Backcountry Extraordinaire!

For our second semi-annual long camping trip, Tim flew in from Ontario for a slice of normal BC life to make up for the tedium of living back east. After a dinner with a couple too many bottles of wine, we got up, packed, and were out the door by 8:30 towards the newly repaired sea-to-sky highway on our way to Downton Lake north of Pemberton.

Lucky for us the highway was repaired, or the trip would have been close to an hour and a half longer! (You may have heard about the rockslide which closed the Sea to Sky a couple of weeks ago for several days).

Because we were going on an 8 night trip, we had quite a bit of gear, so Tim had to share the back seat with Maggie and loads of misc. junk. It didn't bother Sarah or I though.

Maggie got to stick her head out of the window to get away from Tim's fetid odour. It also made for a cute picture. The drive to the trailhead was some 4.5hrs, with the last little bit on a pretty good logging road. There was one short bit where the car almost fell down a 20-30 ft cliff, but I avoided disaster with some fancy driving and a girlish scream.

Haha, I believe there was a girlish scream! I was quite worried myself as the car really seemed to be sliding over the edge. We would have died for sure! That's why on the way back, we all got out and left Remi to his doom.

The trail to Downton Lake is nice and easy, going through some nice alpine meadows and through some nice marmot colonies. Maggie ran around terrorizing them like a quadrupedal godzilla. It was fun to watch. We saw a few that somehow avoided getting mauled by the dog, but we could frequently hear their warning whistles.

She never even got close to catching one, but that didn't discourage her. We couldn't keep track of her! Even when you thought she was exhausted, she'd still tear around like crazy. The marmouts were awesome.

Here was our base camp. It was the nicest place I'd even set the tent. The lake was crystal clear and freezing, but we dipped in a little anyways. The mountains behinds were beautiful, but the rocks were too loose for safe scrambling.

Was that the nicest place you've ever pitched a tent, Remi? I wasn't sure, you only told us about 300 times... Anyway, amazing campsite!

That day we set off to explore the alpine and scout out a route to the summit of Downton Creek Peak. It was nice to walk around and be virtually alone in the alpine. The last hikers were leaving just as we arrived. And they were way across the meadow! We were pretty much alone here the entire time.

Some flying insect or something that we saw on the trail. Pretty neat. It's clearly a moth of some kind. Some zoologist you are!

Tim and I talking about a route for the following day as though we knew what we were doing. We later took the wrong route towards the summit, so Sarah and I were forced to abandon the attempt, partly because I was terrified, and partly because we were worried about the dog on the talus. If we'd taken the correct route (which Remi happened to be carrying as a map in his pocket) we totally could have summited.

I think I look like my dad in this picture. We took over 400 pictures. I love this photo too ;)

Trying to figure out exactly how much bushwacking we'll have to do in order to get back to camp. Turns out it wasn't too much, but Sarah's legs got wrecked, as usual. We have another picture like this from the last time the four of us (Maggie included of course!) hiked together at Albert Edward on Vancouver Island.

A villous cinquefoil, I think. There were lots of these. Then a handful of panoramics.

The meadows. Downton Creek Peak is the flattish one on the right.

Looking down towards the meadow. Our camp was at the foot of the talus slope on the right.

The meadow from the other side, with Downton on the right. Panoramics are the only way to appreciate the magnitude of what we get to see.

Back at camp for some pasta dinner. It turned out a little chewy because Tim put in way too much powdered milk. On the plus side, Maggie didn't mind eating leftovers. And she had powdered milk on her face for two days after... Bear bait!

We went to bed reasonably early, and woke up early when the sun came up over the mountains onto the tents. As we were around 2000m in elevation, it got chilly at night, and we woke up to frost. But it warmed up quickly. Yeah, I think within 30 minutes of this picture being taken, we were all scorching.

It wasn't that bad. Tim is a wimp. You'd figure after a year in the arctic he could handle a slight frost.

Our little lake was perfectly smooth in the morning, so Sarah got a nice shot of it.

In the meadows on the way to the peak. Tim and I chose the wrong route to the summit, so Sarah and I only made it slightly higher than that col, but Tim went right to the summit.

A tiny lake (actually named "Tiny Lake") below the talus slope to the summit.

