And so another year has passed and I find myself looking back at where we went and what we saw during the past 12 months. I mentioned last year that I didn’t think we should even try to go further or higher this year, and without that (self-imposed) pressure, we took a more leisurely approach to our hiking. And yet we still ended up having a really good year, despite a lack of “epic” trips, perhaps because we adopted a willingness to revisit hikes we’ve done before coupled with a desire to just get out hiking whenever possible, rather than work to find the “perfect” hike.
Our top trips
So if we didn’t do any epic trips, how do I decide my top 5? When putting together our summary slideshow shown in the video below, we came up with 7 trips that we thought were the best with a couple that were clear winners. When we looked a bit closer we decided that one of those would have to be content as an honourable mention. And thus our top 6 trips of 2023 were:
- Skyline II and Nepopekum Mountain
We’ve hiked the Skyline I and II trails previously (most notably a 3-day trip in August 2007) and enjoyed them immensely. I’ve had the ridge to Nepopekum Mountain on my radar for a while, and it was great to finally get to explore. It’s a rarely visited summit with not much of a trail to get there but it was worth every uncertain step as the views were beyond stunning.
- Unnecessary Mountain
I really like the view from this summit. Ever since hiking over it on our way to Lions Bay, I’ve harboured the desire to spend the night and watch the sunrise on this ridge. That dream came true with our overnight trip at the beginning of July. With our overnight packs, the trail was every bit as hard as we expected but it was so worth it, even if we did have to endure the conga line that was the string of hikers heading to and from Saint Marks Summit. It was the first time we’d camped within sight of the city, too. I have no illusions about how difficult the rest of the trail would be, but I’m keen to continue and complete the Howe Sound Crest Trail at some point.
- Wilcox Pass
If we’re ever stuck for a hike to do near the Columbia Icefield, it doesn’t take us long to decide that it’s worth doing this one again. The reward-to-effort ratio is about as high as you can get on any hike and bighorn sheep sightings are almost guaranteed. An undisputed favourite.
- Verdant Pass
Another new destination and a place that immediately cast a spell on us. It is, without doubt, a magnificent place and begs to be explored more thoroughly than we had time for. I find it quite hard to find the words, really, and – of course – our photos completely fail to capture how it felt to be there. Which means, I guess, that we just have to go again…
- Frosty Mountain
A firm favourite, it was wonderful to accompany some friends on their first visit to this summit at the tail end of larch season. It might also have been the quietest visit to Frosty we’ve ever had, too, which made it all the more enjoyable. Remarkably, this was only the second visit where we’ve had clear views and we soaked them up! Just watch out for the “friendly” ravens; they’re only after your food.
- Brandywine Mountain
Another wonderful summit! It’s hard to believe it had been nearly 7 years since I last visited, and 9 since we both were here. What have we been doing? This hike is a mixture of easy hiking through wonderful meadows, stiff hiking up through heather and over shifting rocks, and a terrific scramble hike to the summit starting on solid rock and finishing on boulders. I never tire of seeing the stunning glacier and the stomach-churning drop on the north face of the mountain.
Well, I have to admit, those are some pretty fine views. Huh – maybe I was wrong and they really were suitably epic trips? After all, epic-with-a-small-e is still epic.
Honourable mentions
The list of honourable mentions – as ever – has some superb hikes, but they were just overshadowed for one reason or another by the trips above. The first honourable mention goes to the Bald Hills in Jasper National Park which stood out for the unbelievable grizzly bear encounter on that trail, plus we were able to complete the full loop that we hadn’t been able to do on our previous visit, and enjoyed stunning views from the ridge. As we hiked, we reminisced about our time on the Skyline Trail in 2012 and the Bald Hills felt like a wonderful mini Skyline-in-a-day kind of hike. To top it off, we saw a moose and calf on the drive home!
Next on the honourable mention list is Edith Cavell East Ridge summit, an extension of the very popular Cavell Meadows trail. The view from that summit was stunning and took in a full 360 degrees allowing us to identify dozens of peaks (thanks Peakfinder!), and even admire Skyline (again!) from a distance, as well as providing a superb view along the Icefields Parkway to the Columbia Icefield.
Our only overnight trip not in the top 6 deserves an honourable mention too: Moomin Peak lies on the same ridge as Gott Peak (which we’ve visited a few times) and looks a very appealing destination. However, getting there was tougher than we expected and we had to turn around just below the summit in order to get back to the tent before nightfall. Trying to get there on the same day that we hiked in to Blowdown Pass was a little ambitious for us and our memories are mostly of feeling very, very tired! But it was good experience, even if I do still have a scar from falling on some sharp rocks (6 months later). Would I attempt it again? I’m really not sure I would, and it’s not often I say that, but there is more to explore in that area.
Other honourable mentions include: First Brother, Chain Lakes, Beauty Creek, and our quintet of thundering waterfall hikes in May – Gold Creek, Kennedy Falls, Sea to Summit, Deeks Lake, and High Falls Creek.
This list is getting long, but once again I have to mention some of our wonderful snowshoeing trips, even if they were mostly limited to the North Shore. It’s the experience that counts, and we had some great days out on some of the most popular trails near Vancouver.
Flora and fauna
Another way that 2023 was going to have a hard time living up to the year before was in terms of the displays of wildflowers. Compared with the vast carpets of flowers in the Rockies and South Chilcotins in 2022, our sightings this year were considerably more modest. The floral year began with a trip to Salt Spring Island, where we found some nice patches of white fawn lilies and an abundance of fairyslipper orchids, though surprisingly little else. Our trip to Saturna Island the following month was similarly sparse, though we did find a few nice examples of flowers that are rare on the mainland.
