7/23/16: Joffre Lakes Provincial Park (Upper Lake to Glacier to Trailhead)

This morning, I woke up at about 7AM after a night of sporadic periods of sleep and lying awake.  Because it didn’t seem like anyone else would be awakening soon, I walked up the slope toward the glacier, hoping to find a crossing point where I wouldn’t need to cross barefoot in the ice-cold water.  The attempt resulted in a successful, yet inconveniently-long 30-minute detour around river.  I headed to the outhouse to use the restroom and strolled back to the campsite at around 9AM.

When everyone awoke and ate breakfast, we decided to hike to the Mountain peak surrounding the Upper Joffre Lake basin.  While crossing the river, I fell down on a sharp rock and stopped my fall with the palm of my hand, which led to a painful puncture in my skin and possibly even a fracture.  I’ll be visiting a clinic for an x-ray within the next couple of days.

Instead, we ended up wandering to a dead-end cliff face.  At that point, we just decided to to climb up to the glaciers above the lake.  We slowly ascended the steep slope, which was often covered in loose rocks.  Eventually, we arrived at the glacier which provided a close-up view of the thick, light-blue, monumental expanses of ice.  Facing Upper Joffre Lake, we had an amazing view of not only Upper Joffre Lake, but also Middle and Lower Joffre Lakes.  It was an incredible view to experience, especially when surrounded by the constant sound of the numerous streams flowing down the length of the entire rock slope into Upper Joffre Lakes.

After my fall and minor injury this morning, I began thinking about the parallels that can be drawn between walking on rocks in order to cross a river.  Here are some of the comparisons:

• Stepping across “Rocks”= The next-action steps we take in working toward our goals
• “Strength and muscle” in climbing over the rocks = “talent and wisdom” in accomplishing our goals
• Reaching the destination across the river = Accomplishing your goal
• Impatience/Rushing across the rocks (Higher risk of failure, but could still work) = Hurriedly trying to reach your goals (higher risk of failure, but could still work)
• Taking a few minutes to scope out the rocks and plan your way across = Taking an adequate of time to think about your goals, plan them out, and be clear on how you’ll achieve them
• Reaching an uncrossable point/falling into the water = relapsing/failing in reaching your goal
• If you rush across rocks and are reckless, some rocks might be unstable, slippery, and stop you from being able to cross = If you rush in reaching your goal unintelligently, you will put yourself in a position where you might be prone to pitfalls, relapses, because of the additional pressure

Lessons:

• Take the time to plan how you’ll achieve your goals (how you’ll cross the river).  Don’t just quickly run over rocks and hope that the way you’re choosing will be clear. By moving, you’re risking injury, falling into the water, etc.
• It’s not the most talented/wise people that reach their goals… Often times, it’s the patient, well-planning people that do

After we descended to the campsite, the group had a discussion about whether we should camp another night or drive back to Vancouver tonight.  We decided to drive back to Vancouver, which was my personal preference.  Our decision was heavily influenced by an Ironman Triathlon which would be closing access to the road to Vancouver until at least 4PM in the afternoon.  Also taking into account the traffic from additional cars also waiting to drive home at exactly 4PM, we would have to expect to arrive home Sunday night at 12AM if we were to stay an additional day.  Therefore, we just opted to hike down to the trailhead at 7:30PM.  We reached the trailhead at 9PM, and were back in Vancouver by 12AM.  Since I didn’t have a hotel reserved, I’m currently pulling an all-nighter at the Time Horton’s in New Westminster Station.

Additional photos of Joffre Lakes Trip from other group members: