Marriott Basin: A Failing Memory is a Good Thing

My memory is not as good as it used to be. Probably that’s the way it is for most people. Thinking about Marriott Basin as a possible destination for this weekend, I had the fleeting thought – “weren’t we just there?!” Luckily we have the blog as an electronic replacement for my clearly failing long term memory. It turns out that we visited Marriott Basin three times, always in winter, with the last time being in 2014! So, clearly a re-visit was not a crazy idea. Not that there’s anything wrong with going back to places more frequently.

The drive was long, as I was reminded by my passengers – hey, at least they could relax while I had to focus on driving… I used the km markers to make sure that we wouldn’t miss the turn off to the small logging road. In a clearing at the beginning there was a sign not to park there, since it would be used as a helicopter landing pad that week. OK, we wanted to drive a bit farther anyway. We reached an area with maybe 10 cars and an outhouse. After that I deemed the road too spicy for our vehicle, so we set off from there on foot.

Soon we were at the actual trailhead, and headed into a beautiful forest on a nicely maintained trail. Nice! Neil and Kai loved the many small log bridges, especially “the sketchy one”, where little ones could fall into a sinkhole and never be seen again. We stopped at the turnoff to Rohr Lake, at which point I was trying to remember the last time we had been there, but failed. I marked it off mentally as a good option for a visit next summer.

As we got higher, the blueberries and huckleberries got a bit better, although they were clearly beyond their prime. Gradually we came out of the forest into the sub-alpine, and reached Marriott Lake, where I met Tim, an ex-colleague of mine. It’s a small world.

On the far end of the lake, we noticed flagging going up to the left towards some talus, but also flagging going off to the right, along the lake. The former had a nicer looking trail going with it, so we started following that trail (a mistake). The trail disappeared and we were hopping up the talus slope, following flagging. Eventually, we left the rocks and… The flagging continued, but not the trail. That’s when it clicked – we should have gone right. Oh well, down we went, took that right turn, and headed up the good trail towards the Wendy Thompson Hut.

Here we got a surprise – the hut was not as we remembered it. This time we quickly concluded that it wasn’t our failing memories, but actual drastic changes to the hut. The hut now has a little twin connected to it by a fancy drawbridge. It turns out that this is the “new” (not so new now) double outhouse. The bridge serves to allow people to head to the outhouse while being protected from the elements, and without having to step out onto the snow (in winter). The other change took more time to figure out. The entrance switched sides! This seemed like an improbable explanation, but sure enough, we found the old door on the other side, blocked off.

It was already starting to get dark by the time we reached the hut. We quickly set up camp in one of the super nice spots on the opposite side of the little creek, near the hut. This was another off-weekend trip, so we were initially alone. A bit later a couple showed up who stayed in the hut. We enjoyed the clear view of the sky, and especially the views of Jupiter, which we had read was as close to earth as it has been for 50 years. We had brought a small toy telescope and binoculars, and these kept the kids busy for a while and made the star observation more fun.

We all fell asleep early – one of the benefits of wilderness camping. The next day we woke up refreshed, and had a lazy breakfast which included apples dipped in honey for Rosh Hashanah. We packed up and took our time hiking down the trail, and soon enough were back at the car, ready to head home. Kai fell asleep almost instantaneously, and it was too early for dinner, so we kept going till Squamish. We had dinner at an old favourite, the WaterShed Grill. The location right on the Squamish River is spectacular, and we spotted a few eagles and seals. From there it was smooth sailing – another benefit of off-weekend trips, and we were soon home, unpacking and getting ready for bed.