Dates: May 17 & 19, 2014
Participants: Brittany Zenger, Geoff Zenger
Difficulty: 1
Report: With a poor weather forecast, we decided to stay in town this long weekend, but all three days ended up having great weather, and so we ended up doing two hikes on the Saturday and the Monday, with an intense day of mountain biking in between.
On Saturday, we hiked the Tikwalus Heritage Trail, formerly known as the First Brigade Trail or 1848 Trail (103 hikes #82). It turned out to be a really nice hike for this time of year. We left the car at around 12:30pm, and made our way up the recently improved trail. The trail has seen extensive work done in recent years and now features excellent signage, good viewpoints, and many informational sign boards along the trail teaching the history of the trail and the people who built it and used it. The campground at the far end of the trail is in great shape as well for anyone wanting to camp up there. We took it slow, had a nice lunch break, and wandered out on the bluffs trail past the normal turnaround point (the campground), and still made it back to the car before 5, for a total round trip time of 4.5 hours. Recommended!
On Monday, it was pouring rain all morning so it didn’t look like we’d be likely to get out, but around noon it started to clear up and we decided to check out the old Ford Mountain trail in the Chilliwack valley. We were able to drive up to just a couple hundred metres before the uppermost trailhead (you need some aggressive 4×4 driving to make it up the last little bit), and headed up the trail. The trail is in really good shape right now with just a little bit of snow right near the summit, and although the higher peaks were socked in the clouds, the views from the summit should be marvellous on a sunny day. Total round trip time from where we parked was 2 hours, 20 minutes, with an approximately 30 minute break on the summit. It’d be a fine little hike to introduce people to hiking in the valley.