May 3, 2026
~ submitted by Evan Martin
Triple Peak is an iconic landmark on the southern part of the island. Hence it tends to be on every novice island mountaineers checklist. Having not checked it off myself, it was high on my list. However, between being early season and not having been in the mountains for a while, my expectations were low. Hence, I posted this as a reconnaissance trip rather than a summit attempt to keep expectations in check. Maybe that’s why I got very little interest. Either way just I and another Rambler headed out for the day with the sole purpose of getting out, but with a healthy amount of hope.
Having a 3 hour drive from Victoria, we left the parking lot at 8:30. The hike up is steep, but not the gruelling type of steep. You’re mostly hiking up a waterfall with a mix of what feels to me like 3rd class scrambling with a splash of 4th. We managed to keep our feet mostly dry despite the extra runoff from the hotter than normal temperatures. We hit snow at 850m just below the lake. By 10:00 we were on the ridge above the lake.
The top 6” of snow was mush, but underneath was supportive – except when it wasn’t. I can imagine what was under the snow and you could see signs of the snow cracking as it melted away from the cliff faces. Normally we would have put on the snowshoes we carried up, but we felt most of the terrain was too steep to navigate comfortably with them. We opted to drop them on a rock before boot packing the approach. There were tracks leading the entire way up the snowfield so route finding was pretty simple.
A short while later we came to the realization that crampons also wouldn’t be necessary and dropped those on a different rock. We proceeded over moderately steep snow slopes towards the southeast ridge. We climbed the gully towards the boulder on steep snow slopes. There was a small amount of snow on the col, but it was easily navigable- either over or under the snow bridge. At this point we dropped our hiking poles before proceeding. We regretfully kept our ice axes in case we ran into snow near the summit. I felt like we were leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for SAR to follow.
The first pitch was a short step of rock which apparently can be avoided. We opted to pull out the rope and pitch it out, staying mostly to the right by the trees, slinging a few for protection as we proceeded. The second pitch was easier and didn’t require a rope, but we had it out so we played it safe. The last pitch is the most technical although is easily climbable with boots. There is a fixed line for part of this, but it wouldn’t have trusted it. The last little bit to the summit is an easy scramble.
It was about 1pm when we arrived at the summit. We ate our lunch, found the register and made our entry – first one of the season! What happened to the group that made aforementioned tracks I can say. The first two anchors had what I thought was fresh tat, so maybe that’s as far as they made it? After enjoying the warm weather at the summit it was time to head down.
The rappels are about 20m so I would advise anyone interested in this route to take 60m of rope. Or at least don’t leave your second 30m in the truck! Thank goodness for hours watching climbing videos on YouTube. Due to the added logistics of our rappels it was 3pm by the time we arrived back at the boulder.
We retraced our steps back towards the lake, picking up our breadcrumbs as we went. The snow had softened in the afternoon heat and was penetrating our gaiter and boots. The hike back down the waterfall is still pretty technical requiring attention pretty well all the way to the parking lot. We arrived back at 17:30 – 9 hours round trip.
It was an unexpected but excellent start to the climbing season!