Following the annual CEA meetings, I met up with Jorge to find some May/June snow (in July conditions) in Golden Ears Park. The trail to the "ears" climbs up the side of a ridge, through second-growth forest, ... ... with some monarch stumps serving as benches for snack stops. The route features nice views of what is (not obviously from this perspective) the right ear of the Golden Ears. The ridge meets a col and turns left onto Panorama Ridge, by which time we had plenty of snow. The aptly named ridge has stunning BC alpine/water views over Pitt Lake. We reviewed some self arrest basics in preparation for the next day. I had never spent much time out here, in favour of closer to the coast or farther inland, but there is a lot of great climbing around, including Mt Robie Reid. Only one of the tent platforms had melted out so far this season. But there was enough running water that we never needed to melt snow. There is also a fancy urine-separating composting toilet, and an "emergency" shelter which is probably actually pretty reliably available in low-season / mid-week. In the morning, Jorge donned his crampons ... (I had only boots, having packed for my flight a fancy modular pair of crampons which don't fit hiking boots! even though the first thing I ever learned about crampons was "Do not wait until the trailhead to fit or adjust them.") This is the suburban alpine and this area faces away from town --- really pretty amazing. We took a steeper option than needed, in order to get some extra ridge scrambling, which amounted to following the summer route. One outcrop on the ridge ... is followed by more snow, before the final rocky ridge. The summit of the right ear was marred by various bits of wilderness vandalism -- people epoxying or bolting their personal memorials onto the rock. Please don't do this. LNT! Hooray for being back in such a place! We had time to visit the left ear, too. ... On that summit was more personal memorial vandalism, including a cemented engraved cross, though it had already been re-vandalized. That is, someone had broken it off, but you can't easily remove the cement or stub. Besides the unwelcome sights, the Lower Mainland with its multiple downtown highrise cores, the Salish Sea, Vancouver Island, the Olympics, and much more were laid out before us. I was not quite sated by visiting the left and right ears, ... ... so we made our way towards Edge Peak, but decided it looked a bit steep for just a few metres above that snow patch. We made our way back... I took advantage of the great snow conditions to boot up the snow (steepest at the very top) back to the right ear A poorly marked trail at one point had us descend to and beyond some misplaced flagging. We retraced our steps and built an ugly indication to look to the right at this point. These beauties still move me deeply. On my flight in, I had seen the low-snow conditions, and on my flight out I got another look at where we had been (Golden Ears is just right of some clouds near the far left).
