Garibaldi: 9km Climb to Utopia

"Hike up to Garibaldi Lake" has been on my bucket list ever since I moved to Vancouver. The first time I saw a picture of the beautiful turquoise-coloured lake, my mind was set on getting there. (Several weeks ago) I finally got to check this off my list!!! Please forgive the extreme procrastination.

I had known that my sister (Haily) was coming visit me about a month before and had planned to do the hike when she was here. The weather towards the beginning of July was fairly temperamental, so I was worried that mother nature wasn't going to cooperate with our plans. Haily must have brought over some sunshine from Toronto ... because summer decided to finally show up when she got here. We were blessed with beautiful weather on the day of the hike and I couldn't be more happy.

The last hike that I did was the Buntzen Lake trail. It only took us a bit over 2 hours round trip, but we were parched and famished by the end of it. Needless to say, it instilled a bit (a lot) of fear in me of running out of food and water. So, I took the liberty of ensuring that hunger and thirst was not going to be a concern. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of our ginormous food/beverage stash. 

As you will have likely inferred from the title of this post, the hike up to the lake was 9 km. Although I was mentally prepared for the distance, I don't think I fully anticipated how tiring it would be. 

After a countless number of deep/random/silly conversations, multiple snack breaks, and many questions of: "are we there yet???", "how much further???", "is this Garibaldi Lake???" ...

... WE MADE IT!!!

IS THIS EVEN REAL???

... but, really ...

IS THIS EVEN REAL???

We hung around the lake for an hour, as we ate our lunches in satisfaction and tested out the frigid, ice-cold water.

This lasted about 12 seconds before I came running back out.
The water was so cold that I thought that I had lost my toes forever.

And, we made some friends ...

His name is Alvin (because that is what I named him).

The thought of hiking back down the mountain was not something I was looking forward to. By that time, my legs were already feeling jello-y and sore. While my glutes really felt the burn on the way up, going down was a different kind of pain. I have bad knees and ankles to begin with, so it doubly sucked for me. If you're thinking that going down is a piece of cake ... YOU ARE WRONG. After what seemed like 5 hours later, we finally reached the bottom!!! 

The whole hike took us around 6 hours to complete (that's round trip). We went at a pretty leisurely pace. I know there are much longer, tougher, and more difficult hikes out there ... but, I still felt a huge sense of accomplishment! The feeling you get when you finally accomplish something you've been meaning to do, is honestly one of the best feelings. Even though I was borderline limping (which goes to show how very fit I am) as we walked the remaining 1 km to where we had parked our car, I felt amazing on the inside. See below for our tired, but happy faces:

YAY WE DID IT!!! 

Now that I've made it to Garibaldi Lake, my next goal is to go back and hike all the way up to Panorama Ridge (which is another 7 km from Garibaldi Lake). One step at a time!

The aftermath. My muscles rejoiced.