Category: Strathcona Regional District

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Marble Meadows Ramble: Marble Peak, Morrison Spire, and Mount McBride

–SUBMITTED BY MATTHEW LETTINGTON; ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON EXPLORINGTON.COM

My summers are hectic. I pack my days full of hiking in the mountains and coasts of the island. Often, I’m thinking about what to pack on my next trip while I’m unpacking my gear from a trip I’ve just finished. So come September, I’m ready to head back to work and the normalcy of weekly routines that it brings. But not before I squeeze in one last hurrah, on Labour Day. This year, we picked Marble Meadows as the destination for the weekend, and it didn’t disappoint. It was just what I needed after a summer of rained-out trips and the loss of a friend on a mountaineering trip.

through the foggy morraine.

Marble Meadows is a unique treasure within the boundary of Strathcona Provincial Park. But before you start shouting, “Uh, Matthew, there are many treasures in the park!”, let me qualify my point. It’s one of the few places you can stand on the top of a mountain and see exclusively unlogged landscapes, turquoise lakes, and the many types of rock found on the island. It’s a backcountry destination well-known by hikers and fossil-hunters for its rolling terrain, well-booted track, and the millions of fossils visible on the surface of the exposed limestone. You get the point: Marble Meadows is worth a special note.

Total Distance: 30.4 km
Minimum Elevation: 227 m
Maximum Elevation: 2079 m
Total Elevation Gain: 3012 m
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Mount Mitchell via the Northwest Ridge

–submitted by Matthew Lettington; originally published on explorington.com

Once you’ve done enough hiking on Vancouver Island, you will realize that most of the great hiking requires that you drive down a section of industrial gravel road. And that’s if you’re lucky; a good number of these places require walking stretches of road as well. Mount Mitchell is one of those.

The summit ridge on our approach to Mount Mitchell

Located along the Strathcona Provincial Park boundary, between the Norm Creek Valley and the south arm of the Oyster River Valley, this rocky feature creates a jagged protrusion of that boundary to include the area above 1200 metres into the Park. Below that, the terrain is stripped bare, and roads are visible throughout the surrounding valleys.

The long road through the valley to Mount Mitchell

Aside from the tragedy of the lost forest, the roads give fast access to the start of our route. In previous years when the gates were open, Mount Mitchell was considered a daytrip. In those days you could access the route either via the Oyster River gates off Highway 19, or from the Boliden-Westmin Road along the Buttle and Park mainlines. However, times change, and so do permissions and road conditions.

Northwest Ridge Approach to Mount Mitchell

Total Distance: 44.9 km
Starting Elevation: 232 m
Maximum Elevation: 1842 m
Total Elevation gain: 2548 m

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Tahsis Mountain – Ramblers trip 20190511

–submitted by Ramsay Dyer

The Ramblers trip to Malaspina Peak was disrupted on Saturday morning by a large Grand Fir that had laid to rest across the Canton West Main, a few kilometres before where we wanted to go. I hadn’t thought to throw my saw into the truck, but cutting it up will be a fairly big project anyway. We did briefly try to pull it out of the way, but no.

So we decided to go for Tahsis Mountain. When we did Santiago the previous week, we got a look at the approach that Lindsay had taken from the same area to ascend Tahsis Mountain. This seems to involve a fair bit of road walking and bush now, so taking the alternative route, ascending in the Malaspina drainage, that I’d explored previously had some appeal. I guess I’d kinda forgotten that that also involved a fair bit of road walking and bush (probably considerably more).

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Santiago Mountain: A Verticle Bushwack

–-submitted by Matthew Lettington; originally published on explorinton.com

Santiago Mountain rises from the shores of Tahsis Inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. From its summit, you can see some of the best views of Nootka Island, Tahsis Inlet, and some of the island’s most prominent peaks. Yet, for all its selling points, Santiago Mountain sees very few summits. At 1485 metres, this bushy peak’s summit barely reaches the alpine, but still includes enough tree-climbing, exposed scrambling, exposed tree climbing, and long, steep snow slopes to deter most island mountaineers from catching the views. How many have done so is a matter of debate: there’s no summit register to document the ascents –probably not worth it—and in our research we could only find one trip report, the evidence of at least one other via a rusted aerosol can on the summit, and shared word-of-mouth about one other person to successfully summit.

hiking on Vancouver Island's Santiago Mountain: A Vertical Bushwhack
Brooke and Ramsay, on the down route from Santiago Mountain

Distance: 12.5 km
Starting Elevation: 458 m
Maximum Elevation: 1292 m
Total Elevation Gain: 882 m
Total Time: 10 hours

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Mt Becher Snowshoe

~submitted by Phil Dol

March 2, 2019

Five members met up at the Wood Mountain parking lot for a snowshoe to Mt Becher in the sunshine.

We departed at 9:45 am mostly following the summer route. There was only one other person on the trail whom we played leapfrog with up to the summit. We arrived at the summit around 12:30 pm where we experienced the rarity of no wind and clear views of the surrounding mountains all to ourselves.

After a short lunch break, we headed back along the same route, where we encountered several groups of people on snowshoes and backcountry skiers as well as their dogs. We arrived back to the vehicles at 3:00 pm.

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Mount Elma with Octavia

–submitted by Matthew Lettington; originally published on explorington.com

Dear Octavia,

We don’t often get a whole day together for just the two of us. Typically, the entire family goes on our adventures, or at the very least it’s you, Hemingway, and me. In fact, that was the original arrangement, for you both to come with me –and 12 of my closest Ramblers buddies– on our February 3rd summit of Mount Elma. But Hemingway decided to stay home for a swim lesson and his first overnight camping trip away from home, leaving the whole day for just us–our first time!

Octavia on Mount Elma in Strathcona Park
Adventure time!

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Big Den Mountain: The Land of the Little Sticks

–submitted by Matthew Lettington, originally published on explorington.com

Mountains are changeable. From a technical perspective, a route may be an easy ascent in the winter season, and a heinous, bush-filled scramble in the summer. Or, of course, it’s possible that winter adds more treachery to a route that’s a simple scramble in the summer. It’s probably because of this duality that first ascents and first winter ascents are documented as different feats.

hiking to Big Den Mountian in Strathcona Park on Vancouver Island
Thtere’s always time to stop and admire the beasts

I’ll count Big Den Mountain among those peaks that become more complicated when the snow melts. In the winter, Big Den Mountain was an aesthetic, though steep, winter ascent with some adventure between beautiful, mature trees. But in the summer, the approach became a complicated bushy route with at least one unexpected scramble.

Total Distance: 7.2 km
Starting Elevation: 789 m
Maximum Elevation: 1419 m
Total Elevation Gain: 724 m
Total Time: 4 hours, 43 minutes and 34 seconds

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Mount Elma Snowshoe

~submitted by Shannon Tagseth

January 11, 2019

We watched the weather all week with mostly changing conditions and fingers crossed that our hike would return to an overcast day.  Unfortunately the forecast was correct and we started our hike at 7:45am at Raven Lodge in the rain.  Although we all donned our headlamps, the sky had lightened just enough to not need them. 

After a few adjustments to our equipment, we set off through the trails.  Although each of us had hiked in the area before, none of us had led a trip to this objective and therefore we relied upon our navigation device and gpx track to steer us in the right direction.  For approximately the first half of our trip towards our summit, we were thankful to utilize the snowshoe trails.  However, since the onset of the warm weather, we found we were still sinking significantly most of our steps.  We crossed the popular bridge, high above the base of the bridge, and wound our way through the trails, across several groomed cross country ski tracks. 

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