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Recently Chantelle and I decided to plan a vacation through Utah in mid September. Because so many of the things we want to see in Utah will require a ton of hiking/walking, we decided to start tackling some of the hikes found in B.C in preparation. We packed up the Westy Canada Day weekend and head up towards Brandywine Meadows in Whistler.

Buddy enjoying the open space at the back of the Westy 📸 (Chantelle)

There was a ton of traffic on the way there and the Westy isn’t exactly made for the steep and rocky back roads you’ll find in Whistler. This left us short on time to complete the entire hike from the lower parking lot to the meadows before the sun went down (there’s an upper parking area much closer but you’ll need 4x4).

With the difficulty of this hike we knew we likely wouldn’t make it to the meadows before sundown, so instead set the goal of making it to the upper parking lot, there would always be other times to complete the entire hike.

The first portion of the hike was fairly gruelling, but once we started to near the upper parking lot we got to enjoy a slightly flatter ridge.

Eventually we could see a handful of trucks and trailers in the distance indicating we had successfully made it to the upper parking lot. Unfortunately not long before reaching the lot we had started to encounter some snow on the road, and as we continued towards the meadows the snow started appearing more and more. At this point we had already been on the hike for about 2 hours and we had no real idea of how close we were to the meadows or how much the snow would slow us down. We decided this would be our end point, took in the view, had a quick snack and made our way back down.

Black Tusk mountain resting in the distance

Heading back down the mountain towards camp

Once we made it back to the Westy we made a quick dinner, played some scrabble and I set up my camera to take some photos of the stars.

Some Scrabble after dinner 📸 (Chantelle)

I always love learning something new in photography and star trails was something I always wanted to try. After 3 hours of star gazing and jumping in and out of the van to check on the camera (much to the exasperation of my wife who I kept waking up) I finally got my first star trails.

The next morning, after making plenty of coffee to make a slightly grumpy wife a happy wife, we made some breakfast and slowly packed up to head back to the city. First hike of vacation preparation ✅

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