Conquering the Chief

Stawamus Chief deserves a post of its own. I have been wanting to do this hike the last three times I was in BC, but things never worked out. We almost didn't make it here this time as well; it is difficult to visit Squamish without a car, but thankfully Ranee's roommate and Evo saved us!




The two more advanced hikers lost us pretty early on, and we started up the stairs and quickly realized we would need several breaks to get through this.


After we reached a fork in the road, we voted 2-1 to head on the unmarked path to the third peak instead of the more common path to first peak. It was a gamble that I'm glad we took on, because it gave us paths such as...



I loved it. And it was all worth it for this view.





We took a break at the top of the third peak to eat our lunch. As we were resting, the other two caught up to us and we realized they finished three peaks while we had just ascended one. So off we went!

Unfortunately for us, we got confused and kept heading off back towards the third peak, and a lady with a cowbell served to confuse us further; or rather, we confused each other while both trying to help each other find the right direction.

Many people said the view was the prettiest at the second peak... and I wholeheartedly agree. The sun also started to make its presence known as we continued our hike.





By the time we started towards the first peak, we had run out of both water and Pocari Sweat. While voicing our sorrows at not having brought more liquids, a voice from above called out and a lovely lady appeared and offered us her electrolyte-filled water. Hiking miracles!

The path to the first peak was undoubtedly the toughest. There were areas where scrambling was required to move on - many slippery rocks, tight ladders, and thick chains later, we found ourselves on the top of the sunny first peak.





As we started to make our way down the mountain, I realized my legs were starting to get wobbly as we got to the stairs. The constant descent on the stairs took its toll and I felt knee pain for the first time in my life. Thankfully, we made it back to the parking lot and made our way to Sushi Sen in Garibaldi Highlands for dinner.



After driving back to the city, we were super tired but... we wanted ice cream. And we wanted Earnest ice cream. So we looked up the hours and the route, and realized we had about an an hour and a half to walk 4 km. The adventures of Earnest Ice Cream are chronicled here.



This guy lunged at all of our ice creams, so we had to shout "Mine!" to establish boundaries.

We finally headed back to our hostel, where the, "Hey don't you go pulling that! Be civilized. Have some respect for women, you ****ing #%$@!" happened.

Don't let anyone ever tell you Vancouver isn't interesting.