The Hollyburn Trail (1920's) - Articles by Pollough Pogue & Photos

Hiking on Hollyburn Ridge
Pollough Pogue
"The Province" January 24, 1925

You’ve lost your pep; can’t sleep at night; lost your appetite; irritable all day long?

The woods are full of generous-hearted souls anxious to direct you to where you can buy the latest nerve tonic or aid to good digestion. But overmuch advice has addled your brain.

“How to reduce your weight!? How to keep your fleeting youth! How to get rid of that double chin!”

“Bah!” you say, “ I’m sick of reading about the ills of mankind and the latest ’cures.’ ”

Quite so – But you don’t really deserve much sympathy. The probability is that, like 97,000 of your neighbours in Vancouver, you have steadily kept your eyes to the paved roads and drab office buildings of the city: you have ignored the God-given opportunities for health and the real joys of living which lie all around you.

Have you realized, for instance, that those mountains across the Inlet, on which you bestowed no more than a casual glance everyday, can give you back that pep which you have lost more quickly and pleasurably than a score of bottles of physic?

Do you know that within five miles of Vancouver there are alpine playgrounds as beautiful as any which Switzerland can offer? Look around you, man! Make up your mind to give the car a rest in the garage next Sunday and get out in the hills for a day. Take the missus, too, and she’ll get as much benefit from it as you will.

Be persuaded - just for once - to try the talk of a hike up Grouse Mountain or Hollyburn Ridge!

Perhaps you have never before bestowed much attention on that long ridge of tree-clad hills on the North Shore, their steep sides all powdered with snow at this time of year. That camel-backed ridge northwest from English Bay is Hollyburn Ridge. The top of it is a great plateau more than 3,000 ft. above sea level, two miles wide and twice as long, with heather-covered meadows, highland park’s and scattered clumps of alpine trees which in summer time are reflected in the mirror surfaces of still mountain lakes.

From Dundarave, West Vancouver, well-worn paths mount, through green timber most of the way, to the top. To begin with they were horse trails and logging roads, and they are the easiest and least precipitous of all the mountain trails in Vancouver’s alpine playground. The most travelled of the Hollyburn trails are those which begin at the heads of 22nd and 27th streets, Dundarave. The beauty and interest of the mountain forests and the sublimity of the views that expands before the eyes of the climber minimize the exertion of the ascent. In variety and loveliness of scenery and in grandeur of use, Hollyburn Ridge surpasses any mountain within easy access of Vancouver. In the lake district on the high plateau in summer the climber is surrounded by the idyllic perfection of sylvan beauty.

ONE VAST SNOW PLATEAU

At this time of year the great plateau is a solitude of snow. Its charm is of a very different kind but equally beguiling to the nature-loving Hiker. This splendid open white waste, diversified by snow-wreathed alpine trees, has a loveliness beyond expression in words. There is much more sunshine on the plateau than at sea level below. The cold is not severe during the day, and the pure sharp air is a vigorous stimulant. As a winter playground Hollyburn plateau has every natural advantage. More perfect natural facilities for snow-shoeing and ski running could not be found. The natural terraces and steep sidehills of the Hollyburn peaks which rise from the plateau could be readily adapted to ski-jumping and a tobogganing. There are many level miles for snow-shoe tramping. Ice for skating is available on the larger lakes at the cost of removing the snow.

A number of hikers who know the thrills of snowshoe tramping and ski running, and love to kick they get from blood stirring exercise in strong mountain air, climb the Hollyburn trail every weekend with skis or snow-shoes and packsacks with blankets and food. They spend the night in a cabin on the plateau, or in one of the shacks at the old mill.

