Carollyne on the Musical Bumps:
“Beautiful meadows in bloom, snow fields, a lovely lake, views of glaciers and distant peaks are what we found on this 10 hour day hike. The trail up from Whistler seems a lot easier than the elevation gain would indicate, due to the gradual grade, smooth condition of the trail and the relatively easy creek crossings. Harmony Creek still has no bridge, but the water levels are low enough so it is not difficult to cross. Flute Creek’s bridge is split in the middle and seemed slippery enough that most of us opted to wade across the creek. Louise actually got across with dry boots. The fork in the trail where left goes to Russet Lake and right goes to Musical Bumps appears below the pass, unlike what 103 Hikes indicates. With plenty of time and energy we took the left fork to Russet and were very glad we did. The contrast between the meadows and glaciated rock and snow fields as well as the beautiful lake was fantastic. The hut was very clean and unoccupied, but small enough you could not depend on using it for an overnighter. We had lunch at lakeside following Andrew’s swim. Returning from the lake, we could not find any shortcut trail directly across the pass to the Musical Bumps, so we had to go back to the main fork and hike back up to the bumps. The Oboe “bump”, the first one on the return trip, has the steepest incline, but they all are up and down. There is no water on this return trip until below the last bump, so if you go this way, fill up at the lake. There seem to be some missing signage, so we did not find High Note trail on the return. After the bumps, we took the trail that follows Symphony Lake. This was a bit of a kicker… a fairly steep 3 km back to the Gondola after already hiking at least 24 km. However, it was the only trail we saw that was clearly marked “Gondola” so it seemed like the best choice. We caught the free return gondola down around 8 pm after enjoying the sunset and finished off at Splitz Grill for dinner. The gondola was running unusually late due to the BBQ package at the Roundhouse… normally this would have to be an overnighter or an extremely early start to do in one day.”
