A Shot of Brandywine

Killaine & I gave Brandywine mountain a shot today. Brandywine is a pleasant summit south of Whistler, on the same Cheakamus / Squamish divide as Cypress Peak. I'd climbed it once before several years ago. We were hoping we'd have a bit more luck on Brandywine than we had on Cypress Peak a week ago!

The usual "truck at parking area" shot

For some peculiar reason, I chose to drive to the 2WD parking area, rather than the 4WD area (which is about 365m higher, and a couple of kilometres closer). This made the day a bit more challenging than it needed to be!

Killaine hiking up the Brandywine trail

But, soon enough we got to the meadows. Still a bit of cloud lingering, but it cleared off through the day.

Brandywine meadows

The route is reasonably straightforward - through the meadows, then head up easy slopes to the south ridge of Brandywine.

Killaine climbing out of the meadows towards the ridge

The summit beacons

But ... we started running out of time (due to taking the "long start"!). At about 3:00 pm we were still a little ways from the summit ... so we decided to head back.

Great views from the upper ridge of Cypress Peak (center) and Tricouni (to the left).

Killaine takes a "dance break" on the way down

Beautiful flowers!

Finally, back to the truck at about 7pm. Then, all that was left to do was to grab some of the biggest rocks I could lift, and put them in the truck ... for our garden at home!

A small load of rocks