These enthusiasts are not very numerous yet. But in the not remote future Hollyburn Ridge plateau is destined to become a popular skiing and snow-shoeing ground. There is a definite plan on foot to build a characteristic mountain inn in the lake district on the plateau. Already a tract of land as a site for this has been leased from the municipality of West Vancouver. The building, and picturesque chalet of logs, may be constructed next summer. In the meantime the concessionaires have made to the first steps in fitting up one of the bunkhouses at the old Cypress Lumber Company’s sawmill on the main trail as a ski camp. They have built a ski jump near the mill, and as a means of encouraging the sport, are renting skis to hikers and giving instructions in their use. Many hikers have availed themselves of this, and during the weekend the ski jump and its vicinity are animated by the high comedy of the first attempt of ski students.

You won’t find a ski-running or jumping as easy as it looks. Like snowshoes and skates, skis have to be painfully learned, but nothing will furnish more amusement to the gallery and your first experiments with them. But the snow was soft.

Most of the ski runners of Vancouver have hiked up Hollyburn in the last few weeks, and founded an ideal place for their sport. Coffee and good camp food or provided at the ski camp. If this cold weather continues on the mountain, a sports day of races and jobs will be arranged, ski enthusiasts say.

The men who have undertaken these developments are from Sweden, and are practiced ski-runners and jumpers, and his their aim to encourage and popular i ski running on Hollyburn Ridge, which they selected as the most suitable place for Alpine winter sports readily accessible from Vancouver.

STOPPING-PLACE IS NEEDED

A comfortable stopping-place on the plateau would make it possible for ski-runners or snow-shoers to enjoy their sport amidst the beautiful winter scenery of Hollyburn Ridge without the necessity of having to pack blankets and food up the trails.

Let us follow a party of these hikers on their travels.

The other night (they called it night because it was still dark) three hikers started at 6:00 a.m. up the Hollyburn Ridge trail from Dundarave, West Vancouver. They carried new pairs of yellow-webbed snowshoes, which they had purchased in preference to skis from a sense of loyalty to Canadian institutions. They still cherished a rash confidence that they could walk on then successfully the first time they tried, because they had not yet tried. It had not occurred to them that like skis and raw broncos, snow-shoes have to be domesticated before they will behave properly. And in taming them you discover how vindictive inanimate things can be.

At the head of 22nd Street, where the trail begins, the three hikers met a fourth, who also carried snow-shoes but not new ones. He had an experienced look, for he had kicked them into submission on many hikes. But though subdued, there were still capable of mischief.

After lively greetings, the four plodded through the bluish light of the winter dawn up the slanting trail. The chill struck cold even upon their hopeful spirits, and they solaced themselves hiker-fashion, by partaking freely of chocolate bars.

Three hours later the hikers reached the cabin at the first lake on the top. From the old mill they had stumbled through the snow on the trail without using their snow-shoes. After further informal nourishment, in the form of seedless raisins, they fastened on their snowshoes. The sharp clear air of the high plateau was now flooded with sunshine. The thick covering of snow, spread in great billows over meadows and ice-sealed lakes, was lustrous with sunlight. The pure beauty of the snow, the fantastic look of the warped and twisted alpine trees with their heavy heavy snow-fleeces, the blue shadows and the immense silence made the snow-shoers feel that they were in a strange land that had no real relation to the commonplace world they had left below the mountain.

TIROS TUMBLE HEADLONG IN DRIFTS

There was no need to follow the trail now the whole extent of the plateau was open to them to wander where they felt inclined without fear of getting lost. They left deep furrows behind them to mark the back track, for the new snow-shoes were bucking and pitching and skidding and side-slipping. The students of the art of snow-shoeing were tumbled headlong and struggled helpless in the deep snow until helped to an upright position. Shouts of laughter animated the still desert of shimmering snow and white-trimmed trees. The victim of the moment laughed as loudly as the others. It was real sport.

Two of the hikers were of those committed from birth to wear petticoats and sometimes did, but not when they went hiking. They were the healthiest of the party and soon announced that their appetites needed attention. Packsacks were opened in a clump of cypress and hemlock on the shore of last lake. The sunshine fell warm on the creamy snow in this cozy place, from which a frightened rabbit fled with long hops when they appeared. The experienced member of the party now made a fire; he had brought in his back the supply of kindling wood, and with a real axe he split a dry cypress log into billets. He hung his tea-pail over and the fire and kept it filled with snow until he had water enough for ten. The young women spread out an abundant luncheon.

