In the 1920s and the 1950s, my grandmother and my father, respectively, climbed the “Lions.” The old black-and-white pictures in the tattered albums, for me as a young man, created a sense of obligation to follow. A pathway drawn by history.
As my “Nana” Gwen related, her trip up the Lions started from their summer cottage in Horseshoe Bay. Her family would have taken the ferry from downtown across Burrard Inlet to Lonsdale Avenue on the North Shore and then the train to its terminus in Horseshoe Bay.
The women and kids spent the summer in Horseshoe Bay while my great grandfather commuted back and forth for weekends. As a young woman with her friends she would have taken a skiff the five miles north to Brunswick Beach for the 5,500-foot climb to the top of the West Lion. I imagine it was a big day, without established trails, guidebooks or electronic communication and comparatively few who would have come before. Getting hurt would have been a daunting prospect. My dad, on the other hand, drove across the Lions Gate Bridge to get to the climb. I think he was able to drive all the way to Lions Bay on a logging road for his hike. The picture in the album shows him with a Tarzan pose in the fog, theoretically on the summit of the West Lion. Beer looks very close by. When I was the same age my regular hike was the Grouse Grind. I wore Meindl hiking books and backpack with what I felt I absolutely needed if I must spend the night. Not that the night was in the plan, but in the pre-cellphone era one never knew.
I took every conceivable line up to the top over the years. Some significantly better than others but always with the goal of the Grouse Nest for a beer and a well-earned free ride down. My most recent trip up the Grind was a wake up call to how much things had changed. Few trail users wear hiking boots or backpacks, but there is plenty of Lycra and running shoes with a fare-paid trip down.
Building on the train and then the Lions Gate bridge, access north to the Sea to Sky has been steadily improved. Today the 150 kilometres from Vancouver to Pemberton is not much of an impediment and naturally, people come. Things change.
I struggle with these tensions. While I have tried for years to drive business to our Pemberton farm on the Duffey Lake Road, Marriott Basin remains a special place for me. Wendy Thompson was a Whistler friend who was killed while working as an infant transport paramedic. The idea of a hut in her memory was appropriate and reflected the Wendy that I knew. Yet on any given day in “the Basin” my experience is not what it was. Not worse or better, yet certainly different. Less contemplative, busier. In Pemberton and Squamish this past week, I hosted early stakeholder meetings to talk about this tension. The focus was on the front country/backcountry opportunities and capacity. How do we define the issues from various perspectives? How do we help people understand the expectations of behaviour and their responsibilities when off pavement? Few would doubt that in the Corridor we are at a tipping point. Maintaining the quality of experience, be it at home or on the land, needs focused attention and recognition that a drawbridge is not an option.
