What Is Garibaldi Panorama Ridge And Where Is It?
Garibaldi is the name of a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada. Garibaldi Provincial Park is located in Western British Columbia. It is roughly between Vancouver and Whistler in the town of Squamish. Squamish is along the famous and scenic Sea to Sky Highway. Squamish is a stunning natural area with lots of provincial parks, waterfalls, mountains and hiking trails.
Panorama Ridge is located within Garibaldi Provincial Park. The hike to Panorama Ridge is a grueling one that covers about 30 kilometers (18 miles) and rises one full mile from the trailhead to the overlook at Panorama Ridge. This trail also offers lake level views of Garibaldi Lake and the famous Black Tusk formation as well as stunning views from start to finish.
What Is It Like To Travel To Panorama Ridge At Garibaldi Provincial Park?
Traveling to Garibaldi Provincial Park may be a road trip to Squamish if you are already in close proximity to Squamish. If you’re driving from the US, you’ll just need a passport card to cross the border into Canada. If you are flying, chances are you’ll want to fly into the Vancouver, Canada airport or fly into Seattle and drive across into Canada. Once you get to Vancouver you will need to get a rental car and find a place to stay. You’ll drive the Sea To Sky Highway up toward Squamish and likely stay somewhere between Vancouver and Whistler, BC.
The variety of lodging accommodations from Vancouver to Whistle is immense. You’ll find anything from campgrounds and hostels to luxurious hotels and everything in between. When I went to Squamish and hiked Garibaldi I stayed at a wonderful place. If you want a unique, quiet, scenic and mostly off the grid place to stay then check out the Squamish Tantalus View Retreat Chalet. It’s a magical place. It’s definitely not cheap but if you may only take one trip to Squamish and want your lodging experience to be memorable, the Tantalus View Retreat is really hard to beat. The drive from this chalet to the Panorama Ridge trailhead is is about 20 minutes.
What Does It Take To Get A Wall Art Quality Photo Panorama Ridge At Garibaldi Provincial Park?
In order to get any photo of Panorama Ridge, it takes a really strenuous hike. The hike from the Panorama Ridge trailhead covers about 30km or18 miles round trip. The vertical climb from the trailhead to Panorama Ridge is a bit over 5,000 feet depending on where you look. A mile is 5,280 feet so over the length of the hike you will be climbing almost a mile straight up.
The hike can be done as a really long day hike or as a 2 or 3 day hike if you camp at the Garibaldi Lake Campground. If you plan to stay at the campground you’ll need to make reservations in advance. You may want to hike to the campground on day 1, hike to Panorama Ridge and back to the Campground on day 2 or spend a second night at the campground on the way back to the trailhead on day 2 and finish up the hike on day 3. If you make it a multi-day hike, you’ll have to carry all your backpacking gear to he campground and pack lighter from the campground to Panorama Ridge. If you do it in a day hike, you’ll b able to skip the camping gear all together but will need to carry all the gear you do take all the way up to the ridge and back.
If you do it as a day hike and are not a really fast hiker, you’ll want to be at the trailhead and on the trail at sunrise if at all possible. If you can’t get on the trail by at leas 10:00am, you should probably choose a different day or you’ll be hiking back to your car in the dark. The parking lot and the trailhead is at the Rubble Creek Trailhead.
The hike starts out with a lot of steep switchbacks from the Rubble Creek Trailhead until the trail opens up into a meadow near the Garibaldi Lake Campground. From there, the trail continues through beautiful meadows and eventually starts the climb up to Panorama Ridge. There are a number of places along the trail that look like they could be summits. The rail seems to go on forever and ever. Along the way you will see the Black Tusk, another awesome photo opportunity. It’s an old stratovolcano off to your left as you are hiking up to Panorama Ridge.
As you approach Panorama Ridge, the trail gets MUCH steeper and becomes mostly a big boulder field that makes the hike a bit more difficult. If you do this hike in late fall and snow is predicted or there is already snow and ice on the ground it will make this part of the hike much more challenging. You will definitely want to have some spikes but even those will make this part of the hike only marginally easier in snow.
Once you get to the top, you probably won’t find too many other people there. At Panorama Ridge there is some room to walk around on the ridge and take photos from a few different angles though most of them will look pretty much the same.
Once you’ve gotten your fill of photos and let your body rest, it’s time to head back down. If you didn’t stop on the way up to photograph the Black Tusk, you’ll have another chance on the way back down. Once you get back down and start to approach the campground, the trail has a branch that goes off to the left. This will take you down to the edge of Garibaldi Lake. If you’ve got the time and energy, this is a another cool photo spot.
Once you’ve made it back down to your car at the Rubble Creek Trailhead, you’ll probably be just about ready to collapse. Have some extra water and snacks in the car. If you splurge on just one night of lodging while in the Squamish area, the evening after you hike to Panorama Ridge might be he night you want to have a hot tub to relax in when you get back to your hotel or cabin!
What Is The Best Gear For Photographing Panorama Ridge At Garibaldi Provincial Park?
The gear you take for photographing Panorama Ridge will depend on what type of photos you want to get and how much photo gear you are willing to carry 30 kilometers and climb up about a mile with. Since you’ll be hiking and photographing during daylight hours a plain old point ans shoot camera or a cel phone camera will do.
If you want better quality photos and are willing to carry more weight the length of the trail then you’ll probably want a DSLR or mirrorless camera and lenses that include wide angles of at least 24mm on a full frame camera. You may even want to go as wide as 16mm or 17mm. How much zoom power you want is totally up to you. I’d take the equivalent of a 24-100mm lens at least. That should be enough to get most landscape shots. If you want to zoom in on anything like a portion of the Black Tusk while you are up there, 200mm or even 400mm zoom might be desirable.
