Garibaldi Adventure – Part 4
I am trying to keep things dry while breaking camp in the rain.
Friday, September 29th, 2017
At 5:30 AM it began to rain. There was no mistaking the drumming on our tent fly. The weather forecast had unfortunately been deadly accurate. We dozed for an hour or two in our tent, hoping it would stop, but eventually resigned ourselves to our fate, and got up to break camp in the rain.
It did let up somewhat from time to time, so the morning was not all that bad. In any case, eventually all was packed and we were on the trail down the mountain.
As we left, we walked by all the campground facilities, including the food hanging cables. Oddly enough, even though the campground was completely empty, there was still a bag hanging on one of the cables. Perhaps it had been forgotten by the other campers as they hastily exited in the rain.
Despite the heavy investment in tent platforms at the Helm Creek campground, the facilities were quite meagre. There were no tables to cook and eat on, so I suspect many campers would cook on their tent platforms. In bear country, cooking this near one’s tent is not really advisable. In an area with frequent rain, it would also have been great to have at least one roofed shelter, but that was also not available.
At the trail junction just beyond the bridge over the Cheakamus River, we turned right towards Cheakamus Lake. After a kilometer or so, we came to a nice beach near two campsites, and had a lunch. There were several campsites strung out along the lake shore, but only a few, often with two close together, and in general the Cheakamus Lake campground was a disappointment. There was an outhouse, and some food storage facilities, but no tables. The Lake itself was beautiful with heavily forested shores.
After lunch, we retraced our steps back along the Cheakamus River to the trail junction by the bridge, and then continued on without crossing the bridge to the parking lot. At this point we had only a kilometer and a half to go.
Our day had been uneventful. We had met one group of hikers near Cheakamus Lake. Many of them seemed to be foreign, and it likely was a commercial group with a guide. We had also met a family with young children who seemed very concerned about bears. Fortunately we were able to reassure them that the only bear we had seen was many miles away up the mountain. However, we had quite an unexpected surprise related to animals when we reached our car.
We had placed some food in the “secret compartment” of my Toyota Prius so that would-be thieves would not be attracted to any visible bags in the car. This is a small area under the floor of the cargo area, just above where the spare tire is kept. I had always believed that this was a tight reliable storage area, but we now found that mice had found our food here, and made quite a mess. There was an opening in the back wall of the compartment, meant to allow insertion of one’s finger to lift it up in order to access the spare tire. This hole would usually be partially closed by a small panel which snapped in place. This panel was not in place, but even if it had been, I suspect mice could still have entered. Or perhaps the mice had pushed it off in the first place. I vowed to write Toyota about their design failure.
The acrobatics of the mice were impressive. They had obviously smelled the food despite multiple plastic wrappings and zip locks, and moved along the underside of the car to the only small opening into the storage compartment.
Despite our mouse problem, it had been a very successful trip. We would be in Vancouver by dinnertime, so we would not miss the destroyed food too much. We drove back to the city and civilization with many happy memories.