Mt MacDonald - what an adventure!

Recently, I was told about a website that shows hikes and walks that are sometimes not listed on the usual maps. This was quite exciting for me as I love finding new places and making it an adventure to find it and hike it. Well our last hike was just that. I took a few days to figure out a new place I wanted to take my group of hikers and Mt. MacDonald was the choice.

The entrance to the hike is near Mt Wells (close to Goldstream, off of Humpback Road). We all met at the Mt Wells parking lot and walked down the road a bit to find the start of the trail for Mt MacDonald. The trail started to ascend pretty quickly. This was one of the first pictures I took looking up. I just love the beautiful shades of green!

As we hiked, the trail become more and more steep. We came across a part of the trail where it was quite narrow and on a cliff. At this point, we lost some of our group who decided to go another way as they were afraid of heights (and it was 2 of the men!). Sorry guys if you are reading this, however, I just thought that was interesting :-). I did feel a bit responsible in picking this hike, however, there were still about 6 of us that were excited to continue on the narrow route. Here is a picture that is one of my favourite's that shows some of the trail and it's narrow path.



 

 



As we climbed, many of us had to stop and take some pictures as the trail truly offered some beautiful scenery. Here are just a couple:

 

 

At some point in the trail, we were able to meet up with the others that went another way, although they did have to bushwhack to get back to us.

 

As we approached about 3/4 of the way to the top, we came across a part of the trail where we had to use the hand rope's that thankfully someone placed to get us up. It is difficult to see how steep and difficult it would be without the ropes in this picture. The dogs that were with us were not able to come up so some of us stayed behind and others went up.

 

 

Some of the group had some issue's getting to the top of this and going back down was even harder! When we were sitting at the top of this part of the trail, some of the group expressed interest in turning around and heading back down. It was taking a toll on a few of us so was all for it. Before we headed back down, I took the following pictures of the view:

As we headed back down, it was amazing the view that you miss while climbing up.

 

 

 

All in all, it was a beautiful hike with some difficult terrain. We all made it back down safely and I think everyone felt some sort of accomplishment that day!

 

Onto our next hike...

 

Nicole