After waking up Saturday morning to a forecast of improving weather, we decided that grabbing a nice breakfast enroute to the trailhead would be a good idea. We had a lovely breakfast at Denny's and then jumped on the Hwy 1 on our way out towards Maple Ridge. Since Deb and Carl had already decided they would not be in much rush on Sunday, we decided to take only one vehicle. We took their truck.
Upon arriving at the Golden Ears trailhead we took one last bathroom break before strapping on our packs and heading out onto the trail. The weather was rather unsettled and we experienced intermittent rain and dryspells. Overall, everyone made it up to Alder Flats without incident and still feeling (mostly) dry. After lunching on the far side of Alder Flats, we decided we were not quite tired enough so we continued along the trail towards the summit.
After hiking up to and beyond the snowline, we reach approximately the 7.5km mark on the trail where we decided to take a quick rest break. It was here, as we gazed upon the numerous flights of stairs to come, that we decided we had travelled far enough. We turn back towards Alder Flats where we established our camp.
In choosing our camp, we needed to find a site the could accommodate two medium sized tents and that provided sufficient surrounding trees to string up a tarp that would serve as our cooking shelter. We also wanted a site within a short walk to the small river that passed by the camp grounds. In my opinion, we found the best site in the whole area.
The site was about 10 feet from the river and there was plenty of room for both tents, a cooking shelter and a fire. It was at the low point between two groves of trees so it was easy to setup the tarp. Though the site was positively covered in garbage left from previous campers, we were able to clean it all up in a matter of only a few minutes.
Once the tents were pitched and the tarp was strung up, Carl started the task of starting a fire fueled only by wet wood, damp kindling, and 14 special firestarter matches (each is suppose to burn for 7 minutes). After watching the fire going out far too many times, Carl resorted to incorporating half a canister of white gas into his repetroire. Meanwhile, Devin and Deb worked at filtering water and refilling our water bottles and I prepared our dinner (vegetarian soft tacos with a pkg of JiffyPop for desert). Despite his rather valiant attempts, Carl was unsuccessful at burning much more than the gas, the firestarters and some random bits of paper and cardboard. Next time, I think we will be bringing a Presto-Log.
Once the dinner dishes were done, we crawled into our respective tents and fell into a deep slumber.
Upon waking at some point in the night and realizing I was going to need to use the restroom, I noticed the rain was falling in the form of a torrential downpour. I made the mad dash out of the tent and back. I could tell already that our hike down was going to be, shall we say, interesting!
By the time we all woke, the rains had eased off somewhat. To start we boiled a pot of water to make some tea. This was followed with rehydrating some apples and adding them to some hot oatmeal with some cinnamon and brown sugar. Yum yum! We lounged around camp for the next couple hours while we debated how soon we actually needed to pack up camp and brave the rains in our trudge back down the mountain side. Around 1pm we could delay no longer and we set ourselves to the task of breaking camp and packing up our gear. After a final check for any remaining garbage or forgotten items, we were back on the trail heading back down to the trailhead.
All I can say about our descent it that when it rains, it pours and, despite some very good raingear, everyone was soaked by the time we reached the truck. Like our ascent, we all made it down in one piece with one small exception. I had a small slip-up when, while walking on level ground in the last 1.5 km of the hike, I stepped on a wet log. I could have stepped over it but instead I stepped on it. This led to me slipping and faceplanting into the gravel and rocks on the trail. Thankfully I was fine and all I have as a reminder of this is a few random bruises on my forearms and a rather sore nose (my primary point of impact with the rocks).
After dumping our gear into the back of the truck we drove into Coquitlam where we had a fantastic lunch of noodle soup at the Pho Hoa (mmmmmm....hot and sour seafood soup....mmmm).
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