Elfin Lake & The Gargoyles

September 23rd 2025

Distance: 24.7 km, +1258m

I finally made it to Elfin Lake. I had been up to Round Mountain many times on skis, and almost every time I was in a cloud.

Today I got sunny skies and fall colors. The blueberry bushes were a beautiful red. And the blueberries themselves were juicy and delicious. There was a group of first nations people who drove up the road to harvest blueberries.

Garibaldi volcano & blueberry bushes

Lila and I rode/pushed our bikes up the road to Red Heather Hut. We are not mountain bikers so we ended up pushing our bikes up the hill for most of the way. 

Once at the hut we locked up our bikes and hiked the 6km trail to Elfin Lakes. The lake was beautiful! It's pretty surprising that you can mountain bike all the way to the lakes. I can't think of another place where someone could mountain bike pretty far into the backcountry with such incredible views. 

Tantalus Range

From Elfin Lakes we continued on hiking to the Gargoyles. 

The area is teeming with volcanic activity; from Garibaldi, the Opal Cone, and the Gargoyles itself which is a, quaternary high-silica rhyolite. This is rare within the Cascade Volcanic Arc. 

Sky Pilot Group and Columnar Peak as seen from the Gargoyles

The hike from Elfin Lakes to the Gargoyles is a short and steep hike to the saddle of the Gargoyles and Columnar Peak. Columnar Peak is .4m to the left and the Gargoyles is a steep scree slope on the right.  I wish I had time to also go up Columnar Peak or beyond towards Diamond Head, but we wanted to have daylight for the bike ride down. From Elfin Lake back to Red Heather Hut only took about an hour of hiking. Once we got to our bikes we saw four bears. A mom with three cubs pretty close to our bikes. With so many blueberries around they seemed unphased by our presence and eventually moved uphill and we were able to grab our bikes. Lilas bike handlebars were bent and the front brakes did not work so we carefully and slowly rode down to the parking lot. 

I think it was worth walking the bike up the road to quickly get back down. 

I hope to go back to the area and hike to the Opal Cone, Mamquam Lake, and Diamond Head. So much to do and summer is slipping by.

Tantalus Range & blueberry bushes