Golden Ears

Well once again it has been a long time since I last blogged. But for the sake of documenting my life in chronological order, I will step a few weeks back in order to fill you in on a hike that Reg and I did. For the first time for both of us, we conquered Golden Ears mountain.

It is 12 km ONE WAY. I did not train for this trip and I was dreadfully out of shape, but I made it, albeit barely. Positives: Beautiful (although hazey) view of the entire Fraser Valley, good view of Pitt Lake, and a feeling of accomplishment. Negatives: Relentless black flies (even on top), and a terrible trail. I have never called a trail "stupid", but this was a stupid trail. It is 12 kilometers, and it didn't need to be. The first 3 km are completely flat! In another part the trail goes up really steep up the mountainside, only to go down again right away. What's with that? Then there were the rocks. It's like they built half the trail on an old creekbed, with big loose rocks--too small to step on but too big to ignore. Very hard to hike.

There is an "emergency" cabin at the foot of the glacier, about 1 km from the top. It sleeps 8...cozy people. And they had an outhouse. Pretty fancy for being way up in the mountains. The cabin was occupied that night so we tented, which was fine. It was the hottest weekend of the year (35C or so in the valley) so it was really nice, not really cold at all.

We summited in the morning and then headed back down. That was the first time hiking that I was actually concerned that I wouldn't make it down. My legs hadn't recovered from the hike up, and we didn't bring as much food as we should have, so I didn't have anything to get my strength back. We had some Gator Aid mix and I was so desperate for energy that I ate a couple of spoonfuls of raw powder. That might have been the energy I needed to get down. The trail is so steep that you can't go down any faster than you came up, because you have to be so careful of your footing. I was so exhausted and so thankful to see my car after that hike.
(The picture above on the right is of the cabin, the outhouse and our tent)

As a footnote, I would just like to say that I will never do that hike again, unless
a) they redo the trail so there are no creekbeds and
b) they make the trail half as long (and they can, they SO can).