The next morning we woke to a toasty sun-warmed tent, had breakfast and packed a day bag. We'd found a scramble in our guide book that we wanted to try - it was a ten hour round trip but it was out and back, so we could turn around any time.
We set out east along the lake. The mountain to our left had a glacier on top and its meltwaters were coming down in lots of small streams that allowed a wildflower meadow to flourish all over the mountain side. We stuck to the path through the meadows to the end of the lake and hiked up the rocks to the foot of the glacier.
I've never seen a glacier up close in real life. It was incredible. It was spilling down the valley, carrying jagged rocks, boulders, and pebbles, all irregular shapes and sharp angles, freshly plucked from the mountain - yet to be smoothed by rivers and oceans. The cracks and craters in the ice made patterns of curved lines and circles. Glacial till (rock dust so fine that it looks like grey powdered chalk) comes down on top of the ice and collects in groves and channels, giving the ice a dirty appearance. It was clearly a scene in motion but the movement of ice and rocks too slow to observe. The water was faster - it trickled and gushed from various under-ice streams which came together at the foot of the glacier and emerge from a clean blue ice cave to form a blue-green silty lake. Little icebergs floated on the lake but were melted by the time the water spilled over into a fast flowing stream that ran into the much larger Wedgemount Lake.
The sun was hot but the air coming off the glacier was cool. We set off uphill, passing the glacier on our right. After a few minutes of walking on rocks, we came upon a small trickling stream and realised we were on rocks that were in a stream that was on top of the glacier! We could see the ice under the flowing water. Oh god, is this safe? We hopped off an overhanging ice ledge to more solid ground and carried on.
We walked and scrambled our way up the valley and a stream - fast flowing and braided on the steep rocky slope. A lot of the rocks shifted a bit under foot, the hillside nothing more than a steep boulder field on the surface. At the top of the stream, we scrambled up a nice little section of solid rock, a welcome change from the boulders, and sat for some food in the hot sun overlooking the glacier.
We had reached another small lake and the foot of another glacier that we were to pass to continue up to the ridge. We started walking past the glacier but found ourselves on its terminal morraine, sinking up to our ankles in soft muddy till. Ahhh! Back to the rocks! Phew.
Another route took us a less muddy but no more stable way past the glacier. I looked up at the slope we were supposed to scramble. It didn't look safe. A steep slope comprised of boulders that were clearly on their way down. We heard a few cracks from the ice and saw miniature rock slides and tiny sections of steep banks tumble down. A landscape on the move.
We started up the slope on a section of firmly attached bedrock, but soon had to tackle the loose stuff. Even the huge rocks often wobbled or shifted and it didn't feel safe. I sat on a relatively stable rock and thought about how far it was to the nearest piece of terra firma. Can we go back please? Dave seemed happy with the decision and we started picking our way slowly back down. Down is always harder than up and we took our time, back across the bedrock, across the rocks, avoiding the soft morraine this time. And we had another snack stop at the top of our friendly stream with a view of Wedgemount Lake and glacier, feeling almost safe again.
On the way down, the hot sun was getting to us and we stopped in a pool for an icy swim. Then back down to the first glacier and its iceberg lake. There was a man on one of the icebergs and as we got closer, we could see he was wearing a suit, sunglasses and posh shoes... and there was a camera man and a crew there too. The camera man was stood in the icy water with nothing on his legs! Apparently they were shooting for a mobile phone advert. The suited man was posing on the iceberg, mobile phone in hand and the juxtaposed scene was quite striking. We chatted to a crew member for a few minutes then stuck around because I was curious to see how he got off the iceberg. They finished shooting and the camera man waded out to the iceberg and the fellow in the suit climbed on his back for a piggy back to shore! Not so dignified now.
Back down through the wildflower meadow then up to camp to drop off our stuff and head to the lake for another swim, having worked up a sweat on the descent.
That evening we saw the orange glow of the sunset and got ready for bed. We watched the moonrise again from the tent - this time the moon was bright, shining white. We looked for a flattened edge where it should have been waning, but she still looked full.
The next morning we had to get back down the rock-root stairway of a trail to the car. A few mosquitos followed us down and we negotiated the tricky descent whilst swatting at our shoulders. It took a lot of concentration so there wasn't much chat for the three and a half hour walk!
Once back on the road, we drove to Pemberton in the hope it was more pleasant than the tourist-infested, new-built, fast-food centre of Whistler 'village'. And it was. We had showers in the quiet leisure centre, put a load of laundry on and went for a tasty lunch before stocking up on supplies and heading back out.
We had a one night car camping layover at Nairn Falls before hitting the backcountry again with (very slightly) fresher legs. This time we were heading for Garibaldi Lake, where we could camp for three nights and pack in a few day hikes to peaks and glaciers.
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