After a week and a half of going insane trying to sell my van, Deckers said 'Stu, let's go hiking'.. and so we did.

Two days of glacial mayhem, sweat, port, and canned chilli. Mmmm yeah we smelled good.

Anyway, click read more for the story.



I was really excited for this hike, I wanted to do something epic before I left and all the ideas that I had were proving to be impossible to organise on a limited budget and with little time left. This was exactly what I was after.

So Wedgemount Lake is a pretty steep hike up about 900 vertical metres, ending at a glacial lake quite a bit above the treeline. It's quite a bit harder with overnight packs, especially when your pack isn't actually designed for multi-day treks.

The hike starts in the trees like this:



and continues through the treeline to this, with the final leg to the lake up that boulder field:



We toughed it out and hauled butt up to the lake, getting there some time after lunch:



After a long lunch break we decided to continue the adventure (ADVENTURE!!), and under heavy persuasion from Deckers I agreed to attempt to climb the glacier and see what was at the top of the ridge (SPOILER ALERT - more glacier).

Turns out it wasn't the most fantastic idea, with us getting stuck on a rock ledge about 50m short of the ridge for about two hours, having to slide our packs down the glacier and somehow not die on our way down. It's kinda cool though, whenever you fear for your life, when you get out of it alive you feel like you've accomplished something awesome, when, in reality, all you managed to do was survive your own stupidity.

Regardless, we got some cool pics out of it, some scary/fun memories and a good story for the grandkids (I'm of the belief that when travelling any experience is worth it as long as you get a good story for the grandkids).

Other glacier (we hiked up the one opposite this):



The intrepid explorers:





And on the way back to the lake:



Upon returning to the campsite, weary, tired, relieved, scared, hungry etc etc, we called it a day and feasted and feasted and feasted, then drank port and wine and collapsed in front of a very small fire.

Our campsite, bang on the lake, provided some beautiful scenery, especially when the sun set over the mountains:



Day two we woke up early and felt surprisingly sprightly given the pain of the first day, and we decided we were going to conquer a mountain before the morning was out. The mountain was Wedge Mountain, one of the many peaks looming over the lake. The hike itself was hard, well above 2000m so the air was a bit thinner and quite a bit colder, and there was no defined path so a lot of it was scrambling up progressively steeper rock. On the plus side we had no packs, which felt like heaven, so we made it up in a few hours.

Part of the hike up (if you look closely you can see Deckers in the bottom right):



Deckers on the way up:



Deckers at the top:



On top, someone buit an Inukshuk on top of a cornice.., yeah, that's safe:



Glacier!



And finally, a view from the top out across the valley - that's Whistler on the left with all the ski runs, and Blackcomb is the next face closer, but it's kind of facing the wrong way for this pic: