HIKING GOLDEN EARS PART 3
The shadow of the Golden Ears Peak was creeping slowly eastward, and now included the location of the shelter as we descended.
Thursday September 22nd, Continued
Once we had gone through the right “tunnel” in the bush, our descent off the Golden Ears continued uneventfully for a time. We passed by the small snowfields, and a small stream that drained one of them.
Near the base of the peak a short distance above the emergency shelter, we met two young men who were on the way up. They were filtering water, and informed us that they planned to camp on the very peak of the mountain. This seemed a little exposed to us, and the peak, although it had a flat area, was quite rocky. They seemed tough enough. I was wearing about 3 layers, and one of them was in a tank top. Of course, they had to be tough to have carried all their camping supplies up from the parking lot to the base of the peak in one day. We wished them well, and went down past the shelter and were on our way.
We were glad when we finally reached the rubble-filled steps at the bottom of the forest trail, and saw the familiar old cedar stump on which I has posed that morning. The light was fading fast, but we reached the fallen cedar deadfall that towered over the trail before we were forced to switch on our headlamps. It rapidly became very dark, and we still had almost 1.8 km to go until we would leave the dark forest and reach the lookout which overlooked the valley.
This part of the trail looked very different at night from the way it had looked that morning. Much of it was on a rocky steeply descending creek bed, and we had some concern that we would miss the turn where the trail left the creek bed. The creek bed would then carry us deeper into the forest down the mountainside and we would be hopelessly lost in the dark. An occasional red ribbon hung down from the trees beside the trail and this reassured us. With the help of our headlamps, we were able to make our way over the rocks, but the trail seemed to go on forever. We reached wet sections in the creek bed which also reassured us as we had seen them that morning on our ascent. Finally, again with relief, we burst upon the lookout which overlooked the valley, and knew that we were still on track. A small sign, which we had not noticed on the way up, lit up in our headlamps and showed where the East Canyon Trail left the creek bed. Our worries had not been necessary.
The trail then plunged back into the forest for the last 0.8 km, and it became darker than ever. We were glad to see the small placard on a trailside tree that proclaimed “6.5”, for we knew then that we had only a little over half a kilometer to go. Then we saw the 6.0 km plaque, but it was not until we saw our campground outhouse in the dark that we knew for certain we had really made it. Now it was time to take down our food cache, and make dinner.
We were in bed earlier than on our first night, but not until about 11 PM. After the exertions of the day, my son had fallen asleep even before I was able to get into my sleeping bag.
A small hidden gem of a lake along the trail.
Pitt Lake was still below us to our left, and getting closer as we descended. It was becoming lost in the evening mist.
This very sturdy ladder was one of the few assistive devices on the trail. Interestingly, even though we were going up to the Golden Ears, we had to descend this ladder to get there.
Friday, September 23rd.
We awoke to the sound of rain. After the beautiful day we had had the day before, it took us a while to realize that the weather had radically changed for the worse. We waited for an hour in our sleeping bags for the rain to stop, but did not have any luck. We decided to bite the bullet, put up a tarp for shelter and had our breakfast. We took our time and ate most of our remaining food, hoping we would not have to take down our tent in the rain, but still no luck. Eventually we broke camp in the rain, loaded our soaking wet tent, tarp, and ropes into our packs, and were on our way down the trail from Alder Flats to the East Canyon Parking lot.
Dinner is almost on the “table”. The pot is about to boil on the camp stove behind me.
Ready to go. Now we just had to take down the wet tarp and pack it and the ropes into our packs.
We came down from Alder Flats uneventfully, crossed the Gold Creek Bridge, and took the East Canyon Trail. It was still early in the afternoon, so we took a short connector trail down to the Lower Canyon Trail to look at Lower falls. The connector trail was quite rough and steep in places, but once we were on the Lower Falls Trail, the walking was easy.
Gold Creek looked very different today in the rain, compared to our crossing here two days ago.
It was not far from Lower Falls to the parking lot. Here we had a snack, and soon were on our way back to Vancouver. It was satisfying to reflect on having achieved our objective; the summiting of the Golden Ears. We were very lucky to have gone in a day earlier than planned. It was still raining as we left the parking lot in our car. Had we stuck to our original schedule and tried to make our attempt on the summit as planned on this day, success would have been impossible.
We would have had to try again the next year.
The End
