Semaphore Lakes and Locomotive Mountain
Semaphore Lakes and Locomotive Mountain 24th September 2021
0700 on a Friday, bright and early at Rob and Sheila’s place to move packs into the 4*4 cars for the four hours or so drive up to the Hurley FSR. 2WD will do the job but it was a bit of a bouncy road. Stopped at Squamish and Pemberton on the way up. There were ten of us on this trip in seven tents and three cars. Culinary high point was pre hike cookies, ingredients including fresh pear, white chocolate, cardamom, and lime zest. Straight out of The Guardian.
Friday was beautiful weather for the short, mainly uphill, hike through forest to the camp site. See the route here. With tents pitched, on carefully selected high and dry ground in view of the weather forecast, we split into two groups, one to scout out the trail for Saturday’s trip up Locomotive and the other group to check out the waterfall. After the exploration we all met up by some handy rocks away from the camp site to cook dinner. Later, the moonlight on the glaciers and rock face was a spectacular sight.
Saturday dawned bright and clear and off we went, crossing a creek and a boulder field, making our way uphill across jumbled scree following the line of a creek. Again we split into groups when the going became a bit tough with exposure, some hikers electing to wait until the larger group returned from higher elevations. Locomotive Mountain has a high point of 5,440 feet/1,659m so certainly provides a view on the approach to the summit.
We ended up looking down on glaciers and along the Pemberton Valley as well as to distant peaks, definitely worth the walk for the view. We stopped short of the summit as poor weather was in the forecast and we wanted to be able to cook and eat in daylight. We regrouped and made our way back to our tents, rigging tarps to be prepared for breakfast the next day. Here is the route we took.
We then spent the night listening to torrential rain and hearing the tents flapping wildly despite our best efforts. Packed up in the rain on Sunday morning, the walk back to the cars was largely dry, well, damp at the edges but it did brighten up.
We saw no sign of bears, neither prints nor scat but did see some cute marmots. The waterfall expedition was lucky enough to see snow or ice crystals blowing over the escarpment with the sun behind them, an awe inspiring sight that eluded photographic capture. A few brave trees were attempting to create forest in the high Alpine but were almost outnumbered by the flowers.
This was an amazing weekend, camping pretty much at the treeline so the whole day was spent without the usual over and under trees and avoiding tree roots. The campsite with surrounding mountains was in a breathtaking location, this was a truly wonderful BC weekend smoothly put together by Sheila. We will certainly return here.
