Spectacular! A glorious hike through subalpine scenery, especially now as the colours and fruits of autumn are showing up. The views of Sky Pilot and Co-pilot are superb, along with many, many other mountains - Garibaldi, Tantalus, Habrich, Mamquam, Black Tusk, Tricouni, Fee etc. Would love to try this again as a snowshoe in the winter.
It's a 20-km round-trip from the top of the gondola; 6 km on old logging roads then 4 km of subalpine rambling (repeat for the return trip). Once in the clearcut at the end of the logging road (and as clearcuts go, it's pretty scenic), the trail continues up the ridge with lots of small ups and downs along the way, the views gradually getting better and better. That sets the scene for much of the hike, so it's not quite as straightforward as a comparison with something like Elfin Lakes or Garibaldi Lake might make it appear.
Continuing on to the shoulder of Co-pilot looks quite easy but we ran out of time: it took us nearly 8 hours in total. Gotta watch those sunset times at this time of year!
Flowers are pretty much done for the season - just a few patches of pink and white heather holding on, and a lone arnica flower. Pearly everlasting is blooming along the road, fireweed has gone to seed.
Wildlife: bear prints in the mud at the edge of one of the tarns, a pair of grouse, some flickers, a sapsucker, robins, and some American pipits.
Berries - lots of berries! Blueberries and huckleberries galore with flavours spanning the full range of tart to super-sweet. We even tried some bunchberries - pleasantly sweet if mostly seed - and found a small number of thimbleberries to try, which were tasty.