Darkness comes early in the woods in January, so it was necessary to start at half past two on the return trip to Vancouver. This necessity was the only regrettable thing about the trip.

To once behold the alpine loveliness of Hollyburn is to fall under its spell and if a hiker once climbs a great ridge he will climb again and again. In summertime when the huge plateau is overspread with purple and white heather, rhododendron, and many varieties of mountain wildflowers, and water lilies cover the still surfaces of the lakes, Hollyburn is the most popular with week-end hikers of all the mountains in the Vancouver district.

THREE HOURS HIKE TO SUMMIT

No mountain top in the vicinity of the city is so easy to reach. From Marine Drive, the main street that runs fore-and-aft through West Vancouver, three hours leisurely hiking will take you to the plateau. Experienced hikers make the trip without hurry in two hours and a half.

Haunted Trails of Hollyburn
Pollough Pogue
“The Province” May 3, 1925

The trails on Hollyburn Ridge, West Vancouver’s alpine paradise, are the oldest trails in the Vancouver mountains, and are haunted by the ghosts of the past. Legends of pioneer logging are suggested by the cross skids nicked in the middle, still fixed in the Hollyburn trails. There are old miner’s trails, and at least one romantic story of a lost mine. Half a century ago, before Vancouver was contemplated, Moodyville loggers cut a giant harvest off Hollyburn, and the stubble they left shows how titanic were these cedars and firs. These timber harvesters engineered and built the old skid roads which are now the Hollyburn trails. They had a booming ground in the cove at West Vancouver.

Some say that these ancient logging roads, now, in their second incarnation, pleasure trails for hikers and nature students, have spectral visitations from dead bull-punchers who once a year in the misty light of dawn drive ox-teams down the old cross skid trails.

SOME TRAILS ARE SIWASH TRACKS

The Hollyburn Ridge trails, shown in the sketch map on this page, or almost all former skidroads slashed and beavered through the mountain forests forty or fifty or even sixty years ago by logging operators as highways for logs reaped from the timbered slopes. A few of the paths are old hunting tracks worn originally by Siwash moccasins. These, of course, are the oldest.

The present trails used by hikers cross creeks on bridges built in the beginning by the pioneer loggers, and repaired by later outfits of timber operators who have cut logs on the mountain as recently as a few years ago. The Naismith company operated on a rather large scale for a time but gave up logging on Hollyburn several years ago. This company improved and repaired the trails. The Shields concern still logging, built one of the best known paths, the box-flume trail that runs east and west along the sidehills above West Vancouver.

Lately some “ haywire” operators have cut shingle timber and yellow cedar (Western cypress) on the ridge, but to the immense satisfaction of hikers and nature lovers a great deal of green timber remains uncut on Hollyburn. Unless consumed by fire, it will stand for a long time, owing to the cost of getting it down the mountain.

“Sue” Moody’s loggers, in red and white checkered wincey shirts and fullcloth or cottonade trousers tucked into long boots with scarlet tops, reaped the first forest crop off Hollyburn Ridge, then called Black Mountain or Cypress Mountain, and to get the tree giants to their booming-ground at Hollyburn, they built the old skidroads and travoy trails.

Long after the big mills at Moodyville had sawn the great firs and cedars that these bearded lumberjacks harvested, the Naismith outfit, lured by the rich timber still standing on the ridge, joined together some of the old roads and roughed out many miles of new bush paths, scooping out sidehills, bridging creeks and throwing down corduroy where it was needed., and created a fair forest highway from the end of Twenty-sixth street, Dundarave, to the far side of the ridge. The Naismith operation built a sawmill at the 2,500 foot level, and a lumber flume, from the mill down to what is now Sherman station on the P. G. E. Railway, near the Great Northern cannery. The Naismith company extended their trail through the Six Lake district on the flat top of the ridge, and at an elevation of nearly 4,000 feet, excavated ditches and built rock dams to form a reservoir to store up water so that they might operate their flume in the dry season. All their improvements are now used by hikers. The mill longer saws lumber, but is a picturesque ruin. The cabins and shacks along the trails are shelter camps for hikers. The bunkhouses at the mill have been turned into a ski camp. The heavy sawmill machinery dragged to to the little flat on which the mill was built, has been dragged down again by the donkey-engines.

