On Saturday July 30th, Sandy and I hiked up Black Tusk. You can check out the complete set of Black Tusk Photos. Description of the area is at the bcadventure web site. I've been wanting to do this hike for years, but just never seemed to get to it until now.
The trip is roughly in 5 stages. First up is a wooded hike from the Rubble Creek parking lot to Taylor Meadows. Distance is 7.5K, elevation gain 915 metres and estimated time is 3-4 hours. Next phase is the ascent up to the base of Black Tusk, 7K, 850 metres and 2-3 hours. Once at the bottom of Black Tusk, we'd try to find "the chimney" and decide whether to climb up it. The description of the last bit of the tusk " Only those who are properly equipped and experienced should attempt climbing the Tusk. The ascent of the last 100 metres is by a rock "chimney", and must be negotiated very carefully. Beware of falling rocks."
Given the estimated times of 5-7 hours to get to black tusk, 5-7 hours return, adding in meal breaks and climb up to the top, we knew we were in for a pretty busy day. We decided to plan for a late return by starting early and bringing headlights.
Of course, no plan survives contact with reality. We planned to leave my place at 7am, and then a quick 10 minute stop for coffee/breakfast/sandwich pickup. Sandy arriving late and then sandwich people took forever, which meant we got on the road at 7:45 am. A very enjoyable drive up the sea-to-sky highway including a McGriddle stop in Squamish took us 90 minutes. We hit the trailhead at Rubble Creek at 9:30 am and we set a pretty fast pace to start. We do the grouse grind a lot so the hike was quite comfortable by comparison. It's a gorgeously wide and smooth trail. We could comfortably walk side by side and chat. There's a section of about 10 switchbacks that was pretty neat.
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We arrived at Taylor Meadows at 11:15 am, so clearly the day was going faster than expected. The meadows is a beautiful, well, meadow.
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We pressed on to "outhouse junction", where the trail splits to go up to black tusk or to Panorama Ridge. We arrived at 11:45, so we thought we'd stop for lunch, a water refill. Sandy brought a water filter and pump, so we didn't have to lug up as much water as we'd actually need. We'd gone through a liter of water each, so we refilled one of the liters at the stream.
Nothing like hiking in an alpine meadow smelling the flowers. Many of the wildflowers were out in bloom, such as Lupine.
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12:30 we left to do the push to the base of Black Tusk. The landscape changed dramatically as we went from alpine meadows above the treeline and into the scree.
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Very stark with just rock and snow and mountains, but fab views down to Garibaldi lake.
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It was tough slogging up the scree, very slippery. The grouse grind training paid off again and we arrived at the bottom of Black Tusk at 1pm.
The chimney lived up to expectations.
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I'm petrified of heights, so this became one of those "personal accomplishment" things. At one point I got a little stuck. There's a shelf you have to climb up and over. A really nice lady behind me helped direct my left and right feet (you can't really see below you!) and thing progressed.
At 1:20, we arrived at the top! Wow, what a view!
The camera's Panorama view came in quite handy. Sandy had a bit of a space time continuum problem - you can see 2-3 different versions of him in the picture!
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Climbing down was actually easier, because you can face down the mountain and easily use your arms to hold yourself while you move your feet. At the very bottom, Sandy helped place my feet in the last few feet.
Hiking up scree was not fun, so we decided we'd try a different route that involved skiing down snow and scree. A bit of a tentative start going down the scree, then we just went hell bent for leather in our own little min-avalanches.
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Down and up some snow, produced some great action shots.
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Outhouse junction was reached at about 3 pm. We thought about doing Panorama ridge, but our feet and legs were starting to hurt a bit, so we opted to go to Garibaldi lake. We arrived at the lake at about 3:30 pm and enjoyed chilling our feet in the water and a date square.
We left Garibaldi lake for the 9K return trip at 4:15 pm. There were some really pretty lakes and streams on the way down.
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All told, 9 hours from door to door, covering about 33K horizontal and 1.8K vertical. Black Tusk is definitely the best hike that I've been on in the Vancouver area. As a day trip, it's definitely a challenge, but the rewards are stupendous.