–Submitted by Matthew Lettington
I hope you are confused by the title of this post. I’m sure you are asking yourself isn’t the summit the high point? In most cases the answer is yes! However, on Vancouver Island the answer is most probably … who knows. The more I hike and climb the more I am made aware of the inaccuracies of my maps to give me the true summits, show me all of the crucial details regarding elevation change and even report accurate elevations for summits. We most likely attribute these inaccuracies to the original surveys done of the local peaks.
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| Phil Walking through the mature forest on the way to the open mountain tops |
A great example of this is the unnamed peak commonly refereed to as 1920, so named as it is marked on the map as being 1920 metres high. In actual fact it is 1931 m, though in this case the high point is marked as the summit. A second example is Mount Rosseau, the summit is incorrectly marked. The point is places in a col between two bumps. Both my GPS map sets have this inaccuracy . Mount Kitchener in the Prince of Whales Range has similar issues. The high point is quite a distance from the summit and requires significant loss in elevation before climbing back up to the summit. It is in this way that it’s possible to do the summit without hitting the high point.
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| Mount Kitchener Map and GPS Route with Photos |
Total Horizontal Distance: 10.2 km
Starting Elevation: 810 m
Maximum Elevation: 1453 m
Total Elevation Gain: 925 m
Total Time : 4h 45m
Read the full report on Matthew’s Blog: Boring Art, Boring Life