Timberline Tales

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Steamboat Mountain Ruminations

–submitted by Matthew Lettington

Steamboat Mountain falls inside the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks. A donation was made to the Tribal Park Guardians as a Responsible Users Fee.

I approached this trail with some trepidation. Recent online trail reports described the route as being in horrible condition, with several reports mentioning extensive windfall and a trail that was nearly impossible to follow. But I’m stubborn, and I had a few friends who had yet to make it to the summit of this gorgeous mountain. Seven of us, including Hemingway, set our intention: summit or bust!

Is this the crux?

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Moriarty from the East Side

-Submitted by Su Castle
Our injured middle-aged knees needed a smaller South Island objective. Moriarty from the East sounded like the perfect objective. We drove up Northwest Bay logging road 155 main to 160 main. The drive ended at a bit of a rock slide. After walking about 500 m up the logging road to our “trailhead”, we were faced with berry-full 250m bushwack to the logging road that would take us to 1125m.  So many tasty berries! (Plenty of elk and bear prints!)

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Rugged Mountain

–submitted by Jain Alock-White

Rugged Mountain – a goal of mine to get to this area for many years so I decided to make a trip happen! There were five spots open, for a total group size of six, including me. Even though there were 10 people on the waitlist, we only ended up being a group of four. Everyone else cancelled for one reason or another, and our fifth participant woke up feeling unwell and had to cancel on the day we were scheduled to leave. This is why putting your name on the waitlist is a good idea!

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Mt. Regan-Jutland North Ridge Horseshoe

–submitted by Nick Fisch

On July 11, 2026, myself and three other ramblers set out to summit Mount Regan and Jutland Mountain in Strathcona. These are considered two 6,000ft peaks, part of the infamous Alpine Club objective of summiting all 6,000ft peaks on Vancouver Island. Our plan was to run a shuttle, using the Oyster main FSR as an access road, parking one car at the Jutland (North Ridge) trailhead and then continuing on to begin the hike at the trailhead to the North Ridge of Regan. The idea was to summit Regan and then drop down below Albert Edward and hike all the way around to summit Jutland and then descend the North ridge. We used Matthew Lettingtons previous track of Regan (Hiking Mount Regan via The Lower Route – Explorington) as a guide to descend Regan and get to the Strathcona trails leading to Jutland. It was an ambitious plan as we had to get it done within ten hours given the Oyster main gate was only open 8am-8pm (leaving an hour driving each way).

Screenshot

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Mount Mitchell via NW Ridge

–submitted by Su Castle
We car pooled along the Oyster River Main and spur until a large rock and tree fall at about 900m.The trail through the clear cut and the forest to the survey marker is becoming an almost followable trail.
 We were happy to have Matt’s track to follow to the summit. We maneuvered our way through so many different terrains- open rock, very large boulders (affectionately named by us the “BBB’s” or “Triple B’s”). We were lucky to walk on some soft yet solid snow, and managed a tricky corner higher up by using a short belay off a tree. We traversed some loose rocky gullies and some short scramble sections.
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Appleton Creek to Rieveley Pond

–submitted Lisa G.

Inland Lake Campout was June 5-7, 2026 and there were several hikes happening throughout the weekend. I chose to lead the Appleton Creek Trail to Rieveley Pond section on June 6, 2026 as I had heard about how nice the waterfalls are in this section of the Sunshine Coast Trail. We planned for rain but ended up having a fairly dry day…but unfortunately not swimming weather. I planned it for HK1P1 so everyone could have a chance to take photos of the waterfalls and old growth trees. There were 7 hikers in total and we hiked out and back with a total distance of 8.2 km with an elevation gain of 245m.

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