Golden Ears Mountain

Yet another trip to a place I haven't been. Me and a couple of friends started the hike up to the golden ears on Monday afternoon. The ascent to the Alder Flats was uneventful and quite easy. We camped for the night in the woods and enjoyed a peaceful evening listening to the sounds of the forest, the stream of the river nearby and the loud planes passing overhead every bloody 10 minutes... We stayed up until about midnight when the rain decided to force us to call it a night.

Sleep was precious as we didn't get much of it. My friend got sick from the food he ate that night and he was up most of the night donating it to the forest... we finally fell asleep when the sun got up...woke up around 11am.

We finally started the ascent to the golden ears around noon and made it to the shelter at 3pm. The climb to the shelter was quite steep but that's what I enjoy the most. The only annoying parts were the sections with loose rocks and the very wet and bushy sections (I prefer my bushes nice and trimmed...thank you very much...). It also rained on us part of the way and the clouds kept opening up more and more as we climbed up, giving us hope that we may actually see something at the top.

Once we got to the ridge before the shelter, we were greeted by fields of purple flowers, a beautiful view of the Indian arm and billions upon billions of these annoying black flies. We could barely stay still for more than a moment without these critters getting into our ears, eyes, nose, mouth...basically any exposed part... I nearly fell a couple of times as I was trying to brush off some flies instead of focusing on the next step.

We finally made it to the shelter. The clouds were circling around us, occasionally giving us a view of one place or another. We stopped for lunch near some snow, where we thought it would be too cold and windy for the lil f*****s to swarm us. We had a bit of a break from them there. We also replenished our supply of water with the cold, cold, delicious water flowing down from the melting snow.

We then decided to head up into the fog to try and reach the peak. That's the part I enjoyed the most. It involved quite a bit of rock climbing and we were always uncertain where the next step should be. The fog kept moving around us and gave us the occasional glipse of what's ahead. The trusty glowing orange path markers kept appearing every time we thought we were lost. We made it all the way to the second to last peak where we decided to stop. The fog got too thick and the clouds haven't moved an inch off the peak for the entire time, so it was pointless to proceed.

We headed back, arrived back at Alder Flats around 7 and camped for the night. Slept like babies this time around. Woke up at 9am, ate, packed and got down to the car by 11:20am. The skies were a perfect blue with only a few white fluffy clouds.... We went for a swim in Allouette Lake and soaked in some rays before heading home.

Third trip in the last 2 weeks or so where the clouds were hiding brand new views from my thirsty eyes....why do you mock me so mother nature!!!???