Early Saturday morning Rick and I met Rishi at the Mt Cain turnoff and proceeded up Nimpkish Rd. till we hit Vernon camp. There we proceeded up Stuart main till we hit an area of the road that was no longer drivable(1100M). We then proceeded down the rest of the road(.5 km) where we found a lightly booted route through the logging slash.
Within 15 minutes we were in the alpine following a series of gorgeous ridges. Lots of elevation gain/loss and crampons on and off ensued as we continued to the summit block. So far there wasn’t much in the way of difficulty the summit block was a different storey. The route that I estimate would be class 3 was a no go due to wet rock and moss. We had to climb up class 4 rock up the first two ledges till we hit the upper band where it was a short scramble to the sub-summit, then a short hike across the summit block and we were on the summit with Spectacular views. According to the summit register we were the first visitors since Canada day 2015. We just reversed our route out with some tricky down climbing on the lower summit block and more spectacular ridge walking.
We covered 16km, did 1700M of elevation in 8.5 hrs. After the drive down we said goodbye to Rishi and continued on to Mt Alston. We camped at 900M that evening and hit the trail at 7AM. This is a beautiful mountain hike with almost no difficulties and very little bush. We were on the summit in 2.5 hrs. After sitting on the summit and soaking in the incredible view we descended the steep snow slope and were back in the car by 11am. I highly recommend either of the mountains, the views are some of the best on the island and access is fairly good and highly drivable roads.
Another great weekend in the mountains.
