Trip Report: Rainbow Mountain

A short trip report for a short adventure

This past weekend I tried to rustle up some adventures on short notice, as I had the Monday off for Truth and Reconciliation. I have to wonder if getting the day off, as a white settler and salaried professional, is really the way we should be approaching reconciliation, but who am I to argue with a day off.

My friend Kat suggested Overlord near Whistler, but upon learning it was a 40km trail run, I bitterly complained and whined until Kat suggested Rainbow Mountain instead. And when I say "we decided", Kat really did all the planning, provided all the snacks, and made me dinner when I drove up to Whistler the night before. You may be wondering what I bring to the table here. I wonder that too. What I did bring was my often-neglected DSLR camera, which I used to photograph this day hike extensively.

Sunshine and Rainbows

Rainbow is in a general group with Gin, Hanging Lake, and several other well-known touring objectives, which I've heard of but never done. The Rainbow trailhead was shockingly accessible. We set out moderately early on the Monday morning, got some coffee at Mt Currie Coffee Co., and drove to the trailhead, which was on a paved road approximately five minutes away. For access and ease of cute coffees, I must give this a 10/10.

The trail up to Rainbow Lake is a steady climb and reveals a beautifully maintained trail, capped off with a gorgeous lake with views across the valley to Wedge. The other exciting thing was that there was a bear in the area. We’d done a little research on the hiking facebook groups and watched a great video of a grizzly bear loping along the lake boardwalk from a few days before. Needless to say I had my bearspray out and gripped as we jogged across the boardwalk and into the alpine, but we didn't see any bears, although the group we ran into ahead of us showed us some terrifying photos of a grizzly they'd seen a few minutes ago and tried to convince us it was a black bear.

The climb up to the Rainbow Mtn peak starts up a grassy hill that transforms into a rocky col, which steps you up to a ridgeline and into a very cool pocket of a glacier (or permanent snowfield, I’m not sure what the distinction is) before another ridge towards the summit.

On the way up to the summit we ran into two solo male hikers in succession, who let us know they'd turned around at the exposed summit scramble because of the slippery layer of fresh snow laying over the death exposure. In my opinion, if a solo guy with an ice axe thinks it's sketchy, I also think it's sketchy, but we went up to take a look anyways. We also decided the slippy snow was no good and headed back down to the bears.

Overall a very lovely day hike and shockingly quiet considering how nice it is. The round trip ended up being something like 26km. Thanks Kat for the adventure!