Fiddlehead landing to Confederation Lake on the Sunshine Coast Trail

SCT Day 9 - Fiddlehead Landing to Confederation Lake

7/17/2023

Confederation Lake, SCT British Columbia

Powell Lake at the Fiddlehead Hut does not have the prettiest of views, but the full shade and floating houses made for a buzzing night with more of a civilization vibe.

After a night of boat watching as local Canadians rushed out to their Powell Lake floating houses for the Canada Day weekend we were eager to move on to more peaceful spots.

Fiddlehead has a floating house with less than welcoming owners that ran a generator and blared their music at 6:30 am- seemingly on purpose. I wouldn’t normally judge, but after some locals pulled up to retrieve some friends at the hut who had been hiking, a verbal altercation occurred between the 2 groups than was painful to watch. However, the locals saw that we were from the States and out for 7 days and tossed us up a beer and a brownie from the boat that was much appreciated.

The hike up and out of Fiddlehead took us along logging roads that were absolutely full of all types of blooming berries. Our dehydrated breakfast was washed down with handfuls of blackberries and black raspberries. We probably looked like gluttonous bears making our way along the road shoveling berries in our mouth. The juicy freshness and vitamin C did us wonders for the climb ahead of us. We could easily have picked a gallon of berries if we had the time. It inevitably led to many conversations about jam companies and pie making to be had on the Sunshine Coast.

The hike for the day was typical persistent uphill grinding with countless switchbacks and intermittent leveling to give our dire feet a 20 second break from the roots and rocks before repeating. The hike was only 7.5 km but the steepness once again put us hiking around 2 k per hour.

Along the way we had views of Powell Lake, Goat Island, and finally -the treat- views of Tin Hat which we had just climbed. Looking back from this vantage point after being up so high helped us get our bearings and finally put things in perspective.

Upon arrival at Confederation Lake, we found the place to ourselves. The arrowhead shaped lake was encircled by pines with steep edges that reached to the sky. The hut sits on the end of the lake to take in the full views. The creek end that drops water down to Powell Lake is log jammed but slightly up to the right is a very nice clear swimming area where we immediately plunged in to clean off days of sweat.

We set up in the foot print of an old log cabin and it gave us some privacy and a clean-ish place to sort through and dry our gear. Even though we shared this area with three other groups it was more peaceful than Fiddlehead landing.