08_07_01 Canada Day - Barrier Lake Lookout Hike

• Posted on July 1, 2008 at 5:34 PM
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Looking from Barrier Lake lookout towards Mount Baldy

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“08_07_01 Canada Day - Barrier Lake Lookout Hike”

Canada Day, I decided to do one of those “tamed” hikes today. Why “tamed” hike? Well this time we had new addition to our hiking crew – two international students staying with us this summer. Min is from Korea (South Korea to be exact) and Alex is from Poland. We didn’t want to scare our students hence we choose one of those hikes which can be done as a substitute for proverbial “Sunday stroll” although it is not your regular Sunday stroll; we still gained about 500 meters of altitude and covered nearly 16 km. We got up early to have an early start; forecast was calling for showers and possibly thunderstorms. One does not want to be caught on the top of a mountain during thunderstorm unless one wishes to see his partner’s hair standing on ends ;-)). The hike starts at Barrier Lake parking lot. The weather was pristine, no wind at all (very unusual for Barrier Lake), overcast but comfy warm – perfect hiking day. There is two ways of doing this hike – clockwise and counter clockwise, we went for the latter. The benefit of this approach is that all the elevation gain is done at the beginning of the hike while everyone is still fresh and once the top is reached it is very long and very gradual way down. Going up takes around 5 km while the return path takes almost 11 km, most of it very pleasant. It all went well; we reached the top after about 2 hr. As expected the view from top was breath taking. After devouring our lunches we were on our way down. We were done by 2 pm. For those who look for a nice easy hike and yet would like to get good “bang” for their money I highly recommend this hike. For those who need a bit more adrenaline rush I would suggest the other side of Barrier Lake – Mount Baldy (2192 m) but that is a different story.