Quick evening hike up the Stawamus Chief, Squamish
I had intended to get an earlier ferry over to the mainland, but there was too much to do at home. Oh well, it is what it is. I arrived at the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park parking lot, just outside Squamish, at 3:30 pm, and got on the trail as quickly as I could. The Explore Squamish website said that it is a 2-3 hour hike (return) to the First Peak, but that fast hikers might do it in less. I had one hour to sunset.
I had nothing to prove, so there was no point in me risking anything. It is mid-January after all, and even a minor fall late in the day could mean a night on the mountain (and therefore become life-threatening). I had a headlamp with me, and a spare flashlight. I’d see if I could make the summit in an hour – if I wasn’t near it by then, I would reassess.
The trail was steep right from the start! Lots of stairs – but big, high, steep stairs, not like your regular household stairs – made of wood, concrete or hewn boulders of granite! Near the end there were a few metal ladders and chains, to get up the steep stuff (and the last few hundred metres, on bare rock, kind of freaked me out – especially when I turned around to go back down and saw how high and exposed I was!) but it was a totally fun hike.
The sun had set by the time I made the summit, but I still had great views of the town of Squamish and of Mount Garibaldi. I took 58 minutes going up, spent 4 minutes at the top, and actually took as long hiking down – 59 minutes – by headlamp!
Jacqueline Windh 