Garibaldi Grand Tour

Participants: Julian Larsen, Allen Zhao, Adam French, Timothy Warkentin, Daniel Smidov, Gudrun (Gucki) Überacker

Allen organized a trip to do a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Garibaldi Lake, while bagging as many peaks as possible along the way. I had never been to Garibaldi before (I like to avoid crowds), and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to experience everything all at once.

DAY 1:

I started the morning by going to Thunderbird where I would pick up Adam. I sent him a text and waited. Five minutes turned to 30 and Adam wasn’t answering any calls. After waiting over an hour and calling enough times to qualify as harassment in court, I made the difficult decision to leave Adam behind. I went to pick up Tim. After almost getting downtown, Tim calls me letting me know that Daniel (driving the other car) had used his position as an RA to find Adam’s exact unit number. I decided I’d throw Adam one last lifeline. After driving back to Thunderbird, I knocked on Adam’s door to no response. I tried again a few more times. In a last-ditch effort, I noticed one open window on the second floor and yelled towards it: “ADDAAAMM!!!”. To my surprise a lifeless Adam sprung up to the window barely awake. After looking at his phone he realized he had overslept by two hours and immediately asked why we didn’t ditch him. Without his food ready to go he proceeded to throw in the heaviest camping food I’d ever seen, including a few kilograms of carrots, some oranges, and a tub of leftover pasta.

Eventually we made it to the trailhead, though quite late. We were at the lake in a few hours and had lunch before setting off towards Mount Price. After a forest slog we made it to the loose volcanic slope which leads up to Price, where we were treated to our first Panoramic views of the lake and surrounding mountains.

The sun was starting to go down, we were hungry, and there was a big forested bushwhack down to our campsite in the meadows below the Table.

I expected this bushwhack to be the worst of the trip, and I was right. The forest was dense and bushy, and loose dirt and thickets appeared at every turn. Eventually, we made it to Table meadows exhausted and hungry, just as the sun was setting.

Allen and friends (Photo: Tim)

From left: Tim, Allen, Gucki, Adam, Daniel, Me [Julian] (Photo: Tim)

The meadows proved a beautiful setting. The Table, with its natural arch fully visible, looked like something you’d find in the deserts of the American west, not coastal BC. Unfortunately, the mosquitos must have also found the views inspiring because they rose from the alpine grass like a dense fog. I have never experienced as many mosquitos as I did in that horrid place. There were so many that they almost obscured visibility. The high pitch buzzing could be heard from within the tent all night. Hundreds of mosquitoes sat on our backs trying to reach us through Gore-Tex and thick layers. I made it out the best with only a few bites, likely because I covered all of my skin in thick layers and used my entire bottle of bug spray on the first night. After finishing dinner, we finally got some sleep after a very long first day.

DAY 2:

Everyone was slow to move in the morning because of our late sleep, and we didn’t end up leaving until 10am. We quickly gained elevation towards the ridge at the base of the Table, which proved to be as chossy as people make it out to be. Touching the rock at its base would cause things to fall off, and we heard a natural rockfall the night before.

We traversed the ridge towards Sentinel Bay, with a very steep and loose scree slope beside us. After checking the topographical map and looking around we realized that we were going to have to descend this slope into the bay.

The descent was treacherous to say the least. It consisted of a slope with a layer of rocks which slid easily over the hard packed surface and rocketed down the nearby gully in a few seconds. This may have been the sketchiest part of the trip, as rockfall was very frequent. Slipping on this terrain would also mean very bad things, especially if humans tumble anything like the rocks did. Luckily, we made it down towards the bay, though not without a few incidents. Allen got a pretty bad gash on his arm which was cleaned and covered, and I narrowly avoided a football sized rock barreling towards me from above. After getting safely to the Glaciology research huts, I think we were all glad to have made it through that descent without any major injuries.

Gucki and I before realizing we need to go down the slope beside us (Photo: Tim)

Reaching the glaciology huts (Photo: Tim)

We crossed several small streams which cascaded down from the glaciers to reach the base of our next objective: the col between Guard and Deception. The climb looked much more forgiving than the other side of the bay, with boulder fields and heather slopes.

Tim found a large rock with Fool’s Gold in it and decided he would carry it as long as he could. Adam, Tim, Gucki and I reached the col first, so we decided to try and bag Deception. Allen, who arrived once we had already left for Deception, decided to do Guard first, while Daniel stayed at the col with the packs.

Deception proved to live up to its name. After reaching an easy false summit (of many), Adam, Tim, and I decided to continue further which required some fourth class traversing along a cliff.

