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Hanging Lake - Beverly Creek Loop
Timestamp Free: 2018.04.22 - 23:53:59
Ranges: North America Ranges / Pacific Cordillera Range / Coast Mountains / Pacific Ranges
  (1 days)     Elevation Gain: 860m
Participants: Betsy Waddington, Steve Grant, Dave Williams, Darlene Anderson, Robin Tivy
Difficulty: 3: Some difficult stream crossings, some routefinding
Up the Hanging Lake trail, across Spectrum pass then drop down into Beverly Creek. Parking at X-country area costs 15.00/car, must return by 4:30 PM. Our time was 7 hours with a lunch stop.
This is the trip to do! It is a slight variation of Hanging Lake to Beverly Creek (via Spectrum Pass) which we had done the previous Feburary. See Spectrum pass. But this time we paid the $15/car and parked at the Biathlon parking lot. This meant we had to complete the trip by the 4:30 curfew, whereas in the previous trip we had started from outside the olympic area.

Initially we had just planned to go to Hanging Lake via the Hanging Lake Winter Trail and return the same way. But as soon as I saw the fresh fluffy snow, I suggested we go over Spectrum Pass and come back via Beverly Creek. Both Dave and Steve seemed to think it might be a possibility if we had time. It was 9:00 AM.

So off we went. The lower Hanging Lake trail had a light cover of fresh fluffy day old snow on top of a rock solid base. There were two or three other parties on a variety of ski equipment - split boards, and AT gear. In our party we had 4 people with telemark gear, but Dave Williams had gone over to the dark side and acquired some used AT gear.

When we reached the normal crossing point at 1240m, it was not possible to cross. The creek was running on top of the snow/ice. So everybody stayed on the left side (north side) of the creek. As you can see from the old 1:50K topo map, the terrain on the north side of the creek is quite a bit steeper than the south side, which is why the normal winter trail crosses. However since it wasn't feasible to cross the creek, various ski tracks went various routes up thru the steep stuff. The route Steve, Darlene, Betsy and I took involved one step where we boot kicked up a steep little slope. We never rejoined the normal trail, but soon came over the little ridge above Hanging lake and dropped into the lake. Various...

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