Golden Ears

13/9/13

So Brandon and I had been meaning to go on a hike for pretty much all of summer and it was getting near the end of summer so we actioned the plan. Brandon suggested golden ears and I wasn't in a position to argue his decision. Talking during the week he was keen to leave Vancouver about 4pm or so and hike into Alder Flats to camp on Friday night to give us a full day to attack the summit on Saturday. I told him I couldn't get away from work until about 5pm and it was about an hours drive. I also had to get home and chuck stuff in my car and suggested we probably couldn't get on the trail until 7pm but that should be OK. He suggested we just camped at the big provincial campground at the trail head instead of Alder Flat but I told him that sounded no where near as hardcore as hiking in the dark. So after some faffing (including hunting for a fry pan at his place to cook our steak in, we could only find a cast iron one but we thought that we would get a few mission points for carrying it in) we finally got on the trail at 8pm. We had hilariously heavy packs due to all the meat and beer we had. We had about 15min of daylight and then  it was pretty dark. Luckily I had something that resembled the sun strapped to my head so we weren't short of light. We surprised Brandon with our speed and made it to Evans Creek in about half the time he was expected. Unfortunately then we crossed into "Brandons confusion zone" (BCZ). This was a forest section that appeared to be well marked but was pretty deceptive. Brandon had made a couple of wrong turns in there before in the daylight so needless to say we had a bit of trouble in the dark. We took two wrong turns and also managed to actually walk round in a circle. It was the weirdest feeling arriving at a place we had been before while thinking we were travelling in a straight line. It really didn't make any sense because we were following flagging tape the whole time! We finally got to the camp site and set up the tent around 10pm (at a guess, neither of us brought any sort of time keeping device). We cooked up our delicious steak dinner and drank pumpkin ale before hitting the hay.

Didn't get eaten by bears. Horrah.

In the morning we got up a little after sunrise (we think, again, not sure) and cooked up our bacon and mashed spud for breakfast. We were in pretty dense cloud so were a bit concerned we were in for a bit of a rubbish weather day. While we were cooking our breakfast a bunch of other hikers passed us heading up to the peak. Once we were on the trail and started climbing we got out of the cloud pretty quick and happened upon a pretty cracker day. Had some good views of "Robbie Reid" and "Judge Howay" which are hilarious names for mountains. Apparently Robbie and the Judge were good guys and good mates back in the day.

We made really good time on the trail and passed nearly all of the other parties on the trail. We charged on up to the emergency shelter for some pretty cracker views:

After a quick break at the shelter we bagan the final push up to the summit. It was a bit of a slog and we were getting pretty damn thirsty so we were glad to come across a snow melt stream. Somewhere along the way we decided that the beaten path was a bit easy and decided to climb up some dodgy rocks. I went a different way to Brandon and made it to the top of the knob thing pretty easily but once I was at the top I went round and found Brandon was pretty stuck. He had climbed up a wee gut thing and right into the base of a dense shrub guy. Once he chucked his pack up to me he made it up OK though.

We summited about 1pm (according to some other dudes that came up just after us). The last little bit was pretty cool as the view was kinda obscured until you are standing right on the summit. It was pretty hilarious to sit up there and listen to everyone say "holy shit" when they had climbed the last little bit. We at our lunch and took it all in:

We then opened our celebratory summit beers and got someone to take a pic:

It was a pretty nice day up there so we spent quite a bit of time dicking around on the summit and then headed down across some cool bits of perma-ice:

The descent was pretty quick and uneventful. We got back to Alder Flats no worries and packed up our campsite and hiked out. We didn't have any problems in BCZ on the way out. Took one photo of one of the bridges on the trail, I don't think it would be up to DOC standard:

Great day on the mountain. Awesome to get a sweet hike in while the weather was still holding up. Cheers to mountain guide Brandon!