Turquoise Water - Joffre Lakes Provincial Park
- sixstrings17
- Aug 17, 2016
- 3 min read
August 15, J's bday and she wanted to be on top of the world. We took the the 3 hour drive to just outside Pemberton, which is about an hour north of Whistler, famour for ski hills and resorts. The spectacular drive from "Sea to Sky" highway, well, just amazing to see how beautiful this province is. The scenery, the air, and the weather just cannot be beat in the summer. The destination this time around is Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, famous for tranquil lakes with emerald blue water. The round trip hike wsa about 5 hours, 11 km in total. The difficulty is intermediate but if one isn't in any good shape to climb on rock falls, steep hills and steps, and basically no shelter from the sun at the lakes, I'd say better not do this hike. But for those strong enough to hike this, the reward is spectacular scenery of the lakes.
There are three lakes (lower, middle, upper) and each gets more blue and more beautiful as one goes higher up the mountains. The colour is because of particles of glacial silt suspended in the water as the snow caps melt and flows down the rocky side of the mountain. The higher the lake, the purer the water being closest to the melting snow. The secret to hiking this trail is to go slowly, smaller steps, and resting frequently. It's easy to over extend and wear out otherwise. Unsurprisingly, it was a very busy trail, with lots of people met along the way. This is a testament to how beautiful the park is. The lower lake was very easy to get to. Basically, walk 10 minutes from the parking lot. The middle and upper lakes become progressively more difficult. We always bring water but on this trail, there was fresh spring water flowing that was so fresh and clean to drink. First time we ever drank from pure spring glacial water, and seriously cannot be compared with tap or bottled stuff. Everyone must taste pure cold glacial water at least once in a lifetime to see just how incomparable it is from tap water. When we got on top to upper lake, we had lunch and spent an hour or so taking photos. No shelter from the sun up there was there's basically just rocks and a few low lying shrubs. The climate is very dry up there. So we saw the snow caps melting, turning into water falls, flowing into the lakes. It was wild country even though the trail itself is well-worn and busy. We met and chit-chatted with some tourists from Shanghai, China, who were amazed at just how clean, cold and beautiful the lakes are, and took some photos of amazing dog Thompson who loved jumping into the water as his master Dylan threw a stick to be fetched.
It's amazing to see more of beautiful British Columbia and that people come from all over the world to appreciate the natural jewels of this province. Photos just cannot do the beauty justice. One has to see for one's self just how unique the lakes are. Amazingly, from these mountains all the way to the Rockies, Canada is full of mountains and lakes like these.
For J's birthday gift, I gave her a Fitbit fitness tracker watch which counts your steps and
kilometres taken among other metrics. She took more than 23,000 steps, covering 11.5km round trip up and down the mountains, lasting about 5 hours. For daily exercise, it is recommend we take 10,000 steps a day for comparison's sake.
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