The plan, made weeks in advance, was to head off to Wedgemount Lake this past Sunday. We'd all trained hard all summer with some long 20-30k 10 hours hikes and were excited to finish off the season with another one we'd never done.

Unfortunately, the weather report didn't cooperate. Rain was forecast. We debated the night before, knowing full well that reports on the west coast don't mean much - many times we'd gone on so-called ‘rainy days' only to have full sunshine.

Nevertheless, given the fact that we wanted nice views and didn't particularly want to do any scrambling in the rain, we reluctantly made up our minds to do our backup hike, Elfin Lakes.
(I see now that the weather wasn't THAT bad up at Wedgemount, but probably was the best choice for us at the time)

We left Vancouver at a very leisurely 8am, stopped for coffee at Galileo's and hit the trail at around 10:30. After carefully driving our 2WD's over that, um, not-so-smooth road, we reached the upper parking lot which was almost full - including tonnes of bugs.
One of our group members decided to mountain bike it. We laughed at him on the way up, but not on the way down! I really need to try this.

I'd only been here once in the winter, and even then only up to paul ridge. What was a 3 hours ski up in the winter turned out to be a 1.5 hour hike. It was really easy. We barely even broke a sweat, except for a few places. We met lots of people on their way down from the weekend, but also quite a few heading up for the day as well.

I couldn't believe how different Red Heather and Paul ridge were in Summer. It was like a completely different scene. In winter, I remember resting my skis on the shelter roof, due to the snow being so high. Now, the outhouse required a climb up stairs!


Red Heather shelter and outhouse without the snow



...and a comparison from the winter

The trail split into bike and hiking trails. Mr. Bike decided to join us on the hiking trail and just walked it up (we'd all walk down the bike trail on the way back to check it out - bike trail is definitely more rocky and annoying). It was definitely the smoother of the trails, although maybe a bit steeper. After about 1k, the trails joined up again and it was an easy hour or so more to the lakes and cabin.


Just after the hiking trail splits from the cycling trail, on Paul Ridge



The combined trail on the ridge - pretty cloudy view that day!



The trail just before the lakes.



The lakes and cabin


And of course, what's one of my trail reports without a pano:
http://photosynth.net/view/6b1d2061-...2-af50e3c05eb0

The cabin was a welcome break, as the temp was getting quite chilly. The few people that were there left and we had it all to ourselves. There was a bit of construction going on there: it seems that Bc parks is building some new tent pads near the lake. The cabin has some (new?) electric lighting as well as a (new?) heater timing system where you can set it up to 12 hours and the heater will automatically turn on and off maintaining a temp of 20 degrees.

We enjoyed our lunches and began our trek back. Luckily for me, I took all my photos on the way up. On the way down, the rain began as a drizzle and progressively got worse - it was a fairly wet 2.5 hour trek down - without as much of a view. Kind of eerie with the fog actually.


The foggy/rainy trek down.


Total hiking time: 6~ hours. Definitely an easy one in the summer.

Now, maybe wedgemount will cooperate next week?

Good for you, Gimmesnow.

Earlir in the season hiked to Elfin Lakes on snow as it was a backup hike for our Rainbow Mountain trip in June. Wedgemount Lake was our trip for Sunday, and our group agreed to chance it which paid off for us. I have been to Elfin at least 4 times on snow, and yet to get there snow free.

K

Rarely see this in summer. Interesting moving the camp ground closer to the lake. Most camp near the cabin in winter anyways. More campers might use the cabin just for cooking or hanging out evenings during the summer. I'm interested in trying out winter biking in the park.

Oh wow, that's what it looks like without snow!

thinking of an overnighter at Elfin but idea of construction gives me second thought- outdoor peace and hammering dont mix well... did it seem to you like a lot of work going on when you were there? or anyone else been up in the past week?