<计划> Blanca Lake

Our original plan was to do a trip up the Ashlu Creek road to Chimai Mountain. But we were prevented by logging for the power project on Ashlu Creek. So we hastily came up with an alternate plan of going to Blanca Lakes, with no maps. Klaus had been there 30 years ago, and Betsy 18 years ago, both in winter. I had been there 11 years ago, but the main objective had been to bag Exodus. So nobody could remember very much. The only map we had was a Bivouac Javamap with radius 50 km that I had printed off for the Chimai project. Surprising how useful a sketch map can be!

So we drove up the Squamish main, turned west onto the Elaho main and contined to Mile 41. Here Klaus found a turnoff that seemed to be going the right way.

[As it turns out, this new road goes very close to the historic A300 spur which went up "Maude Frickett" creek (Blanca Creek), but went much further.]

Up and up we went on the switchbacks. Eventually we were at over 1000m, in the midst of all sorts of freshly fallen timber, which had not yet been yarded. We parked at 1062m and I took a GPS reading, so we'd find the car.

It was about 10:00 AM. We headed off into the woods like old time explorers, with only a crude sketch map. We just contoured gradually upward through the trees, heading north. We thought this seemed like the right direction to get somewhere, maybe even Blanca Lakes. As we hiked, we could hear the frenzied whining of chainsaws, and every minute the crash of another old growth tree in a clearcut a few hundred meters south of where we started.

After two hours we hit a little meadow and I took another reading. (see waypoints). From here it was just a bit more forest, where we had lunch, and then we were permanently in the open meadow of some creek (which turns out to be "Maude Frickett" Creek, the creek that drains Blanca Lake).

We followed the creek upward for another 2 hours, thinking it must go somewhere. Up and up we went through increasingly glorious meadows. Each corner we expected to be at the top. Eventually at 2:25 PM we topped out at the outlet of a big lake at 1705m. See Blanca Lake.

Of course we were fairly sure this was one of the Blanca Lakes, but where the others might be we didn't know until we climbed much higher. When we got back to actual maps at home, this lake turns out to be Blanca Lake itself, the largest of the lakes. I had never been to this lake, since one normally passes below it en-route to Exodus Peak..

We set up camp on the flat dirt/moss ridge between Blanca Lake and the tiny lake just to the south. We dozed a bit, then hiked up to the top of the ridge to our south. As we climbed up, one by one various other lakes became visible. As well, Ashlu Peak and the heavily glaciated peaks around it were glistening, sparkling, and shimmering to our west. The surfaces of the distant glaciers were like mirrors.

It was easy to pick out the distinct pyramid of Ashlu peak. We got out the one Bivouac Javamap I had. Since we knew our exact position from the GPS, and we had a compass, we soon lined up the compass on the map with every peak we could see within 50 km in the clear autumn air. Ashlu, Porterhouse, Tinniswood, Wedge, Garibaldi, Sky Pilot and Mamquam, just to name a few.

We then decided to continue on the ridgetops around the lowest of the large lakes. On the western side of this lake Klaus and Betsy were quite surprised to find out it was all volcanic - small black volcanic rocks about baseball size, and then occasional huge white erratic granite boulders deposited on top by later glaciers. Nothing else was volcanic in the area. (Although there are definitely other areas like this at the head of the Elaho).

Next day, we headed up ridge just west of Blanca Lake, and to the bump just north of the lake. Here we tried to climb down into the pass which connects Blanca Lake with a smaller lake to the north. These cliffs proved impossible, preventing us from climbing Blanca peak from that route. So instead we headed north, and got a bit higher on the ridge heading for Exodus Peak, and then had lunch, just slightly higher than our previous peak. From here we could see a spectacular steel blue lake which had just formed to the side of the huge glacier coming down from Exodus Peak. As we had lunch, there were repeated roars as huge blocks of the glacier calved off into the lake. This large lake does not even exist on the maps. It is at 50:14:50-123:28:10 and drains under the glacier into Dipper Creek. It seems to be expanding at a huge rate, judging from the number of pieces that calved off during our lunch. Global warming!

After lunch we headed back down to the lower lake covered bench below our previous bump, bypassing all lakes on the east. While traversing along the eastern shore of "Round Lake" we had to start climbing through a boulder field. This was the first thing I actually recognized in this mysterious area we were in with no maps - I remember the boulders, and singing Leonard Cohen songs.

Once at home with maps and the Bivouac site, I can now see that what I must have done 10 years ago was come up E500 to Round Lake, and camp at the south end. We then headed straight north for Exodus, and thus never saw the actual Blanca Lake..

Back in the present. We were amazed at how clear the lake was from the boulders. You could see way down into the lake, as the boulders continued down. Once we were past the boulders, we climbed slightly and were back at camp.

The fall colors were really beautiful. There were whole hillsides of bright crimson blueberry bushes, which reminded me of the color of the maples in the Maritimes. And beautiful orange and yellow trees. The sun was warm, and we went in for a quick swim in the smallest of the lakes. There were lots of blueberries, and we all ate our fill.

We packed up and headed down. On the way down, we tried to improve our route, but actually made it worse. First of all, we somehow got into a dense tangle of broken trees in an avalanche run that we had largely avoided on our way up. Our main method of navigation was Klaus's "dead reconing" through the forest, with the help of my occasional altimeter readings. I had not taken any GPS readings in the forest on the way up, so we had nothing to compare to except the waypoints for the car. It was usually not possible to get readings in the forest, and anyway we didn't want to waste time. Eventually we came to a deep ravine no-one had seen at 1195m. Here we finally took the time to get a GPS reading, and then do a "go to" with the GPS. It said the car was somehow behind us and a bit below. We had stayed too high and overshot by .5 km. So we battled our way down, and eventually hit the clearcut, and finally back to the car.