Summer Hiking Hit List: Gwillim Lakes
A ‘must do hike’ in the Valhallas near Nelson BC is Gwillim Lakes. With a short approach of just 6.5 km it’s idea for the entire family and offers up a series of beautiful small alpine lakes to enjoy. The surrounding peaks provide more challenging hikes for those that wish to get up high and take in the views. The most pronounced peak is called Mount Lucifer which lies to the west of the lakes and is an easy scramble as my 9 year old son had no problem with it when we climbed it 5 years ago. All the route details can be found over here on our Moves Count page.
Gwillim Lakes has several marked camp sites with more being constructed this summer given the locations growing popularity. There is also a new fancy out house, the likes which you have never seen before. It’s still shiny new and ready for a test drive.
If you’d like to see the all the specs on the hike into Gwillim Lakes you can do that on our Garmin Connect page here. I tracked the hike using the new Fenix 5X GPS watch that also has full colour maps, check out the full review of this watch over here.
On day two we set out to climb a rather obscure peak to the south, while it was not a big challenge in itself we did opt for the more spicy route which involved a steep rocky couloir and some fourth class rock scrambling, just to keep it interesting. From the summit you get incredible views of Mt Odin and some of Valhalla Mountain Lodge's terrain. You can checkout this route here.
The hike back from Gwillim Lakes is the same as the way in but I decided to track it using my iPhone and an app called Mountain Hub. You can see all the data here and when you click on “track Stats” you’ll see the time, pace, distance and elevation profile—it’s pretty cool, there are also embedded photos along the route.
I highly recommend you put Gwillim Lakes on your hiking/camping to-do list and be sure to allow for a few days up there as you’ll be kicking yourself if you don’t.
