Heather Mountain
23km, 1321m of elevation gain, depending on whose device you believe.
Total time 10.5 hours (+6 hours of driving time!)
Dean had reached out to see if I was interested in hiking up to Heather Mountain with someone new just outside of Youbou. Why not, sounded fun! A good winter objective with a view, or so we had been told.
Up a little after 4am, out the door for 5am. I met up with Dean and we made the drive through Youbou, taking time to take some pictures of the Elk. We passed over 50 of them that we could see, likely more. They were everywhere!
After the quick photo op in Youbou we made our way through to the trailhead at the very West end of Cowichan Lake and met Evan there. Shortly after 8am we got moving up the hill.
The weather didn't look good for the day and after gaining some elevation, it had started to snow. Our snowshoes helped but even with them we were sinking a bit in the snow making the work a bit tougher. Evan went without snowshoes and it looked tough postholing the entire way in crampons. To his credit he powered through it like a champ!
There was a couple of pretty steep sections. One through some tight trees where we could use their branches for safety but also had to watch out for tree wells. The next steep section was the final push for the summit. There was no view and the wind was pretty bad but with our snowshoes (and crampons) it was an easy push to the summit.
It was super windy with whiteout conditions at the top and within a couple of minutes, it got worse! We had to get off the summit fast and raced to take off our snowshoes and put on our crampons.
I had practiced this before, but in the "heat" of the moment, this was a lot tougher to do. Your fingers froze within seconds and you no longer had any dexterity.
After a couple minor malfunctions with the crampons