Mount Apps: It should have been a snowshoe

November 14th, 2020

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

Mount Apps is one of my favourite short alpine hikes. Located in the Beaufort Range, it offers a beautiful ridge walk through alpine terrain. The roads have pushed so high up the ridge that you literally start the hike on the crest of the ridge – 4×4 permitting, and, weather.

Because the schedule lacked any activity on the weekend of November 14th, I hosted Apps as a late addition. Of course, the weather did not cooperate. A first of the season snowfall cursed our approach, relegating us to a start at 800 m; adding about ninety minutes to our hike.

We considered taking the snowshoes at the jeep, but I was not convinced we would find more than a few inches. A mistake we would come to regret. In places, we discovered drifts of snow that forced us to wade knee deep but then emerge onto areas just a few inches deep.

At the summit cairn, Rishi broke out the fresh donut, and we feasted in the frigid wind and blowing snow. Stuff with carbs and oil, we left the cairn and poked along the ridge for another thirty minutes until we reached the true–though unmarked– summit of Mount Apps.

A memorable moment for the day was when Rishi — in all seriousness — announced that he did not think we would make the summit before our turn around time, thirty seconds before we arrived on the summit.

Aside from the fact we missed an excellent opportunity for an early-season snowshoe, it was a fantastic day in the mountains.

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