It is called Panorama Ridge for a reason. There are awesome panoramic views up on the ridge and there are views along the trail that would make great panoramic shots. If you’ve got DSLR equipment, this may mean a lot more weight. Take your DSLR, a landscape lens, a carbon tripod and then maybe a fixed 50mm or even 70-200 for distant panoramas and all of a sudden you’re carrying a TON of weight. If you’re hauling mirrorless gear and lenses it will certainly be less weight but any extra weight over that long of a hike can make the hike that much more work.
I’d go with at least a full frame DSLR or mirrorless camera with fairly wide landscape lenses. If you’ve got pano gear and are comfortable hauling it all the way up there and back there will be opportunities to use it.
What Is The Story Behind This Garibaldi Panorama Ridge Wall Art Photo?
The trip to Squamish and Panorama Ridge was an unexpected one! A friend had an open spot for a trip to Squamish and asked if I wanted to go. I had never head of this Squamish place, had never been there and didn’t know anything about it. After doing a little online research, it turned out to be quite an impressive area nestled between Vancouver and Whistler with lots of amazing sights to see, hikes to do and amazing photography opportunities everywhere.
We would fly into Vancouver, get a rental car and stay at the Tantalus View Retreat Chalet. I usually road trip everywhere and go for the cheapest possible accommodations because I’m there to hike and explore the outdoors and not stay inside some fancy hotel or cabin. This trip was well beyond what I normally budget for any trip but it looked too good to pass up.
The adventure started going through Canadian Customs when the border agent decided to give me a hard time. I’ve never been arrested, never had a DUI or anything like that but something triggered something that resulted in a hassle going through customs. I had an itinerary, a copy of lodging reservations, a flight back and had traveled back and forth to Canada countless times via car with no problem in the past.
At the last minute the border agent let me go through. After this trip, I had two more similar experiences driving through the Peace Arch border crossing at Vancouver. Though there were not cameras around it seemed like the land crossings were staged for an episode of Border Security: Canada’s Front Line. Whenever possible I’ll avoid crossing from the US into Canada around Vancouver unless I”m dressed as a banker and not someone in the middle of a camping trip.
Once customs was cleared everything went much more smoothly except that I forgot my drivers license so my friend had to do all the driving. We headed up the Sea To Sky Highway, stopped for some groceries and drinks and checked into the Tantalus View Retreat.
After exploring the area around Squamish for a few days we decided it was time to go for broke and hike up to Panorama Ridge. The weather forecast was partly cloudy and fairly warm with no precipitation. It looked like the perfect day to go.
We slept in a bit later that planned and made a huge breakfast to fuel up for the 30km hike to Panorama Ridge that included a vertical climb of a but less than a mile. It took about 20 minutes to drive to the Rubble Creek Trailhead and by the ripe old hour of about 10am we were off on the trail. Ideally if done as a day hike, you would want to start this hike right as the sun rises as we would find out on the way back.
The first section of the hike was a long series of steep switchbacks. In addition to water, food and some extra clothes I had an Induro carbon tripod, 5 camera lenses for a Canon 5D MK III as well as a Nodal Ninja panoramic head. I quickly realized this was A LOT of weight but wasn’t going to go back and drop anything off. Soaked with sweat and a little sore, we made it up through the switchbacks and up to the Garibaldi Lake Campground.
We took a short break, filtered some water, guzzled some water and kept moving. The grade of the trail became much more gentle and the high much easier and more enjoyable after the initial switchbacks. We passed by wildflowers, streams and saw the challenging climb ahead. As the hike continued on the pitch of the trail increased pretty dramatically as we got closer and closer to Panorama Ridge.
In addition to being steeper, the became mostly a giant boulder field. Instead of just climbing up, the footing became more challenging. The ridiculous amount of camera gear on my back really started to weigh me down and make the steep long hike much more difficult. If you do this hike, it really helps to do it with at least one other person. It would have been easy to give up and turn back. If you’ve got one or more other people to encourage and challenge you to keep going it is a lot easier to dig deep and find the motivation and energy to push ahead.
As we got to the boulder field area, the Black Tusk stratovolcano came into view. As we climbed higher and higher the views became more and more majestic. After what seemed like endless false summits we finally made it to the top where the sweeping views from Panorama Ridge came into view. We both collapsed and laid down near the edge of Panorama Ridge for a few minutes before wandering around to take in the views and take a bunch of photos.
I was almost too tired to break out the heavy duty panoramic gear but did snap a few shots with it. After about an hour or so, we began the hike back down. Due to the late start, we had to move pretty fast to have any hope of getting back down before dark. I would have loved to break out the panoramic gear on the way back down but it was simply too much work and too time consuming to set it up, break it down and repeat. I won’t say it was hauled all the way up there for nothing but I was took exhausted to use it as much as I would have liked.
As we started to get close to the Garibaldi Lake Campground, we hit a fork in the trail. To the right, the shorter path back. To the left a longer path that went down to the edge of Garibaldi Lake. We took the fork to the left and enjoyed some late afternoon views and photos from the edge of Garibaldi Lake. That was the final landmark photo spot of the day. From there it was a fast paced hike past the campground and down the endless switchbacks to the parking lot mostly in the dark.
Once back at the car, we guzzled more water, gobbled down some snacks, rested for a few moment and headed back to the Tantalus View Retreat.
There is no easy way to get photos and see Panorama Ridge in person. It is a grueling day hike or a multi day hike if you decide to spend a night or two at the campground along the way.
What Formats Is This Garibaldi Panorama Ridge Wall Art Print Available?
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