Hike from sun to snow!

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I'm starting this at 10.05pm a little inebriated in bed stuffing my face with crisps and bounty bars! The temptation to write we did a big hike, saw a pretty lake then got pissed was strong but I think today earned a bit more effort! So what actually happened was.....
We got up meaning to get an early start but didn't leave whistler until about 10am. We were aiming for Clinton 3.5 hours away. On the way was Joffre Lakes. There are three: lower lake which is about 400 metres from the car park, middle lake which was advertised as 2.5 hours walk from the first lake and upper lake a further 30mins away. Somehow we managed to get lost even finding the car park, I'd read during my research that it was 15mins north of Whistler - bollocks it was probably 15 miles north of Pemberton so about an hour and half out of Whistler! After asking for directions, turning around generally wasting about an hour and god knows how much free wifi at McDonald's we found ourselves in the car park for Joffre Lakes. We used the lovely onsite compost 'long drops,' and walked the short distance to the first lake. It looked very pretty and we took some photos. We then started the hike up to the middle lake. I found another hiking stick to use and we ventured forwards. We are in proper full on bear country now so as we walked through the forested area it felt pretty eerie. We followed the guidance of making as much noise as we could dragging the hiking stick on the floor and dragging our boots as we walked while trying to chat about anything random! The idea is that generally bears stay away from people, black bears more than grizzly bears and that they don't like to be surprised so by making noise they can hear you coming and they get out of the way. We didn't see anyone for the first hour or so. The hike up to the second lake was tough and pretty steep all the way up. Steps after steps... After an hour we felt more safe and to be honest I was so shattered I wouldn't have cared if a bear came along! We passed more people the closer we got to the second lake with them saying 'only ten more mins' and 'it's worth it keep going'. We crossed a severe Avalanche section but luckily there was hardly any snow at this point and it looked more like rockfall with broken trees balancing halfway down the mountainside. There were some dodgy sections we had to get across with narrow paths and compacted ice which was very slippy right on the edge. I can't imagine how people do this hike in winter it would be dangerous. Finally after an hour and 25mins we saw a glimpse of the bluey green water through the trees and we were there. We practically collapsed onto a bench and took on lots of water before taking in the sight of the lake. It was like an oasis surrounded by fir trees with the smell of Christmas trees all around. The lake is a very vivid blue and green colour because of the run off from the glaciers above so it's glacial water. There were tiny chipmunks running around. At the lake there were more people about even though they were hidden in the trees. After taking lots of photos and walking round a bit we decided as we had come this far that we would continue for half an hour up to the upper lake. The trail started to get more difficult and we were scrambling higher up over rocks. Then we came across more ice and thick deep snow. We could see that people had trodden on parts of the snow and their foot had gone through into knee and thigh deep snow. We had hiking boots on so were wearing the right footwear and carefully followed the footprints through the middle until we came to the upper lake. It was mostly still frozen with ice floating on the top with snowy mountains all around. There didn't seem to be a specific viewpoint so we trekked trough trees to the edge of the lake. Steph managed to put her foot through the snow near the edge and I had to help her back out. After a few minutes we decided to head back down. It was now about 3.30pm and we had two and half hours drive to the motel for the night as well as the trek down the mountain. We managed to get back down to the bottom by 5pm and set off in the car. The journey north was strange as we travelled into desert like conditions where the temperature got steadily higher and reached 26 degrees Celsius at 7pm at night. We finally got to the motel in a little town called Clinton about 7.45 after following a motor home most of the way. We had also stopped on the way at Seton Lake when the sun was just on its way down so the view looked pretty. When we arrived at Cariboo Lodge there were a couple of others checking in. They had stopped serving food already by this point but luckily there was a pub next door. We checked into our room and dumped the bags off then headed to the pub where we were told they do pizzas. We sat at the bar ordered a couple of beers and asked about the pizzas to find they didn't do any without meat on. There were no other restaurants open in the town but the lady behind the bar said that the local grocery/petrol station was open for another half hour so Steph went marching off to get food. She came back with lots of junk food! We decided to stay for another beer before going back to the room to eat the junk food. We didn't feel too bad as we'd just done the big hike. We chatted a little with the bar lady and a policeman came in at one point who was new to the area to introduce himself. This led to a conversation with the bar lady about their uniform and how it's bad they have to wear stab vests now. She then went on to tell us proudly that they had only had two murders in the last two years, which in principle doesn't sound bad until I asked her the towns population to find out it's only 600! So basically we had a 1 in 300 chance of being murdered in the town!! By now we were half way down our second beers and some local guy went to the bar to settle his bill then paid for another beer for us so we had three pints each and 20 minutes to down the last one as the pub closed at 10! We walked out of the pub at 10 a little drunk and munched through the food before having another early night.

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Photos

Middle Joffre Lake
Middle Joffre Lake - no filter