Kyle and I celebrated our 15th Anniversary this year! On the 22nd, we were busy with normal day-to-day activities and a church meeting so we planned to celebrate the following weekend. However, we planned on going hiking and checking out this place with a gorgeous view and it the weather didn't cooperate. We had very gray skies and lots of rain!
So we postponed our plans for a week. We met Mom and Dad yesterday morning and dropped the girls off. We planned on heading to the Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish, BC. We were very excited to use our new Nexus passes! Our trip got off to a bit of a rough start when Kyle realized he didn't know where his Nexus pass was. Before we left home, he had it with him. So after searching the car and having Mom and Dad search the parking lot where we met them, we headed back home to look for it. (Thankfully this whole thing happened before we actually got to the border crossing!)
As we pulled into the driveway, we saw it there, on the ground. As we drove out of our neighborhood, we passed Mom and Dad with the girls, who were coming to pick up a few things that we'd forgotten to send along!
At this point, it was about 9:45am and the Nexus lane at the Lynden border crossing doesn't open until noon. We really wanted to use our passes and didn't want to sit and wait so we headed over to the Peace Arch crossing. It was such a satisfying feeling to drive past SO MANY CARS waiting in line. Six lanes of cars backed up for a very long ways. We just drove right past them all.
From there we hit a lot of traffic and didn't get to Squamish to start our hike until 12:45pm! We decided that it would be more fun to hike up to the summit and ride the gondola down (versus riding it both ways.) The hike was challenging, to say the least, but well worth it. We hiked 3.08 miles and gained 2,962 feet of elevation! It look us just under 2 1/2 hrs to reach the summit. The trail had steep steps, lots of roots, and a few sections where there were ropes and chains to help climb. It was mostly in the shade, thank goodness, and several times crossed underneath the gondolas, where we were able to wave at the folks riding up!
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| Ready to go! |
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| It's hard to tell how steep it was but the trail was steep! |
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| Kyle using the rope to climb up a rocky area |
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| You can just barely see the building...that's our destination! |
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| Me, using the chain to climb up the rock |
Once we made it to the top, there were a lot of people, a few trails, a restaurant and a cool suspension bridge with amazing views.
We grabbed a beer, sat in the shade and enjoyed the view, and decided we didn't need to do any of the other hiking trails. Once we were ready, we hopped onto the gondola for our ride down. (Thankfully...there is no way I would ever hike back down the trail we came up!)
The ride home had significantly less traffic, although we did manage to get pulled over by a police officer who informed us that we had done an illegal u-turn. (Thanks Google Maps!) She was nice enough, though, and just told us not to that again.We had a great time and it was a lovely way to celebrate another year!
