Tricouni Meadows East: Celebrating Canada Day in the snow

We had been discussing the July long weekend with a number of friends for a while. We all wanted to celebrate Canada Day by going camping together, but in the end we all ended up different places. Pascale and Ignacio chose to do part of the Sunshine Coast Trail. We did not want to go to the Sunshine Coast as we only had 2 days, which we thought was not quite enough for 2 ferries. Instead we settled for Tricouni Meadows together with Chris, Krystil and their 1 year old. However, due to a miscommunication or rather a lack of communication, they ended up at the meadow on the West side of Tricouni and we on the East side. 

The drive up to the East Meadow is quite complicated and the last part of the road is quite rough - I posted a picture of our map below. The hike in is super easy though. Just around 1.5 km and maybe 150 m of elevation to the High Falls Lake, where there is several good campsite. We camped at a small lake just south of the lake. The trail is not particularly well marked, but the still pretty easy to follow. It goes through a meadow and up a creek. It is a little muddy at places.

At the car and on the trail there were a lot of mosquitos and flies. F was in her full bug suit and she was pretty stocked to be invincible to the bugs. She liked hiking through the meadows and crossing all the little streams. Christian and I mostly wanted to put her in the backpack and run away from the mosquitos. Luckily there were continues snow at the lake and therefor no mosquitos. The weather was weird for the July long weekend. It was really warm in the sun, but the wind was super cold. The clouds constantly threatened with rain. 

Despite the weather Christian decided to give Tricouni a go. He showed me that the lake was still skiable and then went up the ridge on the west side of the lake. At the top of the ridge he dropped down on the other side and traverse towards the summit until he met up with the regular route. From here he followed the standard route as described in Matt Gunn's Scrambles Guide. He wore his skis for most of the approach, but the scrambling part is snow free. The view from the summit was white. The route trip took him about 3 hours.

At camp F could care less about the subpar weather. She was busy building snow cakes and sliding on the snow. Around 5.30pm it started raining and I convinced F to build therm-a-rest slides in the tent instead. After Christian returned I cooked dinner in the drizzle, while F and Christian hiked around on the small rocky ridges. F kept insisting that they were going to Grizzly land - I sure hope not!

The night was warm and rainy, but in the morning we woke up to a bit of blue sky. I took off for my turn on the summit, but at the top of the ridge I decided that it wasn't for me. Not that it was outside my ability, but with the somewhat steeper snow, the scrambling and the non ideal weather I did not feel comfortable doing it by myself. Back at camp I found Christian and F skiing a small slope by the tent. We packed up the tent and headed out. 

Despite the weather I can't really think of a better way to celebrate Canada Day weekend than in the mountains. They are the reason why I came to Canada in the first place almost 10 years ago.