The weather looked promising around the Pemberton valley so plans readjusted and figured we would try exploring the Barbour valley. The plan was to traverse all the way to Copper Mound and descend to Tenquille lake.
We drove up the Birkenhead Lake FSR, it’s mostly 2wd friendly but a couple of landslide towards the end require a bit of clearance. We hiked up the old Tenquille creek FSR which is a bit overgrown but nothing bad, and then there’s a proper trail that leads to Tenquille lake where we had lunch. We camped in the Barbour valley’s meadows, things are still pretty wet and from there it’s almost continuous snow to the Barbour-Gingerbread col. The scramble to Barbour was pretty fun but there’s quite a lot of loose rock, views are epic (Sungod is very appealing from there, Meager, Wedge,Ipsoot all look epic!). We then headed up Gingerbread (uneventful), we had signal and the weather forecast was calling for a thunderstorm in the area so we started evaluating our options. We carried on towards McLeod and took a break just below the peak at the lake. The bad weather was closing in and we didn’t feel comfortable scrambling up McLeod with overnight packs (and less experienced folks in the group) so we decided to bail by simply going down the drainage to Tenquille lake (the bushwhacking at the very end is steep and caution is required). Just an hour later the thunderstorm finally caught up and we were all soaked in a matter of minutes. The last hour was not very fun but we all made it safely to the cars!
Overall a very cool trip I’m a gorgeous area. I really hope it never makes it to YouTube or Instagram and remains as pristine as it is now forever!!
The meadows:
Views from the Barbour scramble:
From top of Gingerbread:
Lake below McLeod
