After about eight months of hiatus, I’m going to make another hiking post. Yay!
My legs, not as happy.
There’s a few options for snow-free hiking in BC at this time of the year. I’m not that fond of tourist traps, so we tend to really go off to more remote places. We were supposed to do an overnight hike in the Stein Valley provincial park, which is a nice, flat hike for a few km (if you approach it from the eastern side) with wilderness camping options. We hadn’t gone in a few years and there is a nice restaurant just along the highway from the park.
The recurring joke is that we don’t actually like to hike, we like to eat. So we hike to get hungry and then we feast like kings.
Anyway, household chores and everyone else (except me) needing to work made it impossible for us to plan anything but a day hike. So we decided to hit The Chief.
This, of course, is a “tourist trap.” Which is the main reason why I’ve never gone to it, despite being a quintessential “hiking must” for everyone and their mother. I was also getting tired of saying “No” when people ask if we’ve ever hiked the Chief. “But we’ve done an 18 km hike in the middle of nowhere and half the hike was a fucking slope LOOK I HAVE THE SCARS TO PROVE IT!” just kind of falls flat on people’s ears. You’ve never hiked the Chief? You’re not extreme enough! So we were like fuck it, let’s do this, and then just to prove we weren’t wimps, we’re doing the 3rd peak when everyone else is doing the 1st. Take that, people who couldn’t care less what we do!
So we geared up, and drove to the trailhead. Tourist trap annoyance #1: parking. We had to park at the Rock Climbers’ area and then walk an extra km to get to the trailhead.
I made the mistake of carrying my son up the first 500 meters from the trailhead, which is full of steep–really steep–stairs that just never seemed to stop. Now, normally, this isn’t a problem for me: I’ve done this a lot. But my almost 4-year-old had gained about 10 lbs (I’m exaggerating, I’m sure it’s less, but it sure felt like it) in the last year, and the last time I carried him was on a flat snowshoeing trip a few months ago that felt like it went on forever. By the end of that 500 meters, I felt like my chest was being bludgeoned by a blunt axe and I was getting nausea and heartburn. I was seriously considering just doing the 1st peak, which is kind of a first for me–a part of me doubted I could take another step.
My husband had to take over. After a few minutes’ rest, I felt a little better, and walked the rest of the pain off. We decided to continue on to the 3rd peak, as previously planned.
The views were pretty good. Lots of very minor scrambling up the rocky slopes, but nothing we’ve done before. We did a little loop, taking the south trail up, and then the northern trail back down, and this is where I was in for a bit of a shock: the last time I had read trail reports for this route was years ago. I had completely forgotten the part with the chains and the fucking metal ladder on the side of the cliff.
I almost missed the ladder while sliding down the rock slope. I was thinking, Hey, I’m sure there’s a rough patch of rock my feet can grab. No? No? Oh shit. It was a very anti-climactic slide, of course–I think an ant outran me at one point. But it was still pretty scary when you’re like an inch away from the chain and there’s nothing stopping you from going straight into a 10? 15? foot drop.
I giggled nervously, told my cousin nearby that I think I’m falling and could she please grab my hiking stick and loop it around the chain. She did that, and holding on to both sides of the stick, I heaved myself across the rock face and grabbed the chain with both hands. Then I was able to go down the ladder like normal. There were more chains and rocks and shit like that, but it was all fun except for the part where my mom repeatedly tried to call us while we were dangling down and got mad because we wouldn’t answer. “Are you guys sleeping?”
Umm, no.
A bit later, we got back to the car, and our favourite Mexican/chicken place was closing early. Us and about three other parties (quite probably also coming back from a hike) screamed in the parking lot, and we ended up “feasting” about an hour and a half and three cities away at the closest Church’s Chicken restaurant.
