Sun, Oct 4 2015 - Mt. Bourgeau: Part 2 (View Original Event Details)
Event Coordinator(s): | |
Raihan K
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Participants: | | Raihan K, Daisy Mae P, Seung L, chris w, Deanna P, Ken N, Ivan Y, Sonja G, Andrei S, CJ, Marina S |
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Write Up:What a day!
Our hike could best be described as a walk in the clouds! As we
made our way through the first part in the forest, what we thought
was fog, turned out to be clouds! At around 7,000 feet the tree
tops were all snowy. Just beyond Bourgeau Lake, so was the
ground. At Harvey Pass we knew we’d have to negotiate snow on the
shoulder of the mountain too. Not only that, at times visibility
was at best 200 feet. We pushed on, following some footsteps left
by folks who had been up there the day before. At places I chose
to break from the trail, mainly to keep our group a safe distance
from the ledge on our left. For safety reasons, we broke into two
groups for the summit push. We climbed above the clouds as we
approached the weather station, and it was a surreal experience to
observe the neighboring peaks drift in and out of view. Nine of
our eleven made it to the summit. Two felt a little drained and
opted to remain on the trail and wait for the others to come back
down. We all came down safely to Harvey Pass together. This is
when one member realized she had lost her little bag containing
her microspikes and thought that she might have dropped them when
she was adjusting layers a few hundred meters back. Some members
of the party wanted to spend a bit of time at Bourgeau Lake. So
once again, we split into two groups. This is when things got
really interesting. Going back towards Mt Bourgeau, we saw a
fairly large grizzly grazing and walking up towards the trail. So
we immediately turned around. There were some hikers who were
sitting at Harvey Pass observing the larch forest down below at
sunshine and they were tracking the grizzly too. Luckily, this
group had found the lost microspikes. We then proceeded towards
Lake Bourgeau and just after crossing the hump from Harvey Lake,
we met with a juvenile male black bear. The bear at first took a
few steps towards us. That got us to backtrack up the path to
Harvey Pass. We all drew our bear sprays and made a lot of noise.
The bear then went behind some rocks. We clambered down a steeper
section and came around back to the trail. This is when we saw
the bear moving ahead of us on the other side of the small tarn
just above Bourgeau Lake. It was headed back towards our trail
ahead of us! What seemed to have happened, is that our ruckus got
the bear trying to find cover, and as it moved away from us, it
got closer and closer to the trail. We approached, making noise,
and had three cans of bear spray drawn and ready. We blew
whistles to warn the other half of our party at Bourgeau Lake. As
we came down the switchbacks to Bourgeau Lake, the bear vanished
into the woods. We had a fun time describing our little adventure
to the rest of the gang who were chilling at Bourgeau Lake
wondering what held us up. The hike back to the parking lot was
uneventful (and felt very long after all the exertion). Everyone
got back safely and seemed to have had a great time.
I’ve uploaded my photos to a Flickr album. Here is the link.
Feel free to download and share.
https://flic.kr/s/aHskmExtby
Cheers,
Raihan