We just got back from a weekend away in Pemberton. Sarah (Steph's friend who is staying with us) still has her rental car, so we wanted to make use of it on the last weekend that Sarah and Hazel are here - they leave on Sunday.
We left from work on the Friday evening and drove up to Pemberton, which is a tiny town about 30km North of Whistler. The journey is about 150km in total from Vancouver and took us about 2 1/2 hours. Pemberton sits in a valley surrounded by mountains on every side - it's a beautiful location. We stayed for the two nights in a fantastic B&B called La Hacienda, which is actually more of a self-contained apartment within someone's house. It was modern and freshly decorated, and had every possible comfort, including a hot tub that we took advantage of. I can't recommend this place enough, and Steph and I would love to go back there.
On Saturday we did a lot of walking. We went first to Nairn Falls Provincial Park and walked to the waterfall. The water levels are very high at this time of year and the falls were pretty spectacular. After that we took a fairly easy walk around One Mile Like just outside Pemberton where we had some lunch. In the afternoon we drove a little further afield to BirkenHead Lake Provincial Park, which included a 17km drive along a rough gravel road - slow going in our little hire car. From the parking lot we did a 1.5km hike to the campgrounds and back. This one was the toughest of the day, and in places the trail was almost blocked by rocks that had been swept there by previous flooding. There were a few times on the way to the campgrounds that we almost turned back, and the presence of a bear in the area put us slightly on edge I think, but we made it all the same. That pretty much tired us out, so then it was back home for food and hot tub.
On Sunday we decided to drive the rest of the Coast Mountain Circle Route, since we had already done the first part of it. I am very glad that we did - the first section from Pemberton to Lillooet was the best scenery I have seen in Canada so far bar none - stunning. We stopped for a very short walk at Joffre Lake Provincial Park, but Sunday was mostly driving. We had some lunch at Lillooet (and Steph got stung by an evil wasp), and then headed South down through the Fraser Valley, following the course of the river via Lytton to Hope. At around 4pm we stopped at a place called Hell's Gate where they have built a cable car that carries you across the river at its most narrow and turbulent point. Apparently when they were blasting a tunnel for the railway at the turn of the century they accidentally caused a huge landslide and blocked half of the river, so that the remaining part now flows much more strongly. Oops. At the same time, the change in river flow prevented salmon from making it upstream to their spawning grounds. So about 50 years later (in the 1950s) they built some concrete fishways that contain a bunch of chambers that slow the water flow, which the salmon can swim through to make it through this tough section of river - very clever. Anyway, the cable car had some great views.
After that we finished the circle, driving to Hope and then back to Vancouver. The entire circle is 568km, so it was a long trip but well worth it. We'd love to go back to Pemberton again some time too.
We have tons of photos of the trip which I'll try to sort out this week.
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