The Chief of a thousand

The 1000^th geocache is a milestone that calls for a significant effort to find a spectacular cache. I've never been up the Stawamus Chief's backside, and only once have I been up the sheer face when my rock climbing friend hauled my frightened self up that hard way. So up the back of the Chief it was decided, and one of the caches placed on the three peaks would do nicely as the milestone.

On Thursday I had an opening, during a lull in work/schoolwork, to finally get back to nature after 3 months of being sequestered from the intense parts of it. I'd not recommend doing the Chief hike as your first hike in a long while; my thighs are burning and my joints crackling after the 3km→ 600m↑. But I did enjoy myself immensely. The weather was perfectly clear, mild, and the trail had recent maintenance. It wasn't busy but it wasn't abandoned, and one bloke I had a chat with on the first peak was an expat from Darwin who is going to UBC to pursue a postgraduate in materials science (he mentioned to me a Mount Conner not far from Uluru). The caches themselves were easy to find, as the GPSr was on target all day long.

BC Parks info board explaining the Chief's physical geology

Going up such an icon of granite switches my eyes & mind into a geology mode. Up the trail there is little to see besides heavy vegetation and rock rubble. From pieces of the rubble, I spotted some mica schist, granulite, syenite, conglomerate of generally small grains, and of course granodiorite grading to granite or grading to diorite. Indeed a hodgepodge of igneous potatoes with a bit of high energy sedimentary gravy thrown in. One particular opening to the side of the trail halfway up was the home of an oddly placed erratic, which upon investigation appeared to be a 3 meter diameter colluvial boulder of the same lithology as the country rock.

This opening was also the first place to showcase the dominant process that is the hidden danger of the Chief trails → exfoliation. On the farside mountain rockface I could see indication of rockfalls via detachment, and further up the trail there was a couple extreme overhanging weathered blocks that I've termed "jenga granite" (see picture below). Glacial activity during the Pleistocene exploited cracks & joints formed via uplift and exfoliation of the granite family rocks making up the massif. Once the trail started heading straight up the ladders & chains, the general hiking boots were swapped for the rock scrambling shoes, and the surface of the true Chief was exposed to the heavens. The Chief is not exactly geologically spectacular along the top, as what you'll see is mostly weather-beaten granodiorite with splotches of diorite & granulite xenoliths up to beachball sizes. The real treat is the views of Howe Sound, the ant-colony of Squamish, and the snowbound Mount Garibaldi complex. The icing on the cake was not dying on the way down the steep center peak, and not sustaining any injuries after an absence from strenuous hiking. Heading into town afterwards for some goods & services was a perfect time to marvel at the sheer granite rockface that looms over Squamish. A keen eye will spot the darker 'slash' that turned Stawamus Chief from a monolith into a bilith 30 Ma ago. 

Examples of exfoliation along Chief trail. Slab detachment on the left, jenga-like sheet fractures on the right

Now that I've hit 1000 I'm a veteran of the hobby, and over the two years I've hunted for those little plastic containers, I've developed some likes and dislikes about it. Thus my forthgoing geocaching focus will lean towards earthcaches plus interesting backwoods/backcountry hikes, and not bothering so much with urban micros and tourist traps.

Why is it every time I see this mountain I think of Babylon 5?

Additional Info:

• Stawamus Chief Provincial Park
• Peaked out! Stawamus Chief geocache
• The Chief: Pillar of Granite