July 18, 2025
~ submitted by Sarah Duncan
This trip was out plan B trip as our original trip to Flower and Shepherds ridge was cancelled due to weather.
Two of the four of us decided to check out these three mountains instead.
We met in Nanaimo and drove up to Sayward Friday morning. I had been up Stowe last year but wasn’t able to summit due to weather so was excited to go back and to tap on Springer and Hkusam as well.
We started up the logging road from the Hwy just south of Sayward gas station (which has great ice cream by the way) and started the ascent. I knew there was logging that was coming in the area and was hoping that it had not started yet… to our surprise, no logging (I heard that who ever is working in there is on strike right now) but the road which had previously ended 8.4 ish Km up from the hwy leaving just under 3KM to walk on an old grown in road before entering into the Beautiful Stowe valley now is punched through right to (and past) the trailhead buffing off almost an hour of walking.
We were on the col between Stowe and Hkusam in no time, having also discovered the trail split off towards Hkusam for the next day (or so we thought was going to be our way up).
We summited Stowe with a wee scramble to amazing views up there of the water and islands between van isl and mainland…
Then back down to the col and the short (112M) decent to the lake where we set camp and had dinner and a swim before heading up the easy and fun scramble to Springer Peak. Also providing beautiful views of Victoria and Warden peak (and surrounding peaks) as well as open views of Sayward village, the dynamic water ways, islands and mainland.
After spending some time up there admiring and chatting about other climbs we would like to do, we headed back down to one of the quietest sleeping spots I have ever experienced. I have named the lake spot Silent Lake due to the lack of sound there. It was amazing. One lone thrush in the morning, that was it.
We packed up and left Silent lake around 830 to ascend back to the col. The previous day we had decided to head up Hkusam Via Lyles trail instead of the bowl which we had originally planned (smart as the snow gully would not have been possible to go up due to the snow conditions)
This is a wonderful way to the top with some great scrambling, a wee bit of slight exposure spots where you wouldn’t want to slip and stunning views of the island mountain ranges.
We summited and read through the summit book (neither Stowe nor Springer had summit books that we could find). It was fun to see so many familiar names.
We descended the same way returning to the col where we had left our overnight stuff in about 4 hours and we rambled back down the Stowe Creek trail and drove out. Had a great cool down dip in the Salmon River, grabbed a very generous ice cream at the gas station and headed back down island.
You could summit these three beauties in a day but it sure was nice to stay up there and take our time.
