Hiking the Chief

Yesterday friends took me hiking in Squamish to climb the Stawamus Chief. Squamish is about halfway to Whistler to the north of Vancouver, and the upper end of the Howe Sound, so it's a lovely drive with water to one side and mountains all around.

This is what the Chief looks like from the ground. We ended up at Second Peak, the middle of the three peaks.

I've done a fair bit of mountain hikes in the past, but this was probably the most technical one I've done. I'm more accustomed to switchbacks and having a beaten path to follow. The Chief is actually a granite monolith, so you're almost always on stone. It's also very vertical. With few exceptions, there's no place where you could drop something and expect to retrieve it.

We had occasional light rain and the rock was mostly wet, so I was really concerned about slipping. At one point I joked: Is there any part of this trail where you could lose your footing and not be killed? The rock was actually pretty grippy; the slippery bits were the tree roots occasionally underfoot. But I got pretty spooked in parts. In a few places chains are drilled into the rock to help you climb. The part below (with Elena) wasn't quite so scary as you're between two rock faces, but in some parts you have the gaping void to your side, and they were my least favourite parts.

At the summit, the sheer face is behind me. I was really spooked and could hardly get close to the edge. The view was fantastic though.

 

Here are some panoramas. Elena and Yann are in the second.

 

We came down a different way and got to see this chasm between the second and third peaks, with a slice of Squamish visible.

I got this on the way down to try to capture the verticality. The trail to First Peak is the most accessible, with lots of wooden stairs and steps carved into the rock. (I was awed by the effort that must have taken.) But the Second Peak trail had a fair amount of scrambling like this.

After making our way back down we went to the other reason for our trip, a visit to the Howe Sound brewpub. It's a large, lovely pub and a great place to showcase their award-winning beers. I've been enjoying their more exotic brews (my current favourites are the Total Eclipse of the Hop Imperial IPA and the Gathering Storm Cascadian Dark Ale) but I wanted to sample some of their more standard beers, so here are five smaller samples.

They also had their Pothole Filler Stout on special and so we enjoyed a few pints of that also. It was a great way to end the trip.