Mount Landale Loop

October 7th, 2023

~ submitted by Su Castle

We started up Cottonwood main just after 7am. Beautiful day, unusual warm and dry October.

Very sad to see Mosaic has come in to fix the road – bridges are in, ready to log again. This way may not be so appealing in the future….

I have looked at the Landale Loop on a map for years. After a satisfying summit, (fall colours! warm rocks! views!) We descended off the ridge on a lovely, marked, easy to find trail. Maybe 500 m to the top of he logging roads.

Our trail runner friend left us there, as she needed some run time.

We assumed we were returning the same way, she was following the route described in All Trails, Ian and I were following what made sense on the logging roads – I’d heavily advise- take the route that goes closest to Sherk Lake! There is a little ‘gap’ where it looks like the roads don’t connect about 500m from Sherk lake, but they do in reality. The “all trails” way was an epic bushwack on completely decommissioned steep “roads”. Sounded heinous.

We may have gone for a swim in Sherk Lake – (it was that warm!) but met a dude dirt bikin’ and fishin’, and it would have been rude to disturb his fish by plunging in next to him.

The logging roads this way were not abysmal. Most of them were older, just a short clearcut open section. We gained Widow Main no problem, and even that was treed next to the creek. 28 kms with the 1km lake detour, 8 hours total time with breaks.

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