Four Lakes - Sat June 17, 2023
Sheila writes:
Twelve of our club members set out on this hike early on Saturday June 17, meeting at the trailhead in Squamish at about 8:45 am. Parking is in a residential area at the North end of Perth Drive in Squamish, where there is room for about 20 cars. Anyone else wishing to do this route or any of the trails here, would be wise to arrive early, as the trails are popular and are shared with mountain bikers, trail bikers, trail runners and dog walkers. Despite this sharing of the trails with lots of people we found everyone to be courteous and friendly.
The trail is actually a string of several trails, which combined, form a loop of about 14 km of fairly easy walking/hiking. We started heading North on the Mashiter trail, cut off on the Tracks From Hell trail, joined the actual Four Lakes Trail at the first lake (Edith Lake), followed the Four Lakes Trail through the Alice Lake Provincial park to Fawn Lake, around Stump Lake, past views of the Cheekye River, to Alice Lake campground, around Alice Lake, and then heading South and East back to our original trailhead via Jack’s Trail and the Perth Service Road trail. There is a moderate grade going up at the start of the hike on the Mashiter trail, and a moderate grade up on the last 2 km of trail/road as well. The rest was undulating grades and wound through pretty wooded vistas and lake views. Any of the four lakes make good stopping points. We stopped at the Alice Lake Day Use area for our lunch where there are washrooms, running water, dozens of well-maintained picnic tables, and a beach further past the picnic tables. The South trails are shared by mountain bikers and intersected by several other trails, while the trails in the Provincial Park portion of the route are for hikers and walkers only and are quite peaceful and relaxing.
The trip took only about 4 hours to complete including stops for views, snacks and lunch. The weather stayed dry and wasn’t too hot. All our members enjoyed the hike and the company.
One other point to mention is that there are so many intersecting trails at some parts of the route that it is handy to have a GPS-based route finding app with you (such as “All Trails”) to avoid doing a lot of backtracking.
Iain’s GP route - https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/11366939935
Edith Lake, one hour into the walk. Image by Iain
Image by Tamsin
Image by Tamsin
Image by Tamsin
Image by Tamsin
Striding out along the trail - image by Tamsin
And again… - image by Tamsin
Plants growing on partly-submerged logs, creating "floating gardens"at Stump Lake near Squamish. Image by Rob.
Yellow Pond Lilies floating and blooming on Stump Lake. Image by Rob.
View of Fawn Lake. Image by Rob.