Mount Rohr Summit Hiking Trip
Duffy Lake Provincial Park
Late September 2022
Henning and I decided to take advantage of the sunny, dry spell that continued into the fall in southern B.C. We planned a 2 night hike to Rohr Lake and Mount Rohr Summit. The trailhead is about 30 km east of Pemberton. We were all packed up and ready to go when thick fire smoke rolled into the area from the wildfires to the south and east of us. Unfortunately this is becoming all too common and interfering with the fall hiking season (and in some years even the summer). Lucky for us, the smoke dissipated after a week, enabling us to proceed with our hike.
We camped two nights at the picturesque, aquamarine Rohr Lake. Both nights we star gazed until 8:30 pm at which time it got too chilly even lying under a tarp and wearing my warm Mec hut booties. Since it gets dark so much later on summer hikes (especially those in the North) we don’t often get to enjoy such an awe-inspiring star-filled sky. And to think that we inhabit just a tiny part of this cosmos; that our home spins and moves through space. On the second night we observed 50+ satellites moving across the sky in single file. It was a bizarre and puzzling sight but we later discovered that it was just Elon Musk sending up 2000 satellites (42,000 projected!) to expand the internet worldwide. What the hell? How much junk will we send into space? Why isn’t this being regulated?
Rohr Lake was busy on the Sunday afternoon we arrived. I’d assumed most people would be heading back down the trail, but it’s close proximity to the Lower Mainland meant that there were still a lot of people by early evening. I couldn’t believe it when I heard and spotted someone’s drone! I couldn’t believe it when young girls/women were posing in the nude in front of the lake! It was all too much for me and such a stark contrast to our wilderness experiences in northern B.C. and the Yukon. Fortunately, the crowds thinned by Monday. We hiked 2.25 hours to Mount Rohr Summit through beautiful meadows and hillsides splashed with red, orange and yellow vegetation. On our return I couldn’t resist a dip in the frigid lake to cool down on such a warm, sunny afternoon.