Mt. Albert Edward: Thanksgiving in the Mountains

On the long Thanksgiving weekend we headed to Vancouver Island to visit our friends Jan and Warrick. We took the ferry on Friday evening which left with a healthy delay which kept our friends waiting at the terminal. They live just outside of Duncan, about an hour away from the ferry terminal in Nanaimo. The next day we took a short morning tour of their 20 acre property, which has mostly lush forest on it and is adjacent to the river. They just finished building a tiny and basic cabin right on the water which they plan on sleeping in sometimes.

After some deliberation, we decided on a three day hike in Strathcona Park, starting at the Mt. Washington ski area. From the parking lot we got a good view of Mt. Albert Edward which we intended to climb the next day and looked formidable and snowy from this angle. On the first day we hiked to the campsite at Circlet Lake, passing many small lakes on the way. We met two guys who were heading down after not making it to the summit, and reported lots of snow. This is apparently a popular area, but there were only a few people at the campsite, despite it being a long weekend. This was probably due to the custom of having a Thanksgiving family dinner on the Sunday, thereby ruining the weekend…

The next day we set out towards Mt. Albert Edward. We got some good views on the way, but once we got onto the ridge we got some wind and low clouds. From the summit we saw zero views, but it was a nice lunch spot nonetheless. On the way down Maya and I amused ourselves by throwing rocks at frozen lakes. The next day we woke up to rain. It rained while we were packing and the rain stopped a short while after we left camp and the weather improved from then. Played with some Whisky Jacks at a nice lunch spot on a lake and back to the car, and the ferry back to Vancouver. We had dinner at Posh Sukiyaki, all you can eat japanese hot pot.

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