Bowen Island is an island situated in Howe Sound just two kilometers away from the mainland, slightly north of Vancouver. One of the advantages of the island is that it can easily and cheaply be reached by public transport.
I wanted to have an early start, so I woke up at 6am to try to make it to the 8am ferry. The bus took me through downtown as I was reading my book and suddenly I raised my eyes to see that I was in the middle of a forest. Someone let me know that it was Stanley Park, an urban park larger than Central Park, populated by centenary trees.
The ferry to Bowen Island leaves from Horseshoe Bay, a small community in the westernmost part of West Vancouver. When the bus left me in the stop I was already excited about the view.
I made it right on time for the ferry, which was a huge one with several decks, loads of space for cars and a number of amenities on board. I went to the outer part of the ferry immediately, to enjoy the breathtaking view.
The ferry trip was around twenty minutes, and left us in Snug Cove, a small community where the ferry terminal is. Snug Cove is mainly one street, with a few interesting buildings like the beautiful Bowen Island public library, a few shops, cafes and restaurants.
My objective was to get to the top of Mt. Gardner, a 719 meter summit and the highest peak of the island. After buying some food for the day and having a quick look at one of the maps there, I started to walk through the Crippen Regional Park, full of beautiful flat trails surrounding Killarney Lake. An hour later I got to the beginning of the trail towards Mt. Gardner, and it was quite steep since the very beginning.
I passed a few signs pointing to paths that didn't seem to be related to Mt. Gardner, so just continued going up, although already thinking that the signs were going to be messy. As it is usual in me, I forgot one of the most important things for this whole trip in Dublin, my hiking boots. I had barely started walking but my feet were already wet. To make things better, snow started to make a presence, only a few small patches in the beginning, but soon the whole path was snow except for a small part where water came down through thus melting the snow. The snow had no human footprints on it, but it was riddled with wild animal ones.
Soon the path was fully covered by a feet of snow, and after a while it split into two ways of similar width. I started to walk towards the left one but in the end opted for the right one. I kept walking on the snow until I reached a small cabin with an antenna and a dead end. There was still snow everywhere and my feet were getting cold. I had just seen a bit earlier a sign pointing to the so-called "handloggers trail", and not really feeling like going back I decided to follow it. The trail started to go down almost immediately, suggesting it wasn't going to get me anywhere near Mt. Gardner, but I wasn't in a hurry and it was a beautiful path down through the forest, so I kept on going.
After some minutes going downhill and quite unsurprisingly the path took me to back to the main path I had started in. I didn't feel like starting to walk uphill again, so I decided to check out a 'viewpoint' that was signalled from the path and stop there to eat something. It was a bit foggy so I couldn't see as much as I would have wanted, but it was still possible to see the mainland, and the fog coming up from the forest created a great image.
After the small refreshment I walked again the same path until the point where it split, and this time I took the left path. After a 180 degrees turn, the path headed up steeply. It was a long straight section covered by snow which seemed like it would be fun to slide down on the way back.
After some moments of strenuous fight against the snow I made it to the top of that section, to find for the first time a small sign that seemed to imply that I was in the right direction. Unfortunately, this state of the art sign pointed directly to a sparse forest full of snow with a few fallen logs hiding any hint of a path.
I wasn't hoping for further signs anywhere close, so I just decided to go uphill across the forest in the general direction pointed by the sign. Advancing wasn't easy because of the lack of a proper path and because there were a lot of fallen trees getting in the way. A few times I had to retrace my steps, or take detours, but I advanced quite steadily all in all, and after a while made it to a beautiful frozen pond. Right by the pond, an orange square blaze attached to a tree was letting me know that I was back to the trail.
My joy about having found the trail lasted barely five minutes, the time that it took me to lose it again. As I couldn't see the next blaze I started to explore again, trying to go uphill to see if I could at least figure out where the summit was, but there was no proper 'uphill', just small mounds, and the trees didn't let me see much. After half an hour wandering around I decided to go back to the place where I had seen the last orange square, and start again from there. Soon I managed to find the next blaze, which this time was an orange piece of plastic tied to a tree. The path then went really close to the mountain edge and I finally could get a view for the first time since the previous viewpoint.
The path went a bit down and got again into the forest. The depth of the snow kept growing and sometimes managed to obscure some of the blazes, making it hard to follow the path. My feet were starting to freeze so I was about to turn back on a couple of occasions that I lost the trail, but in the last moment I would find it again and decided to keep going.
After a while I came across another Mt. Gardner sign, and I faced the last part of the summit. It was really steep and with a lot of snow, but fortunately someone had thought about me and there were three ropes and chains anchored to the ground. The rope worked out great, but the chains would slide through my soaked gloves and couldn't really be trusted. Anyway I made it to the top, and there were two feet of snow. As soon as I gave ten steps up there with snow above my knee, I felt my feet finally giving in and starting to hurt because of the cold. I had a quick look to verify that I couldn't see anything because of the clouds and, having in mind that I still had at least one hour of snow ahead and thinking of my feet, decided to go back as soon as possible.
The way down was quite uneventful, for the most part I could just follow back my footprints and as soon as I descended a few dozens of meters my feet started to feel better and I knew I would keep my ten toes. When I was halfway down I finally met people, after five hours wandering alone through the forest and the snow. They were a couple and the girl was also wearing trainers with leggings just below the knee. I warned them about the woes of the trail and the infinite coldness up there and kept going down, sliding down on the safe snowed parts. It took me less than one hour to be back to the Killarney Lake.
I kept walking and finally made it back to Snug Cove, which when I first arrived seemed like a bunch of houses and after the hike appeared to me as a big city full of services and niceties like heating, food and washrooms. I went for lunch to Doc Morgan's, a (the?) restaurant in the main street, with a good view of the forests in the background.
Feeling much better with a full stomach, I used my spare time to check out the local library, and I was tempted to stay there for an extra hour, but the fatigue kicked in, and I had to take the ferry back, feeling completely satisfied with the day and eager to reach my place to get rid of all the wet clothes I was wearing.
You can also see all the pictures.
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