Hiking Mt Albert Edward, July 2023! Hiking Vancouver Island! Island High Points! Preview the hike!!

This journey begins where so many others do, at the Paradise Meadows trailhead and parking Lot.
There is spotty cell service, if you're paying last minutes fees, and the website only accepts credit cards; in addition, the live human at the info center was not any use in regards to any matter concerned with backcountry passes or fees!
It took us just over an hour to Lake Helen Mackenzie with fairly heavy packs on, and around 5 hours total to get to Circlet Lake for the first night. There are pit toilets and bear caches at Circlet and the smaller pond just before it. The first part of the hike from the Mt Albert Edward trailhead sign is quite steep and unrelenting for the first hour or so and is pretty much the same amount of work coming back down!! Once you come over the top of the first grind, keep to the right, and continue on. Thankfully there are quite a few cairns, flagging tape, and posts to help guide your climb upwards. Even so, it can get confusing in some places, and the fog is know to roll in quickly and thickly. When we were at the top, you could see the clouds rising up the back side and starting to thicken up! It took us about 5 hours to get from camp at Circlet Lake to the Summit of Mt Albert Edward carrying more weight than we needed to. There were still patches of melted snow along the way where you could filter water if needed.