oad less-travel

led i:

the way up the Tusk

One-hour drive
knocks three

hours off hike

THE HIGH alpine meadows
between Black Tusk and
Garibaldi Lake are understand-
abiy the most popular region of
Garibaldi Provincial Park.

By Jolin Moore
Contributing Writer

They are never more beautiful
than in fall, when the turning leaves
of low-growing berry bushes and
gorse create Impressionist swathes of
intense red, orange and yellow amid
the green. On a sunny autumn day,
this is Heidi country where lederho-
sen, dimd! skirts and a lusty yodel
wouldn’t be out of order.

The high usage of this idyilic area
is all the more remarkabie because
getting there is no Sunday stroll. The
conventional approach is to take the
“Black Tusk Area” turnoff from
Hwy. 99, 33 km (20 miles) north of
Squamish and drive 3 km (1.8 miles)
to the Rubble Creek Trail parking-
lot. The 9 km (5.6 mile) trail ascends
— to put it mildly — some 914 m
(3.000 ft.) parallel to the Barrier in a
series of well-graded but apparently
endless switchbacks. Allow 3 to 4
hours, one way.

N.J. Gray, who cut the first trail
to the meadows in 1912, carved a
message into a tree at the top: “Last
biaze, thank God the task is done.”
Generations of wheezing, whining
hikers have answered
Gray with gasped
“Amen!”s and more
colorful epithets.
Having climbed the
Rubble Creek Trail
enough times to know
better, I was bemoaning
the necessity of punish-
ing my aging legs once
more to Community
Editor A.P. McCredie,
who obreezily and
unsympathetically
replied, “Why don't
you just drive?”

“Drive?” { repeated, cautious as a
man discussing the weather with a
dangezous lunatic. McCredie, it
developed, had on the previous
weekend driven up the “Microwave
Route” to within a 15 minute walk of
the Tusk in a friend’s 4 x 4.

The definitive guidebook to
Garibaldi Park, Dan Bowers’ two

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THE CRAGGY summit of Black Tusk is just a short nike away
from the lofty parking loi-perch beside the Microwave Towers,
above Tay!or Meadows and Garibaldi Park.

volume Exploring Garibaldi Park,
(Douglas & Mcintyre) describes this
route as a long day or overnight hike
of some 16 km (10 miles) from the
Cheakamus River to Taylor
Meadows.

I was prepared to be amazed; and
McCredie was evidently eager to
thrash the daylights out of his Jeep

&6 The Black Tusk, very likely the core
of an ancient volcano, may be as much
as 26-million-years-old, and looks

every day of it. 99

Cherokee. An expedition was orga-
nized forthwith and a week later, not
too early in the moming, we turned
off Hwy. 99 across from “Function
Junction” (9.5 km/5.9 miles north of
Brandywine Falls) and took the right
fork to the south bank of the
Cheakamus River and started to
climb.

Less than an hour later, we were

parked at the Microwave Tower, the
decayed black volcanic tooth of the
Tusk towering above us, looking
down on the world like gods.
Though steep in sections, the read is
in surprisingly good shape and only
a few dicey spots near the summit
threaien to loosen one's bridgework.
Any four-whee! drive vehicle with 3
litle clearance will
take you to a truly
unique picnic spot in a
moonscape of shat-
tered basalt that bears
mute testimony to the
brute power of vol-
canic forces.

On the small ridge
summit above the
tower, visitors have
erected a large number
of weird rock cairns
— a miniature
Stonehenge —- that is
very ecrie at sunset; an atavistic
human response to an utterly inhu-
man landscape.

If you plan to hike any distance
from the tower, stiff-shanked beots
with padded scree-cuffs are essential
and care-walking on the loose basalt
blocks is advised. From here, the

See Black Tusk page 33

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