Category: Club

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Mount Buttle: Low Expectations Lead to a Great Day

–submitted by Matthew Lettington; oroginally posted on explorington.com

Sometimes I head out on a trip feeling confident about what I’ll find, only to discover that reality is vastly different from what I expected.

Sometimes the day ends poorly. I’ve arrived at destinations with high expectations, only to discover that, sure, the sights are there, but nobody mentioned that finding parking would be nearly impossible and that I’d be competing with a thousand of other people for the same experience. Banff comes to mind here. Other times, I’ve set out on a hike expecting incredible scenery, only to find that the reality of the destruction on the mountain leaves those expectations in ruins. 5040, I’m looking at you!

And then there are trips like my recent outing to Mount Buttle, where I started with rock-bottom expectations and ended up pleasantly surprised.

Just a bunch of friends heading outside to play

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Forbidden Plateau Traverse trail (Raven Lodge to Wood Mountain)

–submitted by Ross Burnett

The Forbidden Plateau Traverse Trail is a section of one of the club’s “Lifetime Hiking Objectives”. It can be done in either direction; and as a day trip or an overnight. It is about 28 kilometres long.

Three keen members took advantage of the great fall day, and did it as a day hike, in the more downhill direction from Raven Lodge to the Wood Mountain end, finishing at the bottom of the old ski hill; which also serves as the trailhead for the Mt. Becher hike.

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Steamboat Mountain Ruminations

–submitted by Matthew Lettington

Steamboat Mountain falls inside the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks. A donation was made to the Tribal Park Guardians as a Responsible Users Fee.

I approached this trail with some trepidation. Recent online trail reports described the route as being in horrible condition, with several reports mentioning extensive windfall and a trail that was nearly impossible to follow. But I’m stubborn, and I had a few friends who had yet to make it to the summit of this gorgeous mountain. Seven of us, including Hemingway, set our intention: summit or bust!

Is this the crux?

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Moriarty from the East Side

-Submitted by Su Castle
Our injured middle-aged knees needed a smaller South Island objective. Moriarty from the East sounded like the perfect objective. We drove up Northwest Bay logging road 155 main to 160 main. The drive ended at a bit of a rock slide. After walking about 500 m up the logging road to our “trailhead”, we were faced with berry-full 250m bushwack to the logging road that would take us to 1125m.  So many tasty berries! (Plenty of elk and bear prints!)

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Mount Mitchell via NW Ridge

–submitted by Su Castle
We car pooled along the Oyster River Main and spur until a large rock and tree fall at about 900m.The trail through the clear cut and the forest to the survey marker is becoming an almost followable trail.
 We were happy to have Matt’s track to follow to the summit. We maneuvered our way through so many different terrains- open rock, very large boulders (affectionately named by us the “BBB’s” or “Triple B’s”). We were lucky to walk on some soft yet solid snow, and managed a tricky corner higher up by using a short belay off a tree. We traversed some loose rocky gullies and some short scramble sections.
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Appleton Creek to Rieveley Pond

–submitted Lisa G.

Inland Lake Campout was June 5-7, 2026 and there were several hikes happening throughout the weekend. I chose to lead the Appleton Creek Trail to Rieveley Pond section on June 6, 2026 as I had heard about how nice the waterfalls are in this section of the Sunshine Coast Trail. We planned for rain but ended up having a fairly dry day…but unfortunately not swimming weather. I planned it for HK1P1 so everyone could have a chance to take photos of the waterfalls and old growth trees. There were 7 hikers in total and we hiked out and back with a total distance of 8.2 km with an elevation gain of 245m.

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Heather Mountain

April 5, 2026

~ submitted by Nick Fisch

Snowshoes on, then off, then on, then off again…. and again.. and again. It was one of those days.

Four of us set out on Easter Sunday to tackle Heather Mountain from the little Shaw gate. It was a bluebird 20 degree spring day. We began at around 9:30am from the locked gate for a very long slog of an approach up the logging road. We hit snow at around 3100ft and dawned the snowshoes. The going was slow.

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