Flower season really got underway with our hike to Cheakamus Lake in June which yielded some wonderful woodland flowers, while we found a good number of glacier lilies on our hikes to Black Tusk meadows and Nineteen Mile Creek. First Brother was great for paintbrush, larkspur, and others (as you might expect from Manning Park), while our subsequent trips to Moomin Peak and Brandywine Mountain yielded some fine alpine and tundra floral shows. The season ended with some exceptional autumn colour on our September/October hikes and a wonderful array of fungi, especially in Manning Park and on our circuit of the Four Lakes Trail.
In contrast, we had some of our most memorable wildlife encounters, though not all for the right reasons! (If you’ve read my monthly update for December, you’ll know what I’m referring to…) In particular, our week in Jasper was phenomenal as we saw dozens of elk, some (distant) bighorn sheep, four grizzly bears, and a moose and her calf. Wow! I don’t know what else to say about that, other than we have a ton of elk photos now! I wrote about the grizzly encounter in my September summary post and there’s not much point repeating myself other than to say we still can’t believe our luck in having such a close and calm bear encounter. And as I said, I hope never to be that close to a grizzly ever again.
Other wildlife we saw were pikas, marmots, golden-mantled ground squirrels, chipmunks, river otters, a few deer, plus numerous other birds including many ravens, whisky jacks, Steller’s jays, spruce grouse, loons, and a mother ptarmigan with her brood of six equally camouflaged chicks (Brandywine Mountain). Oh and a mouse that got into our car one night in Jasper, shredded some tissues, ate some cheese scraps (so it’s true!), and generally left its calling card all over the place. Fortunately we seemed to miss the worst of bug season which made us both very happy!
The negative wildlife encounters only served to remind us that wildlife should never be fed, no matter how cute it looks, and how many likes such a photo may get on Instagram (which will be a lot less than it used to these days thanks to the ever-changing algorithm…). Really – just don’t do it.
By the numbers
As expected we hiked less in terms of distance and elevation gain, but that’s not to say we had a bad year. Not by a long shot! We still hiked our fourth most distance and elevation gain, and comfortably beat every year before 2020. It shows just how remarkable our “pandemic” hiking period was.
Although some of the key eye-catching numbers appear to have changed significantly, the averages have remained remarkably similar. The biggest change that we felt in 2023 was the abrupt drop in the number of nights spent backpacking. We should have had double that number but for poor weather and post-COVID recovery which led to us cancelling our only significant multi-day trip. But we made up for it with a healthy number of nights car camping.
| Category | Value | Change over 2022 |
| Number of hikes | 49 | +4 |
| Number of days hiking | 53 | -14 |
| Total distance | 580.5 km | -138.5 km |
| Total elevation gain | 29785 m | -6590 m |
| Average per trip | 11.8 km / 608 m | -4.2 km / -200 m |
| Average per day of hiking | 11.0 km / 562 m | +0.3 km / +19 m |
| Number of nights backpacking | 4 | -18 |
| Number of nights car camping | 17 | +6 |
State of the blog
2023 saw 43 posts published (3 of which were last year’s summary posts as I had a lot to write about in 2022!) which is better than I expected as I had several months where the only post I wrote was the monthly Being Outdoors check-in. I also have a couple of trips that I actually wrote up in previous years where I hadn’t got round to choosing photos, which helped bump up my numbers a little. I continued with my monthly summaries, which I quite enjoy writing because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on the month just past and to highlight some photos that otherwise wouldn’t be included in any write-ups.
However, I (inadvertently?) shifted my focus to writing posts for day hikes that I could complete relatively quickly, rather than getting deep into the memories of our multi-day trips. This was down to returning from some of our day hikes after such an amazing day that I really wanted to capture the feeling of the day before it faded from memory. Alas, I didn’t publish a single multi-day trip report in 2023. That will have to change in 2024, as I really want to write up our amazing trips to the Rockies and South Chilcotins from 2022, as well as our 2023 trips. I’ll have to dedicate some time to those as they take much more effort as I attempt to re-immerse myself in the experience, and – inevitably – there are considerably more photos to sift through to find that select few to illustrate our trip.
Slideshow
I’ll finish with my now-customary slideshow of the hiking year that was. It’s difficult to get the timing right, but this one seems good enough to me (2.5 seconds per slide). At least YouTube allows you to slow it down if you want to linger a bit longer. Hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think!
A big thank-you to everyone who has read or liked or commented on any of my posts. I’m sorry I haven’t been returning the favour lately but I hope to do so in 2024. And thank-you to all the friends we hiked with in 2023 for keeping us company and allowing us to drag you up steep hills all over the place. I hope it was worth it!
As for 2024, well, we’re hoping to give Tonquin a second chance, and we have a couple of new vacation destinations in mind (both well-known for their hiking, of course). I have still yet to attempt winter camping, so that’s still out there, and I have a couple of Vancouver Island destinations I’d like to visit. I’m also wondering about Trophy Meadow in Wells Gray to see the amazing glacier lily bloom, though there’s the issue of the notoriously ravenous bug population at that time of year… Apart from that, we’ll just be starting again and getting ourselves out there as often as we can. Because being outdoors beats not being outdoors.
Being. Outdoors. 