Day#1
The night before our adventure we stayed with some pals in Courtenay and had maaaybe a few too many drinks, thus, our start the next day was in the early afternoon. We parked at the Paradise Meadows lot on the boarder of the Strathcona Park past the Mt Washington Ski resort. It is a very popular starting point for many different hikes and begins as a wheelchair accessible gravel trail. After about 45mins to an hour the trail gets a little more rugged, but very well maintained, and the day trippers and tourists start to disappear. The trail is mostly flat with the occasional incline/decline and weaves through some beautiful meadows, hence the name, Paradise Meadows.
Day #2
The next morning we slept in until about 0900, ate breakfast, and saddled up our day packs with water and snacks. We left camp just before 1000 and headed to Moat Lake. What place! There is a small island in the middle with cabins still used by descendants of Stuart Wood. We even noticed a small motor boat beetling around across the water as we made our way along the East side of the lake. From here we could see exactly the route we would take up around Castle Crag and along the ridge to Mt Albert Edward.
The next morning we said our goodbyes to the beautiful scenery and powered back to civilization. It was much faster hiking out, as it always is. The next time I do Albert Edward I would like to descend down via the Augerpoint trail. I'll keep that on my to do list.