The most popular route up Hollyburn, followed in summer by hundreds of hikers each weekend, begins at the head of Twenty-second street, for which one of the old skidroads leads to the box flume trail. The flume is followed to the Naismith trail, which intersects it at the 1,600-foot elevation above Twenty-sixth street, then the Naismith trail is followed to the mill. From Twenty-second street to the intersection the trail is almost as easy as a path in Stanley Park. It was built in the beginning for oxen and horses. It is neither steep nor rough. In summer it is a green tunnel of leaves. In winter it is sheeted and wrapped in the creamy beauty of the snow.

After the intersection the Naismith trail grows steeper as it mounts over rocky ledges, but it is never really difficult. Mountain climbers call it quite easy. It is much easier than the Grouse Mountain trails. Many thousands of feet of logs have been dragged over it by animals, and donkeys engines have climbed it pulling great sleds loaded with tons of machinery.

PLUNGES INTO SPLENDID FOREST

At the old mill it crosses the sawdust covered millyard and plunges into a splendid green forest. In the fragrant dusk of this characteristic coast range wouod the hiker climbs easy grades for three-quarters of an hour. Then the forest ravels out into a thin fringe of cypress and pine and hemlock and the trees show the alpine character in picturesquely warped and gnarled trunks and limbs. Dwarfed sinewy, they look like goblin trees. The trail passes a tumbling log-cabin, hunched up on the shore of an emerald Lake, in the satiny surface of which the dark trees around its rim are exactly painted. It crosses a series of mountain meadows and parks, looping around the curved shores of five other darkly shining lakes, fringed with somber alpine trees. In summer this plateau is rich in wild flowers, and blueberries.

At a rock dam on the farther side of the flat the trail ends, but by cruising westerly, over open alpine parks, and climbing high rock ledges covered with scattering timber, hikers attain Hollyburn peak, called by some Mount Vaughan, from whose granite summit there is a noble view over the field of mountains between Hollyburn ridge and Howe Sound, and across the deep canyons to the east and south. The Lion peaks appear close at hand from here. This is a real rugged mountain height.

To make the trip from West Vancouver to Hollyburn peak, and back in a day is a splendid hike. Start early in the morning or you’ll be late getting back. Looking from the rock knob on the top of Hollyburn, the next ridge, Mt. Strahan, invites you. Camp at the Naismith mill, and start from there, and you can make Strahan and back next day easily.

THE OLD BLACK MOUNTAIN TRAIL

If you look at the trail-map of Hollyburn, you will see that there is marked on it the trail that begins on the west bank of the Capilano at the end of the suspension bridge that swings high over the emerald river.

This is said by old-timers to be the oldest of the Hollyburn Ridge trails, Over half a century ago, when mineral prospectors cruised over the ridge, and hiked into the mountains between the ridge and Howe Sound, they called the ridge Black Mountain.

This is a prospector’s and hunter’s trail, and if you saw any phantoms of the past on this trail they would be ghosts of quartz-seekers or deer-slayers. The trail is not well-defined now, for except by spectral feet, it is seldom trodden, and wild nature has woven her forest mat of salal and vines and purple heather hide the track, and fern and salmonberry flourish where shoepacks wore out a path when Hastings street and Granville street were forest trails.

