A great bang for your buck 20 minutes from home!
Pick your poison to get up hollyburn, any way will do.
Ski from hollyburn to Strachan is excellent. Again, as long as you are roughly skiing in the right direction, you can ski any line and they are all great.
Grovel up the cat track to the Strachan upper lift. zig zag up beside that. Not terribly fun. But it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.
Pass by christmas gully to the top of upper Strachan.
Have so much fun skiing the gully and trees. Again, stay leftish but essentially any line will take you down to the HSCT, and that will take you back to the lodge.
Meet up with all the snowshoers on black. Go up, check out the little peek, return to the up track to the second black peak.
Don’t go too far right down the backside of black. The right side of the gulley is a cliff. This was the closest thing to adventurous, but I feel mostly due to being on the wrong side of the creek wall.
Go drink beer.
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The weather is perfect and the snow is good for snow shoeing. We have a very good snow shoeing today!
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Not for the faint of heart. But do it on a clear day and the views from both peaks are to die for. The ridge scramble along the top of Brunswick gets your heart going and would be ill advised in wet or snow conditions. Also the approach up Harvey from the north side involves a fairly steep incline - you’re definitely using both hands to climb. I did it clockwise and would recommend the same. Did it just under 8 hours accounting for not parking at the closest lot, losing the trail for a bit on the way up Brunswick, and dawdling for over an hour at the top of both peaks.
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Moderate Hike with beautiful views. Next time I’ll be sure to bring my suit for a dip in the lake. The elevation gain at the beginning was the hardest part but only took about 40 min. Would recommend and definitely do again.
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Quick trip up the to the West Lion, trail is in good condition, bridge is sound. Main difficulty is in finding parking. Arriving at 0730 on a Sunday wasn't nearly early enough, ended up parking about 25 minutes away from the trailhead. Watch out for Permit Only Parking.
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It’s rated as a moderate hike I would say the last part is a bit more, but the gorgeous view at the summit is outstanding and a reward for the steeper climb at the last part. Enjoy!
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Steep at the beginning but the rest was easy. Great hike with some snow/mud and an excellent view
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