2004-09-10 0910-1600
I'd been itching to go out and visit a confluence after hearing about the Degree Confluence Project last year, but I didn't have the time to do so until now. The closest confluence to Vancouver, on land at least, is the one near Helm Creek in Garibladi Park. It's an area I'd hiked in before some years ago so this would be a good opportunity to visit again.
I woke up on Friday, Sep 10 2004, at 05:00 PDT and checked the dark sky for a hint of what the weather was doing. There was light cloud with a few patches of sky visible; the waning moon was near Saturn, visible through one of these patches. Around 05:30 the webcams in Whistler were showing light cloud with blue patches of sky. Weather forecasts suggested rain in the afternoon. It looked like the day would be a good one and we should be on the road back home before rain started.
My sister was going to hike along with me, so I picked her up before leaving Vancouver. The drive up to Whistler was uneventful. At 08:15 we started driving up the logging road that leads to the Cheakamus Lake parking lot; little did I know that it would take 35 minutes to drive 6.9 km all the while keeping my Jetta from disappearing into what seemed to be massive potholes! Half-way up I was passed by a station wagon with better ground clearance than I had -- they could make better time by not having to worry too much about the potholes.
We reached the parking lot at 08:50 and found five other cars there ahead of me, including a school bus! No sign of any students though. The temperature was nice, neither cold nor hot. The sky showed white clouds with some blue patches; the clouds did not look wet. After some preparation we started walking towards the Lake, where the Helm Creek trail branches off from about half-way to the lake. At 09:35 we reached the bridge over the Cheakamus River.
The trail climbs up the side of the valley in a series of switchbacks, eventually settling down into a slowly climbing trail for the last 4 km or so before one has to leave the trail to go to the confluence.
We had stopped for lunch beside part of the trail that came close to Helm Creek. As we were preparing to continue on we met a group that had turned around because Mama and Baby Bear were hanging out around the trail checking them out. Before leaving home I'd read the park's trail report which indicated a bear alert throughout the park, so I wasn't very surprised. Some time later it added some excitement to the hike when we came across some paw prints Mama and Baby Bear had left in the mud on the trail. We carried on with an even more careful eye out for the bears.
In the general area near the confluence the character of the forest changes from a treed forest to meadows separated by clumps of trees. At 12:00 the trail was approaching a point on the map that looked closest to the confluence, so it was time to leave the trail. The meadows have areas of very fragile cryptogamic crusts and mosses -- very slow growing plants that will take forever to recover from damage -- so we had to walk very carefully, and held to the treed areas to avoid the sensitive stuff.
On the way we had to cross a small creek. My naive assumption was that this was Helm Creek, obviously smaller than it had been lower down the valley, but no, it was just feeding into Helm Creek, which we came to a few minutes later at 12:15. This could have been problematic, as the flow was great enough and the water cold enough that I didn't want to try wading, and there weren't any suitable rocks in sight to walk across. Twenty minutes of searching the creek for a suitable spot to cross finally revealed two logs that had been caught by the current and lodged together side by side, safe enough to walk across with no difficulty.
It was now 12:37, and the walk to the confluence was easy. Looking for a place to cross the creek had moved us south-west of the confluence, so I naturally approached from that direction. As I approached I kept an eye on the mountains and was pleased to see the Black Tusk and surroundings beginning to look like the online images at confluence.org documenting the first visit. We arrived at the confluence at 12:45. It's in the area of a small meadow, with small trees in the immediate surroundings.
It took my GPS receiver a few minutes to stabilize once I got to the confluence and stopped moving around; after a few minutes I was able to have it sit still while I took pictures of the display.
Here's a shot of the Tusk from the confluence, and a zoom. If one compares the long shot with the image from the earlier visit at confluence.org, one can see that the trees and lines of the mountains are the same.
Around this time the clouds were changing in character from the previous dry clouds to grey clouds saturated with moisture; the air had also developed a cold nip that it hadn't had before. It was a sign to get moving and head back down the trail to the car and home, before all that water decided to come raining down on us.
For some reason I hadn't taken any pictures of the inital crossing of Helm Creek, so I made up for it on the way back. Here're the two logs jammed across the creek. And here's the small creek that drains into Helm Creek.
Occasionally there were interesting mushrooms to be seen along the trail; here's one example, and another.
The rain started about two kilometres away from the confluence on the return trip. Under canopy it was mostly dry, with the pleasant sounds of rain audible in areas of lighter canopy where it came down on the leaves of the plants growing there. The rain never got intense enough for me to even bother with anything more than the shirt I was wearing.
We arrived back at the car at 16:00 and took another 35 minutes to get back to paved roads. The return trip to Vancouver was as uneventful as the trip up.