Remembering The North: An Encounter With A Glacier

Even though we have lived in the famous cold and gray of Canada for the last five years, we have yet to see a single Glacier up close. So we decide to round out our Northern experience in October by booking a Parkbus ride to Pemberton, close to two hundred kilometers from Metro Vancouver, to meet the Matier Glacier, which sits on top of Mount Matier, which in turn is one of several peaks housed at Joffre Lakes Park.  

Named after a French general, Joffre Lakes Park should have been named after the fictional King Joffrey Baratheon instead.  It is a “moderate” hike, according to mountaineering experts I can only describe as sadistic as K.J.B himself. Though I am not a novice climber, I will have to disagree with this rating. The hike can get strenuous, and the terrain makes it even more challenging for beginners and not-so-beginners alike. 

The journey begins at Burrard Station, a popular hub for many tourists buses going out of town. We cross the street to the Chinabank building, where a big white bus is already waiting at the bus stop. The uniformed driver offers the most important piece of information any traveler will ever need: that there is a clean washroom at the Starbucks inside the Hyatt Hotel, unofficially available for Parkbus customers to use and re-use before the trip. We are later told that the washroom inside the bus will only be available for emergencies, and this is how, throughout the trip, we all got to know one passenger quite intimately as he made his way down the aisle to the far end of the bus and closing the latch in several sorry attempts (three, to be exact) to keep his private business to himself. 

At around 8:30, the bus is full and pulls out of Burrard. It is amazing that there are still so many people in this world not wanting to sit out the gloomy Raincouver™ weather with a steaming cup of coffee in their cozy living rooms instead.  

The check-in lady’s voice comes out strong from the speakers as she asks if we have sufficiently caffeinated ourselves for the trip. I keep quiet as people around me holler enthusiastic yays: my reason for stopping by Starbucks that morning was my own private business.  

It’s a relaxing and relatively uneventful ride on the Sea to Sky Highway, except when passengers whip out their cellphones to record their windows when Howe Sound or some such natural beauty emerges from out of the gray, in which case I’m compelled to shift in my seat and also look out my window in a show of quiet solidarity.  

In Squamish, the lady takes to the microphone once more and gives a little quiz about the name of the waterfalls that we are about to see. I shout Shannon Falls and she shouts back that I’m right. Right on cue, the waterfalls emerges on our right side, its long, cascading veil collecting in a pool down the rock. The falls is beautiful, but it is the rock she is on that leaves me awestruck. It looks like one of those majestic rocks you’d see in California’s Yosemite National Park. The granitic nature of the landscape has made the vertical cleavages running down its surface look deeper and darker, speaking to the land’s violent beginnings. It is the only thing on earth that truly gets more beautiful with age: one hundred million years old and counting.  

One and a half hours later, we find ourselves in Whistler. The bus has made a stop, and people are getting off to grab some snacks from the grocery and go for a washroom break. No snowcaps on Whistler’s mountains just yet, but still, they look magnificent: close, yet far away. Whistler is memorable for introducing us to what actual mountain snow feels like, for the very first time in our lives. I remember my son running out of the bus and throwing himself on the first snow pile that he saw on the street when we first visited this place in 2019.

With memories full and bladders empty, we are back on the bus, heading towards Pemberton.  

Pemberton is dotted with ramshackle farm houses, hoop houses with holes where some of the greenhouse film has torn apart, cars overgrown with foliage, and no people walking about. In 2010, the summit of one of its mountains collapsed, causing a major rock avalanche (in fact, the biggest one in Canada’s history) which dammed a creek and pooled about three million cubic meters of water that threatened to wash the whole valley away. Miraculously, the waters eventually drained on their own, but it felt like that cataclysmic event had also drained whatever life had once been there in the valley. Its desolation has a cinematic quality that has stayed with me today.  

After that, the distractions disappear and only the highway now stands between us and certain suffering. At this point, the highway is now called the Duffey Lake Road even though we have been on the same road for the last three hours: I guess it’s a Canadian thing (off tangent: Sanders Street where we live turns to Hazel Street at a point. My readings point to urban sprawl connecting already-named streets together and lazy residents that couldn’t be bothered to memorize new information as some of the reasons for this strange phenomenon).  

I have now become so ensconced in my seat that I feel like I’m about to turn into the cushion. Then the bus suddenly makes a left turn to an empty lot in the middle of nowhere… 

Finally! 

About a five minute walk across Duffey Lake Road is the main parking lot and an outpost marking the trailhead, manned by two park rangers who are already looking too tired to smile. About ten more minutes in, you will see the first sign of just how amazing this place is: the turquoise waters of The Lower Lake, the first of the three glacial lakes on the trail, which will elicit oohs and ahhs, if not from yourself, then from other less jaded hikers following along.  

I cannot get over the color of the lake. A few feet from the lake’s edge stands a little marker explaining the phenomenon: silt from the Glacier collects in the lake as “rockflour,” so powdery fine that it absorbs the purple and indigo wavelengths from sunlight and transforms the water into a gorgeous liquid jewel literally set in stone.  

The next set of oohs and ahhs going forward will surely emanate from yourself, as you groan your way through pain and suffering towards ever-climbing altitude, or so it feels like. Online intel from the K.J.Bs of the mountaineering world will dutifully inform you that there is only 400 meters of elevation gain from all this non-stop climbing – not nearly enough to justify calling the hike “difficult.” Here I am, whining again… 

As we make the push towards Middle Lake, we feel the mountain tilting ever steeply until it feels like (at least for me) almost vertical in places. Several times I have to grab onto my husband’s arm for support as I step and nearly slip on slabs of rock that form a natural stairway along the trail. We see a few bald spots on the mountain face, telling of past avalanches and the ever-present possibility of a new one as we walk on.  

We are amazed by the grey jays constantly flying around us, too closely, I thought – hovering like impatient winged guides. At first, we find this cute and take photos of them alighting on some tree branch and appearing to regard us with wonder. Later, I find out that they are in fact regarding us in hunger. When a fellow climber takes out a chocolate bar to eat, a grey jay suddenly swoops in to steal it away. After hearing quite a few violent objections to this highway robbery, we decide not to take out any food from our backpacks for the duration of the hike.

It is a terrible decision to make, especially after reaching the Middle Lake, where the temperature has dropped to about two degrees and feels like minus twenty due to the wind. My daughter and I call it quits: the Upper Lake will have to wait some other time. But our son is nowhere to be found. He has already gone ahead of us to check out the Upper Lake, and with all phones out of coverage, he needs to be fetched in person. My husband takes to the task and asks us to stay put.  

Which is a terrible advice to give to cold people. My daughter and I keep moving, walking to and fro, putting our hands in each other’s pockets for a bit of warmth, enough to last us one photo, and another, and another, as hungry grey jays and at one point, an adorable-looking pika darting to and fro a rock, provide some entertainment.  

After what seems like forever, we are reunited with our son and make our way back to the trailhead together. At elevation, we are able to behold the beauty of the valley below: the tall cedar, spruce and fir trees needling the landscape; the trail snaking down along the mountain, whose rocky guts have spilled out in several places, sutured by piles of fallen logs; the sight of people as happy as me to be out in Nature, the only Church on earth truly worth anyone’s Sunday.