast. Who were these ultra-fast no-faff moderate VOCers? We hiked up to the col left of Gentian Peak and were rewarded with amazing views. We bopped up to the top of one of Gentian's sub-summits and had a break, deciding not to go to the main peak to save time.
We headed down grassy slopes to Gentian Pass and over towards the lake. Saw two guys on a day trip. We couldn't drop down from the low point as it was too far west (would have ended up in the lake) so we climbed up the ridge a little. Eventually Christian declared a "free for all" and we started hiking down the steep, treed, slope towards Sphinx Bay and the Burton Hut. It probably took around an hour, and it was quite steep, but if I hadn't been totally exhausted it probably wouldn't have been so bad. If this were the only thing you had to do to get to the hut it would be easy to install a trail of some sort. The problem is that it takes a long time to get to this point. As we arrived at the Garbage Pile Laura was coming back up the hill! Apparently her sunglasses had been lost in the forest somewhere. Uh oh, retrieval seemed unlikely, and was indeed unsuccessful. If someone finds some sunglasses in there, well, they belong to her.
Made it to the hut just as the sun was about to set. Some people went swimming, I ended up being too focussed on getting something to eat. I had brought my usual amount of food on this trip (and I usually end up having a bit too much) but it was totally insufficient. Should have brought twice as much. Ate dinner and went to bed. The hut was approximately 84C. Anne and I had brought only one sleeping bag between the two of us, but the thought of unpacking it was comical. We were upstairs, where it was hotter, but there was a window. Any thought of not opening the window to keep the bugs out was quickly forgotten. At first the widow was only open a little, but this did nothing to combat the inferno. Eventually we got it open the whole way, and the hut slowly cooled down over the night. It got to a sleepable temperature at around 4 am or so, unfortunately only about an hour before we needed to wake up.
Rise and shine! We got up and left the hut at 6:20 am, only 20 mins after our target. We walked over to the stream and it looked deep. Matthew was sent in as a sacrifice. "Nuts deep" was the verdict. It looked precarious. The rest of us decided to head upstream a little. You don't have too much choice because there is a fairly large lake a short distance up. We found a part that looked slightly less rapid and tried it out. If you chose a good line it was only knee deep. Nice. It was a bit early in the day for my creek wading preferences though.
Ah yes, route choice. We had waded the creek to go up the Guard-Deception col route. The Sphinx Glacier looked fairly broken up, though it seemed there was a line that would go. The deciding factor was that the group was pretty low energy after a poor night's sleep and we didn't really know what was on the other side of Sphinx Pass. We went up towards the Guard col and got on the glacier. We stayed on the snow but some people donned crampons anyway since the snow was pretty hard. I'm pretty sure the glacier could have been avoided entirely on climber's right if desired.
Up at the col it was pretty windy, but got a good view of the Table. Skies were dark and ominous. Cool light on Mt Garibaldi. Very windy. The slopes down to Sentinel Bay were straightforward though a little steep in places. Mostly grassy. Lots more flowers. Crossing the creek was a little tricky, but if you were lucky only the outside of your boots got wet. It started to rain a little, but thankfully this was shortlived. At least it wasn't too hot. We hiked up next to a creek towards the ridge that extends east from the Table. Along the way we got a good view of the alternate Sphinx Pass route. The slopes down from Sphinx Pass to the Phoenix glacier seemed steep and loose rubble, mostly likely significantly worse than what we had done. Once on the glacier you could traverse high above an icefall on the Sentinel Glacier, but eventually you would have had to traverse a steep snow slope above cliffs (?). Not sure if it would have worked out with our group. It seems that our route choice was wise, at least for this time.
We hiked towards the Table, and eventually onto the lake side of the ridge, right on the edge of steep sandy slopes. It wasn't too bad, and it looked like you could have entirely eliminated any exposure on the ridge top itself, but it would have been more bushy. There was a short class 2 scramble over big blocks to get up to near the Table, to where we could descend. Neat place to be, probably not too many humans have visited here. We could have downclimbed similar blocks to a large plateau north of the Table, but it was easier to surf down scree directly to Table Meadows (west of the plateau). At a brief stop along the way Anne jettisoned her silnylon bag of snacks without noticing. This was unfortunate since we: littered, lost a silnylon stuffsac, and most importantly, lost food.
Table Meadows was nice. Still straggling along at the end of the group. We got to some stagnant water. Some people were filling nalgene's for later treatment just in case there was no more water. Since everyone was disappearing into the forest we didn't stop to pump. It didn't seem that many had stopped to get water, so we continued on. After we caught up to the group trying to negotiate a steep lava-related channel/valley we determined that there was likely no more good water source before the lake. I said that we'd have to go back for water then. Luckily we didn't have to go back all the way, there was another stagnant pool just back around the corner. When I went back a bunch of people came with me. It seems that we would all have perished. I'm not sure why we didn't stop for more water earlier. Anyway, after a long time pumping (takes a while to fill multiple liters for a whole bunch of people when no-one else brings a filter) we got back and started route finding.
