More Mountains

Shorter Walks

Brandywine Meadows
Wed Aug 4th

Given the exertions of the previous day Wednesday got off to a slower start.

A brief visit into town followed by a couple of hours on Alpha Lake, which we've not visited before, was a welcome change to yesterday.  A bit of swimming, paddle boarding and taking in the sights .......

I'd forgotten Nick had suggested heading up to Brandywine Meadows early evening.  A 10k-11k forest road and increasingly steeper, gullied and rockier tracks, followed by a 1k uphill hike through the forest to the water meadows.  Suspecting it would not be a smooth drive up the trails Fred decided to Jack-sit.  


A while ago Nick and Lizzie bought an off-road version of the Toyota 4Runner, chunky tires, numerous off-road settings and finishes.  It does the job amazingly well.  The video is one of the smoother, level sections of road without boulders, rocks and loose gravel that we'd experienced earlier in the climb. The further from the forest service roads the worse the conditions got but the truck made light work of it all.  It took about 45 minutes to do the 11k up the tracks and 1000m climb.

As we got close to the tree-line the scenery opened up providing stunning views in the early evening light.  The Brandywine Meadows are fed from the Brandywine glacier before the creek runs over the Brandywine Falls and joins the Checkamus River further downstream.


There is a threat of returning in September to go camping and hiking the ridge to the top of the glacier.  Mmmmmm. One of the first visits Nick made, he and Lizzie saw their first grizzly on the lower slopes left of the glacier.



In addition to melt water off the glacier, numerous small streams and creeks flowed down from the sides of the mountains adding to the flow of Brandywine.  I wonder if there is a market for selling tapes of these bubbling brooks for helping people to sleep?

Brandywine Glacier




A small waterfall to the right and below the glacier


A close up of Brandywine Creek

With the snow not clearing until June, Spring and Summer is compressed into about 4 months before snow starts to return in October.  The meadows felt very spring like with extensive flora on the lower valley sides.





The 4Runner really does make it look easy.  Some of the gullies across the track dipped by a metre and were 2-4 metres wide.



As we made our descent the sunset was lighting the distant mountains.  A great end to the day without too much walking!






 

Comments

  1. BobAugust 5, 2021 at 11:39 AM

    Now that's a proper truck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MikeT67MAugust 5, 2021 at 3:53 PM

      My old Disco would have done it too - not sure about the current sport model, I admit!

      Delete

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