These are the Days of our Lives
Just a bit of Opera in the mountains, image by Iain
Iain writes:-
After venturing into Brandywine Meadows many years ago and having seen the mountain I’d always wanted to reach Brandywine Summit - this was that trip. The weather forecast wasn’t looking great for Saturday 17th September, cloud was promised and low temperatures. We dithered about doing the trip on Sunday, with a solid sunshine forecast, but in the end stuck to the plan and we were richly rewarded.
Seven of us were in Michelle’s and Rob/Sheila’s 4WD high clearance vehicles, it’s about an hour each way on the logging road and the last 3.3kms has major water bars. Good driving job all round. Bit of a surprise at the end as the parking lot was nearly full, UBC Glacier Course. The advantage of getting to the upper parking lot was that the hike tothe meadows is “laughably short” and indeed it was. It’s a long, level walk then through the meadows to the end of the valley, following the creek, passing a lot of tents before turning left to head up a talus slope - which was near vertical in parts. and pretty slippery. The slope ends at a saddle before the route turns north for a mix of scrambling and ridge walking with some exposure, not for the faint of heart.. Route finding was a bit tricky. All the way we were watching the weather, the summits were always clear and the views just got better and better as we got higher.
We paused short of the summit to check if we were all OK for heading to the top, figured we had plenty of time to get up, down and then out on the road before darkness, so off we went for the final 45 minute push to the top, definitely some scrambling on the way up.
As The Who might say, “we could see for miles and miles and miles”. The weather was unusual, no haze from smoke, no heat haze, just endless visibillity on a 360degree arc, a plethora of glaciers and a cornucopia of nunataks . This was a rare day in the mountains. At the summit (2213m, 7260 feet) the sun came out, Vancouver Opera sprang into action and sang to the mountains, truly something special.
These are the mountain days of which we dream, the soggy mess that was Lost Lake is but a distant memory and we take this hike as being one of the best. What a joy to share it with a crowd of happy hikers. (we were happy at Lost Lake, just wet!)
See a brief video here and a slightly longer one can be found at the end of this link
See the route details here from Iain’s Garmin GPSMAP66sr
