The year I was born, MEC was formed, the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve established, and the BCMC hut at Wedgemount Lake completed and opened to hikers. Nineteen seventy-one was a big year for the future of outdoor recreation in Southwestern BC.
Back then, the Wedgemount Glacier still touched the lake and not a soul posted the picturesque scenes to Instagram.
At 2,895 m, Wedge Mountain is the highest peak in Garibaldi Provincial Park and the hiking trail to the lake at its base is arguably one of the toughest, steepest, and most beautiful around.
As a professional landscape photographer, I haul a lot of extra gear up mountains. A camera body, 4 lenses, filters, batteries, cards, and a tripod at minimum. Making this normally arduous hike with full backpacking gear a positive slog. But also incredibly worthwhile and memorable.
The stunning Wedgemount Lake Trail with its elevation gain of 1,362 m over 12.6 km offers cooling cover of fir, cedar, hemlock, and pine rising out of beds of moss and fern. With scenic Wedgemount Falls and western views over Rainbow Mountain, the trail itself is an alpine gem.
Once you scramble up the massive granite boulder field and gratefully cross over the rise, you’re rewarded with picture-perfect turquoise Wedgemount Lake, a field of wildflowers, and in the far distance below Wedge Mountain, the magnificent Wedgemount Glacier.
Today, the glacier no longer reaches the lake. According to research by BCMC member Karl Ricker and 3 generations of the Tupper and Lyon families, in a matter of 4 decades, she has receded over 560 metres at a rapidly increasing rate.
Less than 2 decades ago, the glacier still touched the banks of Wedgemount Lake itself and the wildflowers in the image below. She has since left the lake and crept back steadily, uncovering a series of riegels, and degrading into ice caves and bergs in a new pool at her current terminus.
Five years ago, I had a wonderful time shooting vibrant blue ice inside the caves at the base of the Wedgemount Glacier. I climbed my way beneath this ancient ice to photograph sunlight through her undulating curves. I listened to her groan and I basked in her beauty.
I returned just 3 years later, as the world awakened from its COVID lockdown, to find my cave gone. Vanished. Replaced by silent grey moraine.
In the images below, you can see the dramatic difference between the terminus of the Wedgemount Glacier in September 2017 and September 2020.
My fine art environmental series “Transient Beauty” was ultimately awarded an Honourable Mention in the 2021 International Photography Awards (IPA). May it remind us of our responsibility to protect our precious and irreplaceable wild spaces.
Sister of ocean and sand,
Can you see our glaciers groaning
with the weight of the world’s heat?
I wait for you, here,
on the land of my ancestors heart heavy with a thirst
for solutions
as I watch this land
change
while the World remains silent.
The glaciers are groaning. Are we listening?
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