Garibaldi Adventure
I am beside one of the many very impressive cedar trees along the trail to the bridge across the Cheakamus River.
Wednesday, September 27th, 2017
Ted and I drove up the Sea to Sky highway from Vancouver to Garibaldi Provincial Park. It was a beautiful clear sunny day, and no doubt the park would be at its best. We had done one previous expedition into Garibaldi many years ago. On that occasion we had gone up Rubble Creek on the other side of the park, and camped in the Taylor Meadows campground. We had had a rude welcome there, as immediately after our arrival the sunny sky had suddenly darkened and a hailstorm had swept through the area. We hoped we would not have a repeat of that on this trip, although rain was forecast for our third day in the park. In fact, we were starting our trip a day earlier than planned so that we would have at least two sunny days before the rain started.
I have always found the name “Garibaldi” intriguing. The man after whom the mountain that dominates the park was named in 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi, had nothing to do with the park. Garibaldi was an Italian military and political leader who had successfully unified Italy that same year. Of interest, the captain of the Royal Navy survey ship that chose the name was George Henry Richards, who presumably was not Italian.
As usual, the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler was impressive – a modern road built were no road should be along the rugged coast of British Columbia. It was not four lanes all the way, as in places the terrain was too constricting to allow for that, even with modern heavy road-building equipment. Much of it was four lanes, however, and that was impressive.
We turned off on the Cheakamus Lake road just a few kilometers before Whistler. After about 6 kilometers on this relatively good but narrow gravel road which fortunately provided no great challenges for our low-slung Toyota Prius, we reached the parking lot.
The parking lot already held many cars, trucks, and SUVs, and two large groups of boisterous young people. Even though the internet booking service just the night before had indicated that no one else had reserved a campsite at Helm Creek, our dream of having the entire Helm Creek Campground to ourselves quickly evaporated, Perhaps things had changed dramatically in the meantime. As things turned out, though, our fears of crowds at our campground were unfounded.
Our plan was to hike up to Helm Creek Campground where we would spend our first night. On our second day we would do a day trip to Panorama ridge, and return to the same campground. On our third day, we would hike back to the parking lot, with a side trip to Cheakamus Lake Campground.
We had lunch on a large flat rock in front of our car. Ted had brought along a huge chicken leg for me complete with thigh from what must have been a monstrous chicken. With that, my own large cheese and turkey breast sandwich and an apple, I left for the trail well-fortified. I was ready to ascend 1,000 meters of vertical.
The trail led us downhill through a magnificent cedar, hemlock, and Douglas fir forest for one and a half kilometers to a steel footbridge across the Cheakamus River. We turned right and crossed the bridge, rather than continue on straight ahead to Cheakamus Lake. Cheakamus Lake had two campgrounds which were much closer than our destination, Helm Creek, but our destination would be much more interesting.
We began to hear a creek to our right, and eventually it came into view through the forest. This was, presumably, Helm Creek. The trees became gradually smaller as we ascended. Just when we thought the trail would never end, we burst out of the stubby forest into a large clearing and saw the food lockers, the outhouses, and the tent platforms of our destination. We had come 9 kilometers from the parking lot, and had climbed 1,000 meters.
It was a big campground with a large number of very sturdy wooden tent platforms. It was quite dry, but I suspect this area is often very wet and marshy, or else the Parks service would not have gone to all the effort and expense of building so many wooden tent platforms. When we arrived, there was only one tent set up, but while we were storing our food in one of the lockers, another group of two appeared and began to set up camp. There would only be three tents in the campground that night.
We set up our tent on our chosen platform with some difficulty, because of course we could not use the usual tent pegs on the platform. Eventually, with the aid of some wooden pegs, branches, and rocks, we thought our tent was secure, and went to filter water. We crossed two small creeks not far from our tent, and then came to a fine third creek, likely Helm Creek, where we filled up every water container we had. Our plan was to have enough to last for the next two days.
Our last chore of the day was to have dinner. We chose an empty tent platform, and had quite a feast with a zucchini loaf appetizer, large bowls of soup, hamburgers with cheese and tomatoes in huge Kaiser Buns, and finally a night cap of hot chocolate. It was very dark before we finished.
We returned to our tent after the usual tooth brushing and face washing. I wrote in my journal for a while with the aid of my headlamp even though it had become very cold. Ted turned his headlamp off and did some star gazing. Polaris was very visible to the north, but the half-moon was quite bright so conditions were less than ideal to study the stars even though it was a clear night.
Just before we went into our tent to turn in, we saw two headlamps coming down the trail from above. We at first assumed the bearers of those lamps were camped in our campground, but to our surprise they continued on down the mountain. They were obviously going to do the entire 9 kilometers back to the parking lot in the darkness of the night.
End of Day 1
