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Garibaldi Provincial Park is about 90 minutes north of Vancouver, BC, Canada, not far south of the Whistler ski resorts. There is an excellent constant-gradient hiking path up through the forest. Where the hillside is steep, the trail takes an easy zig-zag route. |
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At this outcrop one can see back into the valley, where we left the car, and the mountains on the far side. |
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Some lupines along the path. |
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The route goes along the shore of two small lakes |
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This stream is cascading down to one of the small lakes. |
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Two deer ahead of us on the path. |
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A first glimpse through the trees of the scenery we are soon to see. |
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When we reach Garibaldi Lake, this view is northward across the fairly narrow outlet bay. |
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This view is looking eastward from the outlet bay. It appears, from looking at the map, that Gentian Peak is on the left and Castle Towers Mountain is on the right. |
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From the shore of Garibaldi Lake, to the southeast, is Sphinx Glacier. The map labels the peak to the right as Guard Mountain. The peak seen just to the left is further away and called The Sphinx. |
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To the south is Mount Price. The path along the shore is seen along the right. We had lunch and spent an additional hour along this shoreline absorbing the scenery in all directions. The weather was also ideal. |
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Gentian Peak and Castle Towers Mountain across the lake. |
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Northeast of us is Panorama Ridge. There is a hiking path up to that ridge line, which must provide even more majestic photo opportunities. I had a few moments of feeling: if I had been more fit and had started earlier in the morning we could have made it to Panorama Ridge and gotten photos looking down upon Garibaldi Lake and the mountains and glaciers beyond. But it seems that most people that go to Panorama Ridge camp and go there the second day. I quickly settled into feeling very fortunate to have made it to the shore of Garibaldi Lake and seen the magnificant scenery. |
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Sphinx Glacier up at the far end of the lake. |
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There are numerous piles of rocks, presumably dropped by ice-age glaciers, on and near this shore of Garibaldi Lake. The map calls them the Battleship Islands. |
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By walking on stones one can get to some of the islands. |
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Mount Price toward the south. |
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Zoomed in on Mount Price. |
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I can't get enough of the blue lake, blue sky and glaciers and mountains on the other side. |
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We walked 16 miles and climbed 3145 feet that day. |
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As we began our descent, we got this final view of Mount Price. What a mountain sight! We have hiked in some great places, but this was arguably the best hike we have ever experienced. |
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We met two young men who politely asked if we had any extra food. They were feeling dizzy. They had come out from Vancouver that morning for their first hike in the mountains. They carried nothing other than two empty water bottles. We gave each of them a banana, a granola bar and a bottle of water. One of them said it was the best tasting banana he had ever eaten. When we hike we carry extra things. |
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We had noticed in numerous settings that Canadian people are very polite. It was on this hike that we realized that even Canadian teenagers are polite. Other places we have hiked teenagers go past us talking loudly to each other. It seems that grey-haired people are either invisible or considered with disdain for being so slow. However, on this hike more than one set of teenagers smiled and greeted us warmly. |