September 29th, 2006

Frosty Mountain's Golden Larches / Photographs

It's a long 4 hour bus ride from Vancouver to Manning Provincial Park because the bus makes many stops along the way. Normally it only takes 2 hours for a car. After the driver dropped me off at the Manning Park Resort, I started hiking to Lightning Lake which took about 45min and it's where the trailhead to Mt. Frosty began.

The trail was well graded and gentle. Along the way, I saw some signs of autumn, yellow and red leaves on low bushes while the forest itself was mostly pine. I walked at a brisk pace and arrived at the campsite 1:15pm.

After setting up the tent and a quick lunch, I continued up the trail to the ancient larch forest. In 20 minutes, I saw the first larches. They were beautiful with the sun behind them; the golden needles were glowing.  As I climbed higher, I began to see more larches and at the plateau, I was literally surrounded by them.  Blue of the sky against the gold of the larches sprinkled with some green, red and brown. I was so amazed by the colours I barely noticed the mountain scenery around me. Needless to say, I took lots of photographs which delayed my summit of Mount Frosty.

At 5:30pm I stood at the top of Frosty. It looks the same as 13 years ago when I first climbed it except for a very well constructed platform of stone complete with a low wall for breaking the wind. Looks like nice place to spend the night here under the stars. After some photos, I started heading down and taking more pictures along the way. It would be completely dark when I got back to camp.