Spring’s late-onset has done no great favour for mountaineering. A Cool April and May allowed late-season snow to add to an abundant snowpack, enabling cornices to persist beyond their normal range. Our quartet faced this when we set out to summit Malaspina Peak on May 22, 2022. Malaspina Peak is …
Mount Leiner and Phil’s beguiling smile
Mount Leiner is a surprisingly spectacular mountain. The most common approach begins on the outer edge of Tahsis, climbs Leiner’s southwest ridge and meanders several kilometres through the bush toward the summit. Considering its relatively low elevation, it holds a surprisingly high alpine character once you get beyond the shrubs. …
Volcano Peak – Unfinished Business
And so it was that on July 4, three adventuresome souls faced stifling heat and humidity, flies and bush, all in the name of tending to unfinished business: A successful summit of Volcano Peak. Back before the year that never was, before anyone had heard the word COVID-19, Matthew, Phil and Karl …
Family Snowshoe Trip
On Saturday, March 14, I led a small group on a snowshoe trip to Lake Helen Mackenzie. It was two families, me with my two children, and Jes with his son Trace. It was Hemingway’s first-time wearing snowshoes to walk, even though the conditions didn’t require it. We had very …
Marble Meadows Ramble: Marble Peak, Morrison Spire, and Mount McBride
View PostMount Mitchell via the Northwest Ridge
Once you’ve done enough hiking on Vancouver Island, you will realize that most of the great hiking requires that you drive down a section of industrial gravel road. And that’s if you’re lucky; a good number of these places require walking stretches of road as well. Mount Mitchell is one …
Pamela Creek Horseshoe: A Failure on Ms. Mountain
In the early days of writing this blog, I tried to document all my trips. It was a near-impossible task that offered little route information to the community, even if it did frequently highlight my inexperience and buffoonery. It was exhausting and often frustrating, especially when, inevitably, I couldn’t keep …
A Traverse in Strathcona Park: Wolf & Puzzle Mountains with a Circumnavigation of Volcano Lake
View PostTahsis Mountain via the South Ridge
Impossible to tell left from right, I relied on the weight of my body to push a course through, or duck under the branches. Within an hour we…
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Tahsis Mountain : Ramsay’s Route
This trip report is sure to raise some conversation among island mountaineers as to which peak is the real Tahsis Mountain. It
s also the day Ramsay recalled the route being “not that bushy”