Type 2 fun

Tears are nature's way of saying you are having Type 2 fun.
- Roland Burton.

So the tears were shed in the middle of the Garibaldi Neve, and they weren't because I was scared, or tired but when I looked down at the damage to the flesh of my heel I became actually rather concerned. I seriously wondered if you could wear away a heel to the bone since I had another 25km to go and another glacier to climb. But first the beginning...

The hike started out as epic with the 2 hour car ride that actually took 8 hours. We left Vancouver Friday evening in hopes of missing Whistler traffic Saturday morning but we made the wrong choice of bridge leaving town which had an accident. After we had cleared that traffic we still had to hang out in Squamish for several hours because of a severe fatal accident on the highway to Whistler. Finally we got going and reached the parking lot at the bottom of Rubble Creek. It was 1:30 am by the time we got the tents set up so we didn't do the car exchange.

The next morning Roland got everyone up at 6:30 am for an early morning start. He did this by starting the truck and shining the headlights on the tents and starting the camp stove. At that point no one could sleep anymore so we had breakfast. The drivers drove the cars to the end point and we were on our way.

We started at Rubble Creek and hiked up the Barrier. This was actually my first hiking trip but I had done it in the summer.

Here I am while I can still take my boots off without gasps of pain.

This was one of the lower lakes on the way to Garibaldi lake. You can see the very lovely skin tracks that the more experienced members in our group had made while they broke trail.

This is a great view of Garibaldi Mountain. Our trail is essentially up to the saddle on the left of the peak and hugging the mountain, down the other side to the Neve and then out the creek trail to Elfin Lakes.


Here we are crossing Garbaldi Lake heading towards Sphinx Hut. The first time I hiked up to the lake and was told about Sphinx hut I couldn't imagine hiking those extra kilometers. Well, with the skin tracks it was pretty nice actually, you just couldn't pay too close attention to the hut in the distance that never seemed to get closer.

Here we are at the hut, if you aren't one of the keen ones you don't have to be digging it out... The hut has a top floor and the bottom floor has a big bench that people slept on. The hut could comfortably fit 12 but we put 18 in it. Well, at least it wasn't near as cold as the tent the night before.

Roland, true to form had everyone up the next morning when he turned on the lamp and started the stove. Then we continued along the lake towards Sentinel glacier (and the second hut located there).

After climbing the glacier we could look down on a snow field? Glacier bed? There were about 3 or 4 glaciers that came down off this patch. You can see the small spots of people far ahead. The sharp peak centre right is the Shark's fin and our trail skirts it to the left. The weather was glorious, it was warm and sunny. This was also where I had a look at my blister and realized it had gotten a lot worse. Zach was on the trip and was with me at the time. He handled the knife and did the cutting and bandaging because at that point I just wasn't mentally on top of things.

So once my foot was taped up we continued skiing up towards the Shark's fin. Here is a photo looking back towards the saddle that we had climbed.


Here is a photo of someone from our party that I can't identify skirting Mount Garibaldi. What a fantastic view! At this point the wind had picked up. The Neve is down to the left. We skied down (I fell down) onto the neve and then across to....

... Ring creek. This was our exit point out of the Neve and it was still another 5 km plus some climbing to get to the hut. This was the worst part for avalanches. As I was skiing in this section a metre-long section sloughed off just 2 m in front of me. The best I could do was do my best to get out of there.

We skied out to Elfin Hut, a massive hut that can sleep about 60 people (officially?). We got there before sunset which was excellent timing, had some dinner and went to bed.

The next day was a fantastic ski out. Here we are stopping for a break along the ridge. It was another day of fantastic weather and pretty decent snow conditions.

If you are interested in seeing the heel damage, its a gross photo but you have been warned.

Finally, I had a great time. If I was stopped it was type 1 fun, if I was grinding up a glacier and my heel was hurting like hell it was more like type 2 fun. However, it was all fun when it was over and I could look back on what I had done.