Something on my family's summer to-do list was to do more hiking because of our love for both the outdoors and exercising (though my parents enjoy the exercising part more than I do.) Our 9km hike at Garibaldi had been something we've planned on doing for months. After buying some hiking shoes, as well as completing a good intro hike up Grouse Mountain, we finally tackled the 6 hour (round-trip) hike during our annual Whistler vacation this past week.





We hiked up to Garibaldi Lake, an alpine lake and campsite with a 1,484m elevation. Though it is a much larger distance, I think the Garibaldi Lake trail is a much easier hike compared to the Grouse Grind. To bypass a very steep hiking route, the trail goes into a zig-zag to increase elevation quickly - though the entire trail is in a steady incline. The Grouse Grind is over 2,000 steps of stairs going upwards, which is why it is much shorter than this trail.







The moderate level of difficulty of the hike allowed me to take tons of photos and film some vlogs, though my excessive stopping is the reason why it took us 3 1/2 hours to get to the lake. "IT'S FOR THE BLOG OKAY!"

About 2.5 km away from the lake was a lookout point, which was honestly my favourite view in the entire trail. After taking a slight detour, we're suddenly on top of the world. You look to one side and there's a chunk of barren rock with half of it that's been eroded flat, and then you look to the other side and see the peaks of many mountains and the blue sky above it. I've never felt so small and insignificant, but also equally blessed and amazed. 






Getting back on track (literally), we continued our hike towards the lake. The terrain became a bit more "adventurous", as there were more rocks, roots, ups, downs, and the trail became slimmer, further surrounding us with flora.





We were beginning to get that impatient "are we there yet???" feeling when we suddenly started seeing glimpses of the vibrant turquoise waters between the trees. Finally, the trail started descending as we approached Lake Garibaldi.





It sucks my camera didn't always capture the vibrancy of the lake, but the second last picture above is pretty much true to colour. After checking out the beautiful campsites with the even prettier views, and using the not-so-nice outhouses, we ate lunch by the lake.





Unfortunately, going back down was a totally different story. My mom's bad knee took a real bad toll on her, and it becomes painful whenever she walks down inclined ground. It was 9km of downhill hiking, so instead of the ideal fast walk down the mountain we had to go extra slow for my mom's knee. The extra braking and slowing down hurt my feet and toes a lot, and it took us longer than anticipated to return to the bottom. Though we would love to do it again, my mom was in too much pain for her to want to relive it again. But maybe one day soon (if God wills it) we'll come back when her knee is better and camp for a few days!

And lastly, here's the vlog mentioned earlier! I went a bit crazy with the editing.


Check out my entire bucket list, as well as some details on The Bucket List Project.