Saturday afternoon Justine and I headed up to Squamish to do a hike. We had already had a pretty active day - Justine did yoga in the morning, while I had gone for a run - but it was a beautiful day, and Justine had never done this particular hike. It had been a lot of years since I had done it, but I remembered it as being not too bad, with amazing views. As we had left it until fairly late in the afternoon, the hike was much less busy than normal.
As the sign says, this hike is not as easy as some seem to think....
The first part of the hike is really just a series of stairs that you climb, gaining elevation pretty quickly. The river runs alongside the trail for the first part of the hike, before the trail turns into the forest, continuing to climb.
This huge boulder sits off the side of the trail at an overlook about 2/3 the way to the top.
As the trail starts to come out above the tree line, the trail opens up onto the granite rock face, and some of the more fun parts of the trek. At a few of the more steep sections, the park has installed a series of ladders and chains that help you get up these sections.
Justine going up the first ladder
...and on the first set of chain
...one more very thin ladder
Once we made it to the top, we enjoyed the brilliant sunshine and the fantastic views. We were hoping for some rock climbers t come up over the face, but we never did see that. Justine had to check out the edge, from as close as she dared!
Not too close - it's a long way down!
On the way up, I had noticed a couple of interesting spots that I wanted to stop and take pictures at later. Mostly waterfalls, we ended up stopping three times on the way down to see what I could find. A few good pictures came out of it.
