Capturing the Art of Nature
Murrin Park
A lovely tiny park and lake along the Sea to Sky Highway just south of Squamish.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2007
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Murrin park is a very scenic location hidden between sheer rock faces and a busy highway along the eastern edge. I had often driven past this small lake and always noticed that its parking lot was quite full. This intrigued me as I could never see that many people around its fairly small perimeter. So on August 8th 2007 Ethan and I set off to explore this park and see where all the people were hiding.
We arrived around 10:30 when the lot was still quite empty and set off to explore the lake. As it was not far around we decided we would walk it in both directions to pick up any views missed going the first direction. We made our way down the lot and past a small rock face where we noticed a climber eyeing the rock. Then it was off to the right for a counter-clockwise walk around the water. We quickly discovered that this small patch of water offered many very lovely views. From the macro level right down to the micro and those coupled with incredible reflection images. This place truly is a surprising jewel for scenic photographers.
It didn’t take long till we were on our way back along the lake and now I was even more curious as to where the people were. When we got back to the far west side furthest from the road I noticed an unmarked but well traveled trail heading into the forest, so we decided to follow it. After a few minutes walk along the trail we rounded the edge of a rise and saw a huge rock face before us. Along its base were numerous groups of climbers each plotting their ascent of the face. The height was around 80 feet, and offered an excellent training area for rock climbers. The face had many permanent hooks installed which made for convenient practice climbs. Though only practice climbing, it still was incredible watching how these guys can hang by their fingers from tiny cracks and have enough leverage and strength to pull themselves up.
I had hoped for a view of the sound from the park area but climbing the cliff their way was a non-starter. Fortunately one of the climbers pointed me to the trail along the side of the face that leads to the top at a more acceptable angle. Ethan and I hiked the cliff trail and stayed at the top for a while to enjoy the phenomenal view of Howe Sound. This park truly does have two very separate personalities – both of which offer incredible opportunities for photography. Well I got my view of the Sound and we found the missing people so the mystery of the full parking lot was solved. This place has much to offer and I will be coming back here to capture the scenes at differing seasons.