Babes on the Rim

An extended wilderness trip has long been overdue for me and luckily, it didn’t take much convincing to get my friend Carmen to join me for some outdoor adventure. It had been some time since either of us had done an extended backcountry trip and Cathedral Provincial Park seemed like a great place to get reacquainted with outdoor living. We spent a few weeks discussing, well obsessing really, about all the usual details, bears and cougars, food, bear and cougar food - like tasty sleeping-bag wrapped campers.

Glacier Lake and Cathedral Rim

We departed Vancouver, armed with coffee mugs, bear bangers, bear spray, flares, topographical maps, compass (and a guide on how to use them) along with all the other usual camping accoutrements. We were ready - for good times and possibly even an apocalypse or two.

As it turned out, Cathedral was not quite the remote backcountry experience we had expected (or prepared for), it was more like a rugged Stanley Park, minus the traffic and well, the city. After the tent was pitched on a nice bit of lake front property, complete with grazing deer, bunnies and overly friendly swarms of black flies, we set off to get our bearings in our new mountain environment. Our first glimpse of Cathedral Rim was breathtaking and we couldn't help but be excited about the days of hiking ahead of us.

Carmen overlooking LadySlipper Lake

Back down at the tent, we eagerly prepared the first meal of our little expedition; food after all tastes so much better outside... or so we thought. The discovery that the new primus stove only had one setting: inferno, set off a feast of giggles as we desperately tried to put away those dry, blackened lentil burgers. The tone had been set and from early morning until 8:09pm, or was it 8:12pm? when the dark finally came and starry sky rose, we laughed and laughed as though infused with some strange alpine laughing gas. No threat of bears or of getting lost, we rested easy and relaxed as though we were on top of world.