Tag: Matthew Lettington

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Ball Lake Snowshoe

March 29, 2025

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

Throughout Paradise Meadows, signs of winter’s slow demise are everywhere. Though over two meters of snow still blankets much of the landscape, evidence of the coming summer is undeniable. Patches of open water are appearing along the edges of the lakes, and in some places, we could see water nearly twelve inches below the snow’s surface.

This was my first time tackling this route in winter. Typically, snowshoers take a direct path across the frozen lakes, but with the increasing melt, we opted to follow the shoreline instead. It was the safer choice.

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Mount Cokely Winter Mountaineering

March 15, 2025

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

Well, at the very least, we can say it was a day in the mountains.

One common issue when planning a day of learning is that the weather doesn’t really care about your plans. While we had hoped for a multiday steep-angle adventure, the forecast had us adjusting our expectations, turning the trip into a single-day learning experience.

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Gemini Mountain

November 2, 2024

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

We had a glorious trip planned up Sadie Peak from the west (Nitnat) side. A week earlier, Phil and I explored this approach and discovered that the old road was drivable to nearly 1000 metres, provided that one doesn’t care a lick about their paint. I was primed to do this peak again without the long, busier approach from the Nitnat-Nanaimo Lakes pass. Things didn’t go as expected. 

Just 2 kilometres from my house, my water pump decided to give up, drenching the Jeep’s cooling system and killing my power steering. It was a challenging journey back home, with the vehicle on the brink of overheating. But I was not alone in this. I called Chris, who kindly agreed to pick me up, showing the true spirit of friendship. With our camaraderie, we set out to create a new plan, undeterred by the unexpected turn of events. 

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Nahmint Mountain

Nahmint Mountain has been on my bucket list for a long time, but there always seem to be bigger and more important mountains to tackle than this peak. The main issue is that the trip reports I’ve read discuss how long the trip is, and it’s difficult to find people who are interested in doing exceptionally long days. I’m happy to report that we used a route that got us back to the vehicle within eight hours.

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Mount Klitsa via Brooke Geroge Trail — Lifetime Objective

–submitted by Matthew Lettington

What an amazing day on Mount Klitsa! Nine of us hiked the Brooke George trail and reached the summit on this beautiful day. We drove on the rough road to the trailhead, which made returning to the vehicles even more satisfying. Many thanks to the AVOC volunteers for creating the turnaround!

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Sadie Peak

July 20, 2024

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

Why not many things change in the Alpine over the years, the same cannot be said for cut blocks. When I did Sadie Peak the first time, I do remember the block being a little bit of a challenge, but this time it was  very bushy. 

We stuck to the route I used on my first trip to this mountain 10 years earlier. The first half mostly went as expected. We followed the original route pretty closely. The navigation and bush on the first quarter of the route was made even more challenging by the very warm weather. By the time we made it halfway along the route, we discovered a well booted in game trail. It was a welcome sight because it greatly sped up those portions of the trip. 

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Mackenzie Peak

July 27, 2024

~ submitted by Matthew Lettington

McKenzie peak is the High Point to the McKenzie range. On my first attempt, I reached the summit block via the climbers trail built in the 70s by Island Mountain ramblers members. For this trip we went up by the Canoe Creek micro dam. The trails been flagged and blazed quite heavily. There’s lots of evidence of the dozens of climbers that have been visiting the range over the past few years. It made for a quick travel with little need for complex navigation.

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