This morning, we woke up at 7AM, packed up camp, and drove over to the Co-op gas station at around 8am. Across the street from the gas station, we ate breakfast at Cruiser’s Grill. I ordered an omelette with extra cheese which was very delicious and filled up the tank for the day ahead.
At 11:30AM, the entire Meetup Group met up at the Co-op gas station for the upcoming weekend camping trip. Here is the Meetup event link. The event attendees were as follows:
- Michel Pinault (Retired from the Canadian army)
- Kannae (International student from Japan)
- Tyler Moore (plumber/entrepreneur)
- Kate Hamm (attorney and videographer)
- Neil (Machinist who recently moved to Victoria)
- Rand Park
- Julie Tremblay (Event coordinator and fitness/health enthusiast)
- Sarah Ross (Landscaper who moved to Victoria from Ireland a couple years ago)
- Wiebke (Legal assistant who moved to Victoria from Germany 8 years ago)
After a brief pre-trip meeting, we drove to the trailhead which is located about 15 minutes off of the highway, accessible via a graded dirt road. This page has a useful map showing the location of the trailhead. We then began hiking the unexpectedly strenuous three hours to the saddle between Mt Cokely and Mt Arrowsmith. The trail wasn’t too long, but was steeply climbing uphill for most of the way. Since I was expecting a relatively easy hike, I was accustomed to hiking with a much lighter daypack, and it was a very hot day, the hike up to the saddle was a bit difficult. During the hike, I remember thinking that Julien and Rachel definitely made the right decision not to join us on this hike because of the level of difficulty. We arrived at the saddle a few hours into the hike, and ascended another 5-10 minutes toward Mt Arrowsmith to the camping area.
Because it was still just 4PM, we all definitely wanted to hike and explore some more before nightfall. Kate, Kanai, Julie, Neil, Tyler and I decided to hike down to the Jewel Lake, which was a few hundred meters below the camping area. After searching for the trail for about 30 minutes, we finally found a rough, yet marked trail which steeply descended via switchbacks to Jewel Lake. Jewel lake is stunning and the water was perfectly refreshing. We each took turns jumping in, and then swam altogether to the middle of the lake for a few minutes. We also chatted with a solo-backpacker who was camped on the shores of Jewel Lake. He mentioned that instead of retracing our steps back to our camping area, we could complete a loop on the ridge above Jewel Lake, which would take us about an hour to complete. In addition to the stunning views from the ridge, we would also be passing through the site of a crashed airplane from the 1950s. We we were sold on the ridge loop hike and were excited for what awaited us. The loop hike featured many long-distance views of the Salish Sea, views of the lake below, walking across snow patches and walking across snow-melt rivers. After about an hour of hiking, we arrived back on the same ridge where our camping area was located. We were immediately faced with a beautiful late-afternoon view toward the direction of the trailhead.
When we arrived back at camp, we set up our tents, ate dinner, and had interesting group conversations with a backdrop of an incredible sunset view. After a few hours of interesting conversations, I went to sleep at around 11PM.