We came to the same channel/valley as on the Brohm-Price trip from last year. Again we headed into the forest rather than follow the easy valley bottom towards Price. Things worked out fine, but I'm still not sure whether the valley would be less bushy. We laboured up to the col. No-one had the energy to summit price (I think we'd all done it before).
We started down the slopes to the trail back to the Battleship Islands campground. My perspective was that the trail was pretty good at finding a direct route through the highly complex lava terrain in the area. Seemed better than last year's route to me. Of course it took a long, long time because I/we were totally totally ruined by the long days.
Got back to the campground and had a rest on the dock. It was nice to be done the hard part. Feasted on some nuts from Anne V. (thanks!). Some went swimming and it looked nice, but would have required extra energy and the sun was setting. Eventually we summoned up the energy to start our descent. Very tired and sore. Eventually started going faster because it didn't seem to hurt more and would get it over sooner. The soles of my feet were killing me, shoulders not doing so well either. Got to the parking lot, yay! No ticket for an expired parking permit either.
Sweet. Circumnavigation complete. Thanks to Christian for organizing and the rest of the group for a good, if tiring, outing. There is some really great terrain relatively close to popular areas in the park but barely anyone ever goes there. You could easily do this trip in a more leisurely fashion, climbing peaks along the way, with some spectacular campsites. |
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Maple Ridge, BC
Canada
154 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2008 : 5:00 PM
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nice report Sweb.
I have never been involved with the VOC but I get the impression that the group wasn't too concerned about the slower members. This doesn't seem very considerate or safe for that matter
Any group I am part of always paces itself according to the slowest in the group |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1321 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2008 : 5:43 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by oldman
nice report Sweb.
I have never been involved with the VOC but I get the impression that the group wasn't too concerned about the slower members. This doesn't seem very considerate or safe for that matter
Any group I am part of always paces itself according to the slowest in the group
Yeah, it might have been an idea for us to re-group more often, but we were mostly at similar experience levels, so it wasn't really an issue of less experienced/slower people being abandoned. Usually I'm one of the faster hikers, guess I was off my game this weekend. |
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 Peak bagging, bushwhacking, zamboni driving, snowshoeing, self portrait artist, and speed demon who loves to hang out on Mt. Seymour
3995 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2008 : 7:50 PM
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Interesting trip and a cool looking vantage of The Table.
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Fast hikin, carrot chompin, always grinnin, gear scatterin recipient of the Theta Lake manouver
Burnaby
2039 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2008 : 8:27 PM
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Excellent TR. Congratulations to you all.
Cool pictures! |
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 | Dru
Mountain Grammar Police
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Sardonic sandbagging scoundrel, Cascade Climbers lobotomized spraymeister, space blanket flyer, new millennium vulgarian betaboy and friend to all squids
Climbing, a mountain
Canada
∞ Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 10:10 AM
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| That's a great weekend no matter how you slice it. |
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Burnaby, BC
Canada
32 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 10:11 AM
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"Four people (in my car) going camping was only $5"
NO NO. It should be $20 (4ppl*5): Backcountry Camping Fee: $5.00 per person / night, for all persons 13 years of age or older (includes parking and payable in the parking lot by self-registration envelope system)
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/garibald.html
Good trip report, and nice photo. I like this photo espically "Scrambling up to the Table"
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1321 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 10:25 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Huggies
"Four people (in my car) going camping was only $5"
NO NO. It should be $20 (4ppl*5): Backcountry Camping Fee: $5.00 per person / night, for all persons 13 years of age or older (includes parking and payable in the parking lot by self-registration envelope system)
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/garibald.html
Actually yeah, I understand this, and was being somewhat sarcastic. I was complaining about the terrible machine they have there for you to pay with. Essentially I tried to tell them what we were doing, expecting it to charge me $20, but it charged me $5 instead, and only gave a parking permit till early the next morning! They need to fix their machines. Or at least install some good directions next to the machine that spell things out, so you know how to deal with it. I didn't have time to mess around with the machine, just wanted to go hiking. |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1422 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 2:37 PM
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| $5 per person per night is the fee for the campgrounds. It's not entirely clear what you are supposed to do if you are staying overnight, but not in a campground (i.e. at Sphinx Hut or somewhere entirely different like half way along the Garibaldi Neve). Usually I just pay the day use parking fee x2. |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1321 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 2:39 PM
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| There are a whole bunch of signs that say you can't even camp anywhere other than the Taylor Meadows or Battleship Islands campgrounds, so presumably what we did was totally illegal, as is doing the Neve or staying anywhere else in the massive Garibaldi Park. |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
1422 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2008 : 3:06 PM
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| My impression from talking to a few rangers was that it was ok to camp anywhere that was more than a few km beyond the trail system, but I have not idea what fees are supposed to apply. |
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Garibaldi Lake Circumnavigation, Aug. 16-17, 2008
