Mt Gardner
Bagged: ✅ Mt. Gardner ❌ Suicide Bluffs ❌ de Pencier
On Saturday with a couple of friends we did Mt. Gardner on Bowen Island. It’s one of the lower peaks and guaranteed to be snow free. We hopped on the ferry, parked at the south west end and then went up the hike.
Honestly it’s a pretty straightforward hike, a few steep parts. At the top the true summit is pretty rubbish, so head north to the telecommunication towers for a better view. All we saw was mist and cloud as the weather closed in. We hiked all the way down in the rain which of course stopped, right as we completed the hike.
On Sunday I aimed to do Suicide Bluffs and de Pencier. I figured at 1,100m odd they’d be snow free or at least less snow, especially considering my experience on South Needle (similar elevation) the week before. How different it was. About 15 minutes after leaving the parking lot, we were facing continual snow and had our spikes on.
Suicide bluffs trail was deep snow, something we were not prepared for. There’s no trail visible, no markings and without snow shoes we were getting very wet. We turned back quite quickly, not wanting to venture anywhere near unstable snow or cornices. We then thought about de Pencier so headed over that way and faced similar deep snow.
At this point it started raining and was cold. So knowing that these peaks are something I do regularly during the summer and will come back to, decided to call it quits. A little disappointing, but the amount of snow still up there was surprising. Going to be another couple of weeks before those are easy to do.