July 13, 2025
~ submitted by Evan Martin
My wife and son left Saturday to visit their family, so I was looking to get out of the house for the weekend. With so many mountains on the island, I sometimes run into decision paralysis in trying to decide where to go. This is when I often turn to lists like the Lifetime Climbing Objectives for inspiration. Although most of these objectives are larger objectives that take a bit of planning, Klitsa Mountain seemed like a bit of an outlier and a low hanging fruit. Noting that there were no other day hikes happening, I made a last minute decision to add it to the schedule.
With no family obligations, I decided to make a relaxing trip of it. Rather than the typical 5am start out of Victoria, I drove up the night before and camped at the Nahmint Lake Rec Site. Despite being a Saturday evening, I managed to snag a free site, although there’s ample place to pitch a tent on a beach if the sites were full. After what my watch described as a “long and calm” sleep, I had a relaxing morning before meeting up with a fellow rambler. We departed the rec site at 8:30 and headed for the trailhead.
Although the drive to the trailhead is long, the roads are in mostly good shape. Gracie Main was a little rough in places, but overall any half capable vehicle should not have any problems. The road continues to be in good shape up the N600 spur to the junction just below 700m. It’s apparent that most people are stopping here, as the remainder of the road up to the trailhead is severely grown in. Although grown in, the road itself is in reasonable shape. I was able to easily drive to the top of the road. Luckily, there’s a clearing kept open at the trailhead large enough to turn a vehicle around. I parked my truck off to the side as much as I could in case someone else followed me up.
We were excited to get started and headed off shortly after we arrived. Neither of us remembered to note the time or start our GPS’s, but I wager it was about 9:00. The trail is obvious and easy to follow. It was slippery in places (more notably on the way down) and be careful of the Devils Club on the lower parts of the trail. Otherwise the hike was more or less uneventful.
We took our first short stop at the lake. The trail skirts around the east side of the lake before dipping back into the forecast again. At one point the trail branches and we followed for this maybe 20m before checking the GPS and realizing we were heading in the wrong direction. Shortly after we reached tree line and started getting uninterrupted views of the summit.
At this point we started encountering patches of snow and could see larger snowfields up above. We had decided not to take crampons, and started to wonder if this was the right decision. Shortly after we ran into two backpackers who had came up the day before. I was assured that we’d be okay when I noticed that they had made it to the summit in worn out sneakers. We were also notified that the bugs weren’t any better up higher. Although not bad by Newfoundland standards, they were probably the worst I’ve encountered on this island so far.
We continued to follow the trail towards the summit. We avoided snow where possible, sticking to climbers right of the remaining snowfield. Near the top of the snowfield we rejoined a trail that went to the south of the summit block. Although the route in CalTopo trends to the North of the summit block we decided to follow to the path. The path led to a fair size cairn with an old ice axe – almost like a monument of some sort. After briefly contemplating scrambling up this southern face, we decided to skirt the summit block and link up with the mapped route. The last push to the summit we scrambled up a couple of 3rd class moves in the moat formed by the upper part of a snowfield.
It was about 11:30 when we reached the top. The weather was nice, the wildflowers were out, and the views were superb, so we endured the bugs and hung out for a while. By the time we headed back down it was about noon. We opted for a slightly different path down. What started out as initially an easier path turned into a series of chossy benches. We managed to pick our way down and hopped onto the snow at our first opportunity. We used this opportunity to review set arrests and have a little practice. The snow wasn’t all that steep and it was difficult to pick up much momentum – perfect for an intro to self arrests.
The remainder of the hike back to the truck was also largely uneventful, other than a few slips on the aforementioned wet trail before the lake. We made it back to the truck about 1:45. I had lots of time to fight the summer Sunday traffic down the Malahat – a not so delightful finish to an otherwise very enjoyable trip.