CANADA IV: HOW I CLIMBED “THE CHIEF”
- coupkovasvatava
- May 18, 2018
- 3 min read
Yesterday I climbed The Chief. The Chief is a big rock. I mean a single rock. It is the second largest granite monolith in the world (the first is much better known Uluru in Australia). It was formed a long time ago under the surface and later on pushed up. It now sticks 702 metres above sea level (or the waters of Howe Sound, which is actually the southernmost fjord in the north hemisphere) and it is hard work to get up. It involves gaining 550 metres on something over 2 kilometres, a lot of scrambling, a few chains, one ladder… and a lot of will. We decided to avoid tourists again so instead of climbing the first peak (which was not the peak for us), we climbed the third one. Fortunately there was a doggie going up as well in front of us so we had a good motivation. The views from the top (and the second peak that is connected with the third but not the first one) were well worth the climb up (and down!).
So with The Chief the first “travelling” part of my big Canadian Adventure ended. After coming from the mountains I spent a few days by Okanagan Lake. It is famous for wine growing and I have no idea why we didn´t taste any wine at all. But we stayed a few days at our new friends who live in Kelowna. Initially mum thought one night was going to be enough but the she saw how happy I was with my little friend Emily (and I suspect she was happy with her big friends Petr and Verca as well J) that she decided to stay three days.
But time flies and it was time to go. It was raining when we were leaving but once we got to the viewpoint above a small town with a funny name Peachland, the sun came out. And it was still out when we were exploring the famous Skaha Bluffs in Penticton with our “old” friend Mira and new friend Tomas. When we were about to cross a flooded stream, mum got rid of me and Mira carried me for the rest of our short trip. He did what I wanted and I really liked patting his head.
Mum wanted to take the most remote highway to Vancouver ever, but then it started raining and with all the melting snow we had to turn around: “three feet of water on the road, can take two to three days to go down”. And thus, unintentionally, we visited Hope and climbed a surprisingly amazing viewpoint in the slopes of Mount Hope and by Chilliwack we went up Elk Mountain (1 432 m) – just because we didn’t have a 4WD car to get to the trailhead of Mount Cheam (2 104 m), which was higher, but more snowy).
In Langley British Columbia was established and we went to see the former fort because mum wanted to get some culture for a change. Boring, touristy and we could not find a place to stay so eventually we ended up in a horrible and expensive “ghost town” campsite with faulty showers.
Whistler is well known for hiking… but skiing as well and the winter season finished just two weeks ago so you can imagine how much snow there is left just EVERYWHERE. So we stayed on Cheakamus Lake level and it was pretty nice.
Yesterday I did The Chief and I almost dropped my water bottle from the top of it. Mum said it´s time to settle down for a bit. I am not very sure what it means but I am not sleeping in the car tonight.
Your Annie
