Living the best adventure life, since 1958
A large group of Island Mountain Ramblers and guests assembled in the parking lot of Raven lodge, mid-morning of January 7th. The wind in the parking lot was frigid and the thermometer in my car read temperatures close to -10 C. In keeping with many of the trips I lead, I took a long time getting my seld ready for the trip.
2016 is remembered by most as a year full of foul events, a year that just kept kicking people when they were down! From my perspective, the year looked pretty okay. My family welcomed a second child, I went back to university (AGAIN), and I amidst the mayhem still managed to adventure with many friends. In December, I examined my GPS trip data and discovered that I hiked, kayaked and/or snowshoed more than 60,0000 metres of elevation gain, and more than 700 kilometres of horizontal distance. More importantly, Phil and I checked off more than 30 peaks on our Island Alpine Quest. I was eager to add Mt Derby and Mt Peel to that list of completed peaks.
The Island Mountain Ramblers have a New Year’s Day tradition of hosting a hike to celebrate a new year of adventure. To kick off 2017, I joined my three club-mates on a three-day winter trip to kick of 2017. If successful we would summit Mt Derby and Mt Peel. The trip included two days of alpine winter camping, my first true winter camping experience. As our day of departure approached the forecast brought an arctic outflow, we were looking forward too -if that’s even the right term- temperatures as low as -24 C!
Total Distance: 12. 4 km
Starting Elevation: 420 m
Maximum Elevation: 1160 m
Total Elevation Gain: 825 m
–submitted by Ken Warren
New Years morning was cold, breezy and clearing when four Ramblers set out in the snow from Witchcraft Lake to Mt Benson. There was one truck in the parking lot before us and a single hiker ahead of us. Trail conditions were fair with around 6cm of fresh snow softening up the ice slick of the well used track. We made good time to the halfway point with a short off trail ramble to mix things up.
I’ll cut to the chase– we didn’t make the summit of Mount Spencer. Of course, as with most of my stories, the devil’s in the details.
On December 18th, Vancouver Island was deep in a colder-than-normal shoulder season. The day held a forecast for overcast skies and precipitation. Further, the Mount Spencer trip was scheduled on a day with only 8 hours of daylight, almost the shortest day of the year.
The cold month had brought snow low down on the mountains, and covered the logging roads in snow. From a hiking perspective, with our approach routes covered in snow, we wouldn’t be able to drive very far — meaning that our Mount Spencer hike was double the normal distance.
Total Distance: 20.6 km
Starting Elevation: 388 m
Maximum Elevation: 1430 m
Total Elevation Gain: 1414 m
Total Time: 11 h
Continue reading “Mount Spencer: The Great Congo Line of December 2016”
–submitted by Matthew Lettington
The forecast held true for our scheduled Family/Novice snowshoe trip for the winter 2016/2017 season. The skies were darkened by overcast skies air temperature hovered just below freezing, and there was hardly any falling snow. overcast skies and the air was slightly below zero, on the Island Mountain Ramblers first Family/Novice snowshoe trip of the 2016/2017 winter.
This file was originally mailed to the members of the Island Mountain Ramblers, in 1976. It includes trip reports and club activity between December 1975 and May 1976.
This file is a scanned from documents that were originally mailed to the members of the Island Mountain Ramblers, in 1975. It contains trip reports, club business, and information about the Federation of Mountain Clubs of British Columbia (FMCBC) written from December 1973 to August 1975.
This file was originally mailed to the members of the Island Mountain Ramblers, in October 1973.
[Note: the IMR is looking for someone to transcribe this document contact president@islandmountainramblers.com if you can do it]
This file was originally mailed to the members of the Island Mountain Ramblers, in January 1972.
[Note: the IMR is looking for someone to transcribe this document contact president@islandmountainramblers.com if you can do it]
This file was originally mailed to the members of the Island Mountain Ramblers, in 1969-70.
[Note: the IMR is looking for someone to transcribe this document contact president@islandmountainramblers.com if you can do it]
Image Gallery for Cape Scott Trip:
