A Single Night, Double Days, and Triple the Fun: Pic Your Adventure #2
If you read the last blog entry I wrote, you’d know that that had been my first ever time camping out in the mountains. Well, this adventure was my second time doing that same thing (just with less of a hike and a smaller lake).
This is the only hint I’ll reveal ;)
Once again, I have to give all of the credit for this adventure to the one and only Steve Robert. I believe he first seen a photo of this mountain on Instagram with the only giveaway of it’s location in the geotag “Vancouver Island”. Fantastic, theres only 31,788 km² of land here, finding one mountain should be plenty easy… I won’t reveal all of our secrets because I have a firm belief in people doing their own research, but Steve and I (mostly Steve) managed to dig our way through Instagram Posts, Hashtags, and a whole lot of Google Maps images to find our Mountain.
And (after a couple hour’s drive along with a few km’s of bumpy logging roads) so began the hike up to our camping spot.
The climb up was quite beautiful. The trail goes almost vertical the entire way up which makes for a shorter but more exhausting hike. Most of the soreness in our quads was drowned out by the sound of the waterfalls. For most of the ascent we were directly next to this stream of water, essentially one big waterfall the entire way up. It was actually quite convenient for refilling water bottles, especially considering half of our pack weights consisted of camera gear, tripods, and gimbals (which I’ll explain later).
By this point in the summer Steve and myself found ourselves swimming in every single body of water we came across. Maybe we are more closely related to dolphins than we previously thought? …Regardless of our biological descent, the water was calling and we were answering.
After a strenuous (but not too difficult) ascent up wet, slippery rock with heavy backpacks, you know the first and only thing on our mind was to jump into that sweet, green, glacial-fed water.
Oh there must’ve been a god that day because he was giving us the only thing we wanted in that moment… and I say “in that moment” because once we swam around for more than a couple seconds, we started to feel the sweet burn of that icy alpine water. Yep, it was cold. SO worth it.
The air was calm. The lake was still. Not a single sound other than a few shutter clicks and the very occasional bird chirp.
So many peaks, ridges, and valleys.
It was a really serene evening. No cellphone service, everything was calm, and the sun was on it’s way passed the horizon, making for some incredible light.
After the sun went down, we put on our sweaters (it’s pretty chilly in the alpine on a September evening) and proceeded to cook our luxurious dinner. Pasta noodles and Pesto sauce (the Steve Robert staple) is all you need to feel like you’re eating at a 5-star Italian restaurant when you’re out camping in the mountains.
Steve prepares the pasta…
Steve cooks the pasta…
As you can see, spending time in the mountains usually means saving pack weight by not bringing unnecessary things. Spare clothes, gourmet food, a soft bed, hot showers and other creature comforts: these are all things that usually get left behind. We sacrifice comfort and familiarity for the calls of the unknown and the chills of high mountain air. We make these sacrifices and exchanges because the reward is worth so much. When we put ourselves out there, into nature, sometimes we get lucky enough to see her reveal her most intimate self.
Remember how I said I brought my gimbal up with me? Well I’m not totally crazy, I just really wanted this shot. It didn’t quite turn out how I wanted, but it was my first attempt at doing a Milky Way panning timelapse. It’s not perfect but I am happy with the result. More practice will equal more finessing.
Before we went to bed at 9:00pm (like some old people…) we set our alarms to be up at about 2:00am so that we could shoot the Milky Way. I love shooting astro, even though I don’t do it nearly enough. Perhaps a New Years resolution for 2019…
After sleeping another 3ish hours, our alarms went off again, this time to catch the first rays of sunlight over the horizon.
Sunrise didn’t disappoint. The air was clear, without a cloud, and the sun’s light was some of the most pinkish-orange I had ever seen.
This is probably one of my favourite images. It was a perfect morning with a perfect view.
This morning had to be one of my all-time favourites. The sunrise was perfect, and the sun was oh-so warming. After a quick oatmeal-and-Cliff-Bar breakfast, we knew there was a mission to tackle. See, when we were digging around topographic satellite images, we realized there was another alpine lake here, a couple hundred feet higher than the one we camped at. We were feeling good and we were feeling confident from our sweet oats and protein. We looked up towards the trees, and we spotted a few small gullies that we could potentially bushwhack up to find our upper lake.
Well, let me tell you about that adventure… Most people that visit this incredible spot either hangout at this lower lake like we had been, or they make for the summit (which is about an 8-hour trip, according to the other couple we briefly seen that day). What this meant was that nobody really goes searching for this upper alpine lake, EVER, apparently. It was a proper bushwhack. Directly vertical the whole way up, literally pulling ourselves up by small shrubs, tree branches, and tall weeds. No trail, just the occasional piece of trail marker tied to a branch or small shrub every few hundred feet to let you know you were on the right way (up?).
Look, it’s Steve. The excursion up was painful, steep, and scratchy, but this view alone made it all worth it. That body of water below is the lower lake where we camped.
BOOM. The upper alpine lake. We made it and it was more than we could’ve imagined. A complete 360 degree view of prominent and rugged Vancouver Island peaks. The reward was so sweet that you know we had to….
Go for a dip, of course!
As we walked the perimeter of the lake, taking in the views, snapping photos, and slowly drying out our underwear, we decided that maybe traversing around below the main summit may be easier than descending the same way we came up (for obvious reasons). Aside from getting split up, going in opposite directions, and getting a bit lost for about 30 minutes, we reunited and found our proper trail back down.
We found a couple of these little ponds during our descent back down. Sticking to tradition and swimming in every body of water we came across, of course I went for a swim here! Somewhere on his computer Steve has the shot of it…
This had to be my favourite swimming shot from the trip. Look at the mountain! Look at the snow-pack! Look at the blue water! If you look closely you’ll even observe a very underwater Steve Robert. It was our last swim, but it was, in my opinion, the most beautiful.
Overall, this trip was one that I’ll remember forever. It ignited a passion for the mountains and the outdoors that I hadn’t fully experienced before. Sure, Cream Lake was beautiful, scenic, and just as amazing, but there was something about this adventure that was more immersive. Maybe it was watching the Milky Way sore across the sky at night, the perfect sunrise, the struggle of bushwhacking up to that second lake, or all of the lakes we forced ourselves to swim in… I’m not sure, but this trip will forever go down in my books as the one that ignited the stoke for being in the mountains.
Thanks for reading and check out my Instagram for more,
-Deon