Heather Mountain Hustle

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

When the weather turned to crap on October 28th, we abandoned our plan to summit Steven Peak in the Tlupana Range and turned our eyes to something much closer to home: Heather Mountain.

You may be surprised to read that I haven’t done this common south island hike, but the long logging road approach never really appealed to me, when there are so many other objectives on our list that don’t require 15 kilometres of walking on hard, unaesthetic logging road. However, earlier that week, I caught wind that the gate might be open and sent Phil a message about the possibility. Rather than walk through the downpour of rain on an unknown route on an unfamiliar mountain, we decided to make an easy day of it.

hiking to Heather Mountain on Vancouver Island
an idyllic mountain scene

We got lucky! Indeed, we did find the gate unlocked. Even better, we found that a kind soul had brushed out the upper sections of the old logging road, creating what I’ll refer to as an ATV track to the end of the road.

Total Distance: 4.8km
Starting Elevation: 1053 Em
Maximum Elevation: 1346 m
Total Elevation Gain: 392 m
Total Time: 2h 12 m


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