Aloutte Lake Overnighter

August 02,2014

We decided to paddle up the lake on the August long weekend. The forecast was to be excellent all weekend long (and it was). We've never done wilderness camping along that lake before and I'm glad we gave it a try. It was amazing to say the least. The great thing about this overnight trip is that it's only about 40 minutes drive from home. A short drive and this is what you get around here in the lower mainland of British Columbia.

Another interesting point about this little excursion was that we had just purchased some backpacking gear and decided to give it a practice run. All in all, the gear proved to be very good. The tent was a little tight but we were shooting for very lightweight gear to do some back country hiking at some point. I'll elaborate more on this gear in the "Resources" section of this site later.

Here are just a few shots from that day. This first shot is taken from where the boat lauch is. What a view from there. You can see where the boat launch is in relation to where we stopped to camp in the map below.

The following video was just a quick panoramic view of the lake from the beach where we camped. The sound isn't great but I decided to keep it because I've got a really cool Zeppelin tune playing (Boogie with Stu - Physical Graffiti) in the background on one of those portable bluetooth JBL speakers. Neat little gadget. Ran the tunes from my phone.

BUT we didn't keep the tunes going too long because we just wanted to enjoy our peaceful surroundings.

The rest of these shots are from the camping spot. The water was perfect for swimming on this very hot day. There was nobody around us at all. It was like our own little private oasis. This was the perfect summer camping trip.

We didn't get a fire going that night because I thought there might have been a fire ban due to the extremely dry weather that we were having at the time. But we did notice several fires going on the other side of the lake. However, I don't think that the land on the other side of the lake, is actually part of Golden Ears provincial park.

Ok so you gotta love the next three shots. This was the next morning. We got up to this amazing sunrise that just happened to be rising at the perfect location (i.e. right between the mountains at the end of the lake). I mean could it get any more perfect than that? This is what I call "Searching". Also, look at that water. A paddler's dream. It doesn't get any better than this. The paddle back that morning was so peaceful. We got back home totally relaxed and forgot about the rat race for a while.

The maps below show the general location (in relation to highway 1) of Aloutte lake and where to launch any boat. I used the boat lauch area to put the canoe in the water. This boat launch is located in Golden Ears Provincial Park (just on the outskirts of Maple Ridge). However, there is a way to get to this lake on the other side of the lake which is not actually part of the park itself (back road access - see map). I've taken this back road before (many years ago) but I don't remember the details at this time. I do plan on finding that access again at some point.