On the way up. Don't be fooled, talus is horrid to walk on. It slides all over, offers no grip, at would be generally unpleasant to fall down. This picture is at the col. Thank god for my poles or else I'd be dead - I'm not joking.

Tim on the false summit. The real summit is behind him, but we couldn't take a picture of that.

Sarah wondering why I drag her to these places and thinking up new ways to tell me she doesn't think we should do this sort of thing.

Tim paying his respects to the mountain.

On the way down. We had to choose between hard unstable rocks or steep and slippery snow. It's a toss up, but I prefer the snow.

Since we hadn't yet had enough, we took off across the meadows towards a ridge to see if we could get to the top. We didn't. I don't think we even got halfway ;)

Back at camp.

Tim, the following morning. This must have been around 6:30 or 7:00 before the flies came out. It was a nice time of day. It was the frickin' mosquitos that got me! Tim counted and I had SIXTEEN (yes, 16) bug bites on one shoulder!

We decided to take a "rest" day, and just play in the area around camp. We had a game of scrabble on that rock.

Tim has an underwater camera, so I tried a few pictures. This was the best.

Tim and I climed the talus slope above our camp (at the lake below) to see if we could push big rocks down (more on that later). There were some pretty good views.

Tim crawled under some ice to see what it was like. Kinda neat. Later that day we met Evan in Pemberton. With all of us packed in the car and some fresh food for the days to come, we drove off and found a nice site on the Lillooet River. However, as soon as we had our tents set up, we noticed the water rising pretty quickly, so we packed all of our stuff and took off towards our next trailhead. (I wasn't overly sad to leave, although it was beautiful... When we first arrived we had to cross part of the river and I sunk up to my thighs!! I was terrified I was going to drown! Evan laughed at me.) We ended up camping on the side of a logging road. It wasn't scenic, so there are no pictures here. On the plus side, we got up early and made the trailhead in no time and with only minimal wear on the car. Speaking of which, it was roughly at this point that the trunk decided to stop working for no apparent reason. The car must have realized it's a GM. On a side note, some may think that the reason that GM is losing buckets of money is because they failed to invest in fuel efficient cars, but this is not the case. It's because they can't even figure out how to build a functioning latch for a trunk. If they can't do that, how are they going to figure out how to build an internal combustion engine, let alone a hybrid engine?

On the next trail towards Semaphore Lakes.

There was a glacier immediately above our camp (i.e. a few hundred meters up talus slopes), so we went to check it out.

The next day we decided to go on a Man-venture (Sarah and Maggie held down the fort) up Face Mountain, seen behind us.

We stopped early on to refill with some glacier fresh water in the morain below the mountains.

Evan climbing the snow fields.

After an hour or so we came to this steep snow cliff. It was no match for my ice axe. Evan and Tim had trouble.

This was the high point of the walk, we missed the summit due to some seriously sketchy traverses we didn't want to risk (see next picture)

We knew when we pulled out the cheap nylon rope that we were in way over our heads. We turned around at this spot.

Because the forecast for Saturday was rain, we decided to stick around camp for Friday and attempt to ascend Locomotive Mt on Saturday.It was a slow, but relaxing day. I got to ID all the plants in the area, and even collect a few that actually survived the trip back home.

Tim and Evan got bored and distracted themselves in whatever way they could. While they re-enacted scenes from a cowboy movie that won an oscar or two, Sarah and I took off for a nearby hill to see if we could get some nice views.

There's some neat dead trees in the alpine.

This was the last we'd see of Face Mt.

Ditto Locomotive.

This was Locomotive in the morning. Because I was slightly annoyed at having missed our only chance at the mountain the day before, I decided to attempt to get at least to the ridge where we had spotted a couple of lakes on our Face Mt attempt. I was a bit surprised when everyone else decided to come along, but who was I to complain.

Here we are traversing towards the lakes.

Back at camp we split our time between hibernating in our tents and shivering below the tarp as driving rain and hail kept us from playing around camp.

And here we are on our way out. The rain let up long enough for us to get our gear stowed before everything got soaked.

Below are some of the videos taken during the trip. I think it would be best to say that viewer discretion is advised, especially when ice cold water is involved.