Slhanay

April 28, 2023 - Squamish

Stats: 9.2 km / 859m gain / 682m high / 4:45 hours MT

Slhanay Mt is the northeast neighbour of the more popular Stawamus Chief. It offers some amazing southwest views of the Chief, from an angle not often seen. I organized this excursion as a 2-day trip, as we had to catch an early morning boat to Echo Lake the next day and its almost a 2-hour drive to Sqamish.

After a 1.4 km drive on the pot-holed Mamquam River FSR, we parked and set out at 11:30pm. A truck-sized boulder was quickly seen as we entered the forest. Just past it was a junction where we turned left.

Yay! It was the first time this year we got to wear shorts and tank-tops.

This must've been quite the rockslide. It shaved off the face of the mountain, leaving behind a huge playground for rock-climbers.

The trail turned right and led us alongside the base of this rock wall.

A tricky squeeze. We had to tilt ourselves to the side, without losing our balance.

We traversed the upper slopes of a deep gully with a rope dangling a bit lower down.

After about an hour of hiking, a side-trail led us to this northwest view of Squamish. The steepest part was now behind us.

Note: In the Destination Hikes book it says to turn left. Wrong. You have to turn right.

A wolf! Not.

At my favorite southwest viewpoint by Tony's Lookout. Looking at the narrower back side of the Chief with it's north-facing cliffs + Squamish town & river where it empties into Howe Sound.

The Tantalus Mountain range -- west.

After a long cold winter that didn't seem to want to leave, these two days where temperatures hit 28C, were a real treat!

Northwest.

Hiking makes us hungry.

Hmm. Which way to go now? A brief stop to check our GPSs (we all had one). The second photo is of the Echo Lake hike, which was on our agenda for the following day. The falls can be seen to the mid-right of the photo. Echo Lake lies nestled in the white bowl between the two peaks.

We did turn off at the correct trail to get to the summit, but very soon, it forked. It was easy to miss the turn-off to the correct trail, and easy to miss the fork. Neither were marked or flagged (contrary to what the book says). So we discovered that there's 3 routes leading to the summit, not 2. Having scouted this hike out last year, it was nice to do a different trail this year. We did the one to the left, which looped round and approached the summit from the west. We found this memorial at the base of a long granite cliff.

Its a good thing the rock was dry.

When we got to the top of the cliff, we found a second memorial. We suspect they were for the same individual and at the location where he or she died.

Garabaldi Mt -- northeast.

Group shot: me, Sheri K, Peter F, Charlotte H, Sonia J, Dave B

Sheri is sun-tanning -- west.

north

Garabaldi Mt (2678m) -- northeast

Mamquam Mt (2588m) - east.

We descended by way of the most right route (as seen on my map). This trail had a more gradual grade. The middle route is the shortest but also the steepest.

Another spectacular viewpoint. From here we could see Howe Sound and Squamish with the backdrop of the Tantalus Mountain range.

Sonia found 3 helium balloons. This one reads, "Love".

Dave took a bit of a tumble on this slope. I was focused on him as he was brushing off his pants and making sure he wasn't hurt and Sonia was focused on her phone so Sheri is the only one who saw Sonia unintentionally kick a rock loose, which ricocheted down the steep slope and almost hit Dave! That wouldn've been adding insult to injury!

Sheri did this hike last year too and found this hut that looked lived in. She showed it to us but its definitely abandoned now. There were notices on the door warning us not to tresspass.

We got back to the vehicles at 5:00ish. Sonia & I had taken cooler chests along and some of us took backpacker chairs. So we all had a relaxing time sipping our cold beer and pop. Then off to the nearby Squamish Adventure Inn hostel where we shared a 6-bed dorm. Most of us women had homemade dinner at the hostel but the guys & Sonia went out for dinner.

What would the next day bring? None of us had ever done Echo Lake before. Destination Hikes book said its a "wickedly steep rough trail". We would soon find out...