From Deception looking towards Guard (Photo: Tim)

VOC on the col (Photo: Tim)

After regrouping back at the col we decided we didn’t all have time for both peaks, but since we had split up and done them collectively, we thought that was sufficient. The descent was along a snow gully to the left of Guard glacier, and after some fun glissades, we raced down the boulders towards Burton hut. I reached the creek beside the hut first, and immediately went barefoot to start crossing. The water was fast-moving, thigh-deep, and excruciatingly cold. I hopped on a boulder midway across to regain feeling in my feet and then finished crossing just as Adam, Tim, and Gucki appeared on the bank where I started. We dove into the lake just for sunset, and this refreshing dip was certainly a highlight of the trip.

Back in the hut, Adam’s ridiculous backpacking food came into the spotlight, as his fresh vegetables and jars of sauce came together to create a dish much too nice to be on a backcountry trip. The rest of us ate our plain dinners and hung up our food before calling it a night.

DAY 3:

Tim decided to leave his Fool’s Gold behind. If it’s still in or around the hut, you now know Tim cradled it in his arms all the way from Sentinel Bay.

The route for the morning looked to be the last bushwhack of the trip. We decided to follow some boulder fields, but the forest was okay as well. Despite not being on any trail, we periodically saw flagging tape, which we took as mysterious signs that our route decisions were good.

After reaching the alpine, we walked up to Polomonium ridge. We dropped our bags and had lunch as the impressive Castle Towers loomed above us.

Castle Towers was our biggest objective of the trip. Even though most of it was easy scrambling up boulders, the slope was steep and long.

The views at the false summit were spectacular, and the true summit looked daunting. Allen, Adam, Tim and I decided to make the short but exposed journey. The first part was the hardest, as loose dirt and rocks littered the steep decent down the side of the cliff face. This part was probably mostly class four. We had to go one at a time as rockfall was a serious hazard. Once at the bottom of the notch we shimmied up the top of a steep gully along the base of the cliff face and then walked over to the ascend the final summit block. Finally at the top of the summit we all celebrated and took in the views.

On the false summit of Castle Towers (Photo: Tim)

Gucki and Daniel on the false summit of Castle Towers (Photo: Tim)

Me descending the false summit (Photo: Allen)

The descent was easy, and the wind seemed to keep the mosquitos at bay. We set up tents and cooked another very large dinner which I shoveled down. This is where Adam removed his shoes revealing the onset of trench foot. I’ll spare you the pictures because they’re horrifying. The wind began to die down as we finished up dinner and the hordes of mosquitos appeared from nowhere to torment us, so I called it a night as quick as possible.

DAY 4:

Every day so far had been a late start and thus a late arrival at camp. On the final day Gucki insisted that we break the cycle, so we woke up at 5:30am with the plan to leave by 6:30am, which as usual turned into 7:30am. None the less, it was an earlier start and we got up to the top of the ridge below gentian peak in less than an hour.

After a bit of a scramble up to the peak we scree skied down to a tarn where Tim and Adam went for a quick swim. After a while, Gucki, Tim, Adam and I started to get worried about Daniel and Allen who hadn’t arrived yet. Tim went searching for them and then yelled back through the wind. All we could make out was “camera”. Allen had left his camera on the very top of Gentian Peak and ran all the way back up and down at a record pace to grab it. So much for early starts…

We climbed to Panorama ridge, passing some marmots before seeing the massive crowd of Instagram tourists on the false summit below the peak. We briskly passed through the crowds of confused onlookers. I looked at them through stylish sunglasses I had borrowed from Allen with duct tape around the sides to shield my burnt eyes.

We started towards the Black Tusk and encountered Erik Demers: our seventh and final member who decided to join us for the end of the final day.

We made it to the regular summit of Black Tusk, where we got our last summit photos and made the long but easy decent all the way down to the parking lot.

The Black Tusk, with new edition Erik second from the right (Photo: Tim)

In Squamish, we ordered samosas, and gradually reintegrated into society by sitting on the sidewalk like true dirtbags. We got more than a few stares from people in passing cars, which probably thought a homeless camp was developing on the streets of Squamish. After saying our goodbyes, especially to Gucki who was moving back to Austria in a few days, the group parted ways and drove home.

In the end we summited 8 named peaks:

Price, Deception, Guard, Polomonium, Castle Towers, Gentian, Panorama, Black Tusk

Overall, this trip was an incredible experience and a beautiful route. There’s so much I couldn’t include in this report, but I guess you’ll have to complete your own Grand Tour if you want to experience it for yourself…