Round Mountain - June 12 2022
Coast Mountains, Squamish, British Columbia
1646m
This weekend I had a bunch of family come to town, so that means getting together for dinner, various to-dos to for various people, etc. So this Sunday, I had only a few hours to get a hike in before heading down to the city, so I decided to give Round Mountain a shot after seeing a report that the road up was clear and driveable. It's only about half an hour from my place, and I know the area is popular enough there'd be little, if any trailbreaking, so it seemed like a good candidate for a short morning/afternoon jaunt.
I got to the trailhead about 10 minutes after 11. Thankfully the reports were right, the road was doable all the way up in my 2wd sedan, so I hopped out of the car with a spring in my step and headed up.
Going was pretty fast on the solid ground until about 1130m where the snow started inconsistently. I tried to hold out til the snow got consistent, and at about 1175m I gave up and put my spikes on to regain my speed, which thankfully was effective. About half an hour in, I'd worked up a good sweat, but it was a bit cool for my shorts+t-shirt, especially since the rain was coming down with some gusto, so I pulled out the shell and rain pants, took a picture of a nice waterfall off the side of the trail, and headed back up a bit more weather-appropriately than previous.
From there, progress resumed fairly steadily, with a somewhat bumpy but well-packed trail heading up. At an hour in, I'd gained about 450m and about 4.5km (this trail has a fairly consistent and nice grade if you like elevation and kms to stay even). The trail forks here for the Red Heather Hut Loop, but my goal was to the right. In summer the trail is more to the right than I went, but the trail was broken in more of a straight line, and I wasn't going to complain about that.
Somehow, on the way up, I totally missed the hut, but I did see the washroom just up the trail at about 1400m. I recommend snowshoe/ski-ing up here, as the trail gets a lot less broken, and you're going to want more floatation. I, however, tried to go on a bit further with just my spikes. At about 1465m I gave up and put the snowshoes on, which made progress a lot easier. From there, I followed the (fewer than before I forked away toward Round Mountain) tracks until I hit 1550m, where I found a lovely sign which although I ignored, you might not want to, especially when there's fresher/more snow.
It also seems most people agree, as past this sign (as I discovered after trying to follow a couple sets of tracks which did not agree with my GPS) there were no tracks to follow, and I had to break my own trail, which absolutely sucked. The snow was so wet, sticky, and heavy, just snowshoeing at all wasn't very fun, and breaking trail in that was worse. Thankfully, I didn't have much left to go, so I set out, albeit a bit slower now that I was breaking trail, and couldn't entirely rely on my GPS either, as summer-focused trails don't always make sense in the snow.
Here, it got steeper, and I had to push my snowshoes into the snow a bit more intentionally. But after about 15 minutes of a few steps, quick breathers whilst checking the GPS, and continuing with occasional "oh wait that's not the right way" or "but that's a cliff", I made the summit in just over half an hour, which I think is an alright time.
I spent a few minutes chilling at the summit, but since I was on a bit of a tight schedule, I took a few sips of water and headed down after about a 5 minute break. Coming back down the steep section past the avalanche sign wasn't the most fun, as the snow was very unstable and slid very easily. I've also been having some ankle impingement for the last few days, so that did not help. I carefully plodded down, and just gave up and butt-slid down (no axe handy) to get down some steeper parts, and in about 10 minutes, and 1:50 into my journey I was at the sign once again.
After another 10 minutes of slide-stepping down the soft snow, I made it back to the hut 2 hours into the trip. This time, at least, I actually noticed the hut. Since I've slept in it before, you'd think I'd have recognized it on the way up, but you'd be wrong.
However, here I decided to totally ruin what I felt was actually a decent time for this trip, and decided to answer a message on my phone and ended up in a 20 minute phone call (surprisingly good reception on the part of Telus, fwiw). After hanging up I saw the time and it was already 1:30. Since I had to be in the city by 4, that was not a good sign. I packed the snowshoes up, and headed down as fast as my ankle would let me.
The next half hour was very uneventful fast-walking down the trail, until 1115m where I hit the "don't feed the bears" sign, grabbed the one non-cloud-covered picture of the hike (still raining, though), took the spikes off, and continued on.
It only took about 10 minutes to get down from there, so I headed out at about 2:15, basically a 3hr C2C trip (which can easily be less with less snow, no phone calls, and just being faster). Normally this would be the end of my trip report, but of course Mother Nature had to troll me just a little more, so after I got down from the trailhead road and into the Garibaldi Highlands neighbourhood, and I was done hiking, the rain stopped and the sun came out, just in time for me to head back inside -_-
Thankfully I managed to get home, have a quick shower, and head out without a significant deviation from the schedule, so I'd say this was a successful trip, and I'd recommend Round Mountain as a nice side-objective if you're making your way past Elfin Lakes, or as a nice peak to keep in the bank for a day when you're pressed for time.