A few week-ends ago, Brice and I went camping at Greendrop lake, near Chiliwack.
Originally, I had my eyes set on Elk Mountain. I had hiked to the top of Elk mountains last summer with my friend Kaitie, and since then had wanted to come back with Brice. A few weeks ago, a photo popped in my instagram feed, of a camping scene located on Elk mountain. I thought this would indeed be a great camping spot. The hike up is only 3,5k and the next day we could hike the additional 7km return to Thurston Mountain before coming back down.
We didn’t leave the city until 3:30pm on Saturday – first we had to go stand in line for two and half hours to go vote for the french elections. It took us a couple of hours to drive to the Elk Mountain trail head, and when we got there, we were welcomed by a nice big sign indicating (amongst other rules) “No Camping”. I was so excited about the idea of camping up there, with the potential of catching a pretty epic sunset and/or sunrise over the valley, I hadn’t thought to check whether it was actually ok or not.
Now, following the rules might make us look a bit square, but if our trip to Patagonia has taught us anything, it is the importance of such rules in the preservation and conservation of the land. And in this case, the sign clearly indicated that the mountain was home to sensitive and fragile eco-systems, which camping (and building fire, etc) would contribute to damaging. Not to mention that leaving our car un-attended over night could potentially create concerns of lost or injured hikers if a forest ranger happened to be driving by…(We’ve hiked up to the mountain since, just for the day, and it seems to be a pretty popular camping spot despite it all, so that second concern might not be a huge deal, but still…)
So with that we improvised a plan B. Reaching for our Backroad mapbook, we decided to head further east to the Lindeman Lake trail head. We had gone to Lindeman last summer, just for an afternoon, but continuing along the same trail past the lake would take us to Greendrop Lake, another more remote camping option.
It was already 6:30pm when we arrived at the trail head, but we figured we had a good two hours of daylight still, so we got going. The hike to Lindeman is only 1,7km, with some steep and technical sections, but overall fairly easy. Once we arrived at Lindeman, we walked along the lake through the camping area. Being the first sunny week-end in quite a while, the grounds were pretty busy with campers. The trail took us along the shore, and through a boulder field at the northern end of the lake, then we left Linderman behind and continued hiking deeper into the back country. We had another 4,2km to cover to get to Greendrop, which ended up taking about 2 hours. The trail was pretty technical, alternating between densely forested area, and rock-covered single track along boulder slopes, with the addition of a few stream crossings, made likely bigger at this time of year by the snow melting.
The last 1.4 km were all in trees, but there was a good foot of snow left still in that portion, which slowed us down a bit. About 700 meters from the campground, we had to take the head lamps out to finish. Thankfully the trail was very well marked with bright orange markers and ribbons every 25 meters.
We made it to the campground around 9:30pm. It was completely dark by then. There were two groups of campers already set up, with nice fires going (they had likely logged their own firewood all the way up, as everything around was way too wet to burn). We hadn’t planned on making any fire, but even with the slightly below zero temperature of the night, we managed to stay cozy in our puffies and sleeping bags.
Dinner was quick to make – the folks at Good to Go had sent us a selection of their dehydrated meals to try, and it turned out to be quite tasty (we had the thai curry that night, and their granola and oatmeal for breakfast the next day).
The next morning we took our time having breakfast and checking out the lake in daylight – it was still mainly covered in snow and ice. Then we headed back down to Lindeman. With the sun out, the trail was really beautiful, shafts of light coming through the trees and creating bright rims around the moss-covered boulders – all in classic PNW fashion.
While we had seen no one on the way up, we passed quite a few people taking the day hike to Greendrop. It took us much less time to arrive back to Lindeman, and we decided to take a break on the northern end of the lake, rather than join the crowds along the western shore. After a quick bite, we walked the remaining few kilometres back along the lake and down to the parking lot. Lindeman is a very popular destination – as we had found out last summer, and no wonder. The turquoise colour of its water, surrounded by snow-capped mountains make it probably one of the most accessible, scenic places in the area.
We reached the parking lot at 2pm, perfect timing to dodge the growing crowds of afternoon hikers. Before heading back to Vancouver, we couldn’t leave Chilliwack without stopping by I Fly for Pie, the diner-style restaurant located at the Chilliwack airport, famous for its decadent pies…
