Mt. Gardner, Bowen Island

School was finished, I didn't start work for another week, and the weather was fairly sunny, so it was a perfect Friday to take off to Bowen Island for a day hike. Mark joined me on this trip, which is cool because he was gone for nearly all of last summer and we didn't get to do much hiking then. We drove to Horseshoe Bay, decided to park the car there and walked on to the ferry. It's a short 15-minute ferry ride over to Snug Cove on Bowen Island.

We only got off the ferry around 11:45am or so, since we missed the earlier ferry that we were originally aiming for. Snug Cove is a cool tiny little bay with a small town. It was quiet when we got there - not many tourists around on Friday morning in May, although I'm sure it picks up in July and August! We started by walking through Crippen Regional Park, instead of along the highway, which was a more tranquil route. We had a good guidebook to follow so it was quite easy to find Killarney Lake, and then the Mt Gardner trailhead, although there were quite a few trail forks to choose from along the way. Our destination was the North Peak of Mt Gardner, and we started by walking up a wide gravel road. We switched onto a nice dirt trail fairly soon, and quickly came across a huge gaping hole! It seemed like the river running beneath the trail had eroded the ground, and it had all collapsed. Looked quite intimidating - I guess the it's closest thing you'd find to a crevasse while hiking on dirt!

We continued along the trail and found a great south-west looking viewpoint for a pre-lunch snack. We could see Keats Island, the Sunshine Coast, Gambier Island, and the Paisely Group of islands from there.

From there the trail climbed steeply, and it even had some ropes strung in a few sections to help with balance. We got to the 720m top (Mt Gardner North Peak - apparently the South Peak doesn't have any views) around 3pm and were greeted by about 5 or 6 huge cellphone towers. I guess it's a perfect place for towers because of the sight lines to pretty much everywhere nearby. We still had great views out over Vancouver, up Howe Sound, and over to the Sunshine Coast. A helicopter landed briefly to drop off supplies at the cell towers and then took off again. We enjoyed a tasty lunch, took a few photos, and then headed back down.

Coming down was much faster than going up (only took about an hour), mostly beacuse we didn't have to stop at every fork to figure out which one to take. We got back to Snug Cove around 4:45pm, and relaxed on the freshly cut grass. We were hoping to catch the 5pm ferry, but it was massively delayed, so we just wandered around Snug Cove's piers until the ferry finally showed up around 5:40pm. It was a great relaxing ride back to Horseshoe Bay, sitting out in the sun on the upper boat deck.