Snowshoeing to Elfin Lakes Hut by Kavya Shanbhag

This is a post from my 12-year-old daughter, Kavya.

Hi people, as you have probably noticed from my first two words, this is not an ordinary boring post by my dad. This, my friends, is a very special guest post by his daughter, ME! Anyways, on to the hike! 

My birthday was in the first week of February. For my birthday present, my friend Chloe decided she wanted to take me on a hike to Elfin Lakes to stay in the cabin up there. I thought this was a
fantastic idea, hence the planning began. The group was going to be me, my mom[Kasturi], Chloe and Chloe’s mom[Celeste]. We wanted to go in February, but other plans led us to choose the dates March 16-17.

Elfin Lakes is around 22km to the hut and back. Since it was winter, we took snowshoes and chains for the car. In my pack, I was carrying: one sleeping bag, clothes, jackets, slides, and some toiletries. My pack felt slightly lighter than the pack I took on Wedgemount Lake trip, which was around 12lbs. Now, actually, on to the hike!

This was my first hike with snowshoes since I was six (I hiked Alexander Falls), and I was not at all expecting the extra weight. My legs and back were already sore when I woke up, because I had skied the previous day. With these two factors, I was, believe it or not, already tired before I reached the end of the parking lot.

It helped me hike at a good pace when I was talking with Chloe. We quickly developed a steady pace, and we were hiking in front of our moms, so we had to wait for them every so often.

After around 2 1/2 hours, we reached Red Heather Hut. Chloe and I  reached Red Heather about 5 minutes before our moms. We felt very proud of ourselves for taking our snowshoes off all by ourselves. We went inside but were too embarrassed to sit next to people who we didn’t know, so we went back outside.

Later when Kasturi and Celeste arrived we sucked it up and went inside. We had a short lunch break of around 10 minutes. Red Heather is about 1/4 up a steepish hill, so you hike this hill for around 15 minutes or so, and then you take a break at Red Heather, so you lose your momentum, and then you have to hike up the rest of the tiring hill. On the hill I kept telling myself “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. This was a great suggestion from Chloe.

After what felt like forever I finally reached the top of the hill, just behind Chloe. We sat down on the snow to wait for our moms while complaining about the long climb we had to endure. From here on we were hiking on a ridge with undulating terrain.

I fell over the side once but was very lucky because I did not tumble very far. After the ridge there were some hills and while we were hiking I was informed by Celeste and Chloe that there was a steep hill which we would have to climb and then after that there would be a 5 minute walk then we would reach the hut.

About 15 minutes after we reached the steep hill Chloe and Celeste were referring to. Chloe and I reached the top before our moms and when I turned around to look at them, their large backpacks, slow pace and lightly snow-dusted jackets reminded me of an Everest documentary.

Elfin Lakes Hut

When Chloe and I reached the hut we took all of our gear off, hung our wet clothes and chose bunks.

Later with our moms we had dinner then played bluff, crib, ludo and snakes and ladders. We went to bed around 10:00 pm. We woke up at about 7:30am, had breakfast and then packed up.

We were very relaxed so we left around 11:00am. We did not take a lunch break at Red Heather, but we did stop to layer up since it was starting to snow. About 3O minutes after we left Red Heather the trail started feeling endless.

Chloe and I started asking people who were going up, how much time until the parking lot? We asked this one guy, and he said, “only about 10-15 minutes more.” So Chloe and I got super excited and hopeful, then 30 minutes later we realized that the guy probably thought we were waaaaay faster than we were.

After another 15 minutes, we thought we should stop and wait for the moms since we hadn’t waited in a while. After they caught up to us, we hiked for about 15 minutes more, then we reached the parking lot. Overall, it took us about 5.5 hours to go up and about 4.5 hours to hike down.

My favourite part of this trip was probably the cabin; it was fun to play games inside, and it was very cozy. This was my first winter backpacking trip, and I definitely want to do more!

Thank you for reading my post, I hope you liked it.