But the old footway may still be followed; nature’s damp luxuriance has hidden but not obliterated it. It leads up the long eastern slope of the ridge to the tableland on the top. Pushing among high bracken and shrubbery and mounting over fallen logs and wading through devil’s club and blueberry bushes and crossing the blackened swaths of old bushfires, the hiker reaches three lovely mountain lakes rimmed by green timber, and marshy meadows where blue gentians grow. Hikers call these lakes East, Middle and West. It is about half an hour’s tramp up from West Lake to the group of lakes called Six Lakes by hikers, between which the Naismith trail winds on its way to the other side of the ridge and Hollyburn peak, the region’s highest elevation.

SPLENDID VIEW FROM BOX-FLUME TRAIL

Hikers who don’t want to make the trip to the top of the ridge, owing to lack of time or to disinclination to exertion, are advised to hit the box-flume trail shown on the map, built by the constructors of the Shields water-carrying flume which runs, a four-mile-long box on stilts beside the trail, from Bob Shield’s logging operation just about Ambleside, west to Cypress Creek.

The flume and the trail follow a narrow shelf on the side of Hollyburn Ridge at elevations of from 1200 to 1,500 feet, a sufficient height to afford a wonderful view of English Bay, the Straits of Georgia, Howe Sound, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, Point Grey, Lulu Island and the Fraser Valley to the west. In clear weather Mount Rainier may be seen from this trail. To the eastward you get a glorious view of Mount Baker and the snow-covered peaks it dominates. From this viewpoint, more than any other, you realize what a magnificent mountain old Baker is. Vancouver harbour and the city lie spread beneath you, as if you were looking at a vast photograph taken from an airplane. These views are much more extensive than the outlook from the Grouse plateau, or from any other elevation in the Vancouver district.

The box flume trail is very lovely in the summer-time, as it passes through green woods, luxuriant because of the southern exposure, and sheltered from the northerly winds.

The trail is almost level, and is reached from the head of Twenty-second street by following the old cross-skid road, which climbs the side of Hollyburn to the box-flume. This old skid-road is the easiest trail on Hollyburn, except the box-flume trail itself. The box-flume is no longer in use, and when you get about an hour’s hike west of where the flume trail is intersected by the Naismith trail that climbs the mountainside from the head of Twenty-sixth street, Dundarave, the trail gradually disappears, but if you wish to make the trip to Cypress creek gulch, you can easily walk in the flume. It is not dangerous. It will take you to a wild and romantic canyon.

The Hollyburn Trail
A Wonderland of Green Forest and Enchanting Alpine Beauty
“Hundred Times More Attractive Than Stanley Park”
A Paradise of Virgin Shadowy Woods and Flowery Meadows

The hiking trip of the Vancouver and New Westminster newspaper fraternity - comprising 170 members – to Hollyburn Ridge next Sunday, at the invitation of the West Vancouver Council, calls attention afresh to the beauty of this mountain playground at the doors of the city. The following article describes the available routes and the scenic possibilities of the trip.

Pollough Pogue
October 4, 1925

Excelling in outdoor beauty of every variety any other mountain in the Vancouver Alpine District, Hollyburn Ridge is easier to climb, its great plateau gorgeously lovely now in rich autumn masquerade, is easier of access than any other mountain playground in the district.

This surpassing beautiful recreation region at an elevation of 4000 feet above the city, may be reached by easy stages. A half-hour trip in one of the West Vancouver ferries, a ten minute ride in a ferry bus, and a fifteen-minute walk takes you to where thethe mountain trails begin. There are two main trails from, West Vancouver. Both are charming sylvan avenues leading to mountain scenery, higher up, which is magnificent beyond power of description.

No fallen timber or other obstructions or places in which an incautious step may mean danger, are to be found on these trails. They are as safe and as easy , except for the slight effort necessary on the steeper side hills, as the trails in Stanley Park, and a hundred times more beautiful and interesting. A trip up Hollyburn trails makes Stanley Park seem commonplace.

