icedtrish

Today, I hiked the Stawamus Chief seccond peak in Squamish, BC.  For those who don't know, Squamish is the town on the way to Whistler from Vancouver.  It's a pretty little highway town, sometimes called Squampton (ie, Compton), for reasons I won't get into on here.

The Stawamus Chief is a three-peak mountain accessible right off of the Sea to Sky highway.  You just kind of pull into the parking lot and hit it. 

I've lived in the area for a few years now, and had been thinking the Chief would be a good start to get back into hiking, which I'd done a fair bit of in Northern BC, where I'm originally from.  Some friends of mine who rock climb at the Chief suggested I hit that to start.  The Chief's first peak is super crowded, the quickest to get to, but, I think a man we met on the trail coined the term the best, "it's a lot like metrotown up there." (Metrotown being a very large busy mall.)  I wasn't really interested in going to Metrotown on top of a mountain so we went to the second peak, which was probably a good intermediate thing for me, although the third isn't much further, or very difficult for that matter.

The second peak, I also discovered, is much more fun than the first, with the last portion having a chain bolted into the rock face to help you sort of scramble your way up. It was so, so, so worth it.  Looking over at the first peak and how packed it was, I was pretty stoked we'd picked the second peak.  Next time I'm definitely going for the third.

If you're hiking the chief and do want to hit the first peak, I will note this: when you're coming down the chains from the second peak, look across on the last chain path, and you'll see a sort of ladder screwed into the rock face, climb that up to the first peak as no one seems to ever notice it, and it is apparently fairly quick and pretty sweet.