The Stawamish Chief and Lighthouse Park

The Stawamish Chief is a 600m tall granite massif rising above Squamish, the self-proclaimed outdoors recreation capital of British Columbia. Considering the mountain biking, hiking, climbing, skiing, fishing and other sports that it is ideally suited to it certainly has a stake on that claim!

We had noticed a decent weather window and decided the night before to head through early in the morning to hike up the Chief. Geoff has never climbed it properly (i.e. with ropes), and longs one day to do so, but this time we were just excited to be on this very special mountain and play on granite!

Breakfast at Porteau Cove Provincial Park (if it looks familiar, we stopped here on our way to Keith's Hut too)

The Chief as viewed from Squamish. We climbed the right hand summit.

The front face of The Chief is very well known for its excellent granite rock climbing.  We walked up the back.

Christopher found a den beneath this cedar tree.

We started our trail at the 300m high Shannon Falls. Easily accessible from the road it is remarkable that we got this shot without a host of tourists in the background.

The first two thirds of the hike you head up through forest before emerging onto the exposed granite which has ladders and chains to aid in the slightly trickier bits.

The granite near the top was fantastic!

Looking directly north towards Whistler.

A 'friendly' chipmunck who wanted to share our lunch...

Looking across at the central peak.

The view from the summit of Howe Sound was well worth the effort. We ran out of time however and settled for summitting the first peak only. 

Late afternoon on Howe Sound as we drove back.

As we drove back it seemed we were destined to sit in afternoon traffic so, considering the beautiful late afternoon light, we headed down to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. Geoff had been here once before to climb the rocky crags at Juniper Point, but had never explored this lovely park.

Captain Vancouver, back in the 1790's decided to place a lighthouse at this point, named Atkinson Point, in order to warn other ships of the dangerous headland.  In order to ensure that the lighthouse was visible at all times he declared the area around the lighthouse a conservation reserve in order that the trees would remain a dark background to the white lighthouse.  As a result this park has some beautiful old growth forest, most noticeably many trees of enormous girth and thick mossy undergrowth.

Apart from the beautiful forest we were thrilled to get within a few meters of a pileated woodpecker who was digging beetle from dead trees. Christopher too was mesmorised by this completely foreign bird, tap, tapping away and dropping woodchips all around us.

A real log cabin!

The lighthouse at Atkinson Point

A peaceful sunset after a good hike.

Lion's Gate Bridge with Northand West Van on the left and Stanley Park on the right. It is an impressive structure, but even more impressive is the inevitable traffic. Cycling is certainly the quicker means of getting across the bridge for most of the day!