Walking at two and a half miles per hour it takes you about an hour and a quarter to reach the ski camp at the old Naismith (1) sawmill, elevation 2500 feet, from the head of Twenty-sixth street, on the Twenty-sixth street trail (2). From the head of Twenty-second it will take you perhaps a quarter hour longer. The exertion of climbing that far gives you a healthy appetite for lunch, which is served at the ski camp, maintained by two popular Scandinavian sportsmen, known to hikers as Eilif (Haxthow) and Eric (Ahlberg). Both, by the way, are expert ski-runners and specialists on winter sports. Both are splendid woodsmen and familiar with the mountain country for which their camp is a base, and are available as efficient guides for parties who wish to explore the almost untouched field of mountains behind Hollyburn Ridge. During the winter the ski camp which these excellent sportsmen have established is a headquarters for snow sports of all kinds, but chiefly ski-running through the enchanting white forest, and ski jumping on the big slide at the old mill.

From the ski camp the trails penetrate the great green forests of Hollyburn, in which no logs have ever been cut, and which are untouched by fire. Through characteristic coast range woods, main trails lead the hiker through alpine meadows embellished by mountain lakes glowing like rich emeralds, to Hollyburn peak, the highest elevation on the mountain, or to Cypress Lake (3), which is not surpasses for solitary beauty by any mountain lake in the Coast Range.

HOLLYBURN PEAK

The central point of interest in this gorgeous alpine wilderness is Hollyburn Peak, from which a great panorama of mountains may be viewed and photographed. The horizon to the east and west and north is rimmed with peaks, on some of which snow fields and glaciers are to be seen all the year round. From here the trail takes you down the northwestern slopes of Hollyburn, and many hikers attain the summit of Mt. Strahan (4), the next ridge of mountains, over 5000 feet, before turning back for the return trip of their day’s hike.

From the ski camp at the old mill to the peak of Hollyburn it is at the leisurely hiking pace of two and one half hours per hour about a two-hour’s trip. Almost every variety of alpine scenery is viewed on this hike. The trail passes through a somber forest for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the Naismith mill. This beautiful green timber makes you feel “all that mystery of motionless and teeming life that is in the forests, that spirit of the woods where one waits silent, glancing everywhere expectant of Pan, the God of wild life, to step out from one – but which one first? – of the trees.”

Then the trail leaves the shadowy woods and crosses flowery meadows in the sunlight, plunges again into the forest, and again emerges upon heathery meadows, winding between mirror-like lakes embraced by forest trees of rugged alpine appearance, mountain hemlock, amabilis fir and western white pine, hardened to a grim physique by the winter cold. There are a dozen lakes and ponds on this trail to the peak. There are no difficulties in this trail, and lovers of natural beauty find that the romantic and colorful interest is so absorbing that the exertion of hiking is unnoticed. There are no rough or dangerous places, and the trip has been made by people of advanced age.

WILD LIFE

The attractions by the Hollyburn Ridge are so numerous that it is impossible to refer to them all. The great ridge on which hunting and shooting have been forbidden by the Provincial game board, has every species of wild life found in the Coast Range. There are deer and bear, and all the larger and smaller animals that inhabit the Coast mountains. Blue grouse are numerous and show their handsome feathers to hikers on the trail, and bird life of every kind is seen and heard.

This wonderful region of outdoor pastime is a paradise for the botanist, the lover of bird and animal life, the seeker after mountain air and alpine, the amateur photographer, the camper, and hiker. It is a wonderland of green forest and alpine beauty. A few years ago, it was known to but a few, now it is becoming the most popular of mountain playgrounds. It’s rapidly-growing popularity is natural, for everyone who visits it for the first time goes back to the city and speaks in glowing terms of its beauty. Its great advantages over other mountains in the Vancouver outdoor district are its splendid trails, the accessibility of extensive plateau, and the very important thing that its slopes are gradual and demand little exertion more than a walking trip on level ground. Its main trails were well built –n easy switchbacks for the purposes of logging. It is not unlikely that in the not remote future these trails will be converted into motor roads.

As well as being the most easy of access, Hollyburn Ridge is far the most beautiful of all the Vancouver mountains. The enchanting loveliness of this wonderful beautyland must be seen to be fully appreciated.

Photo Group 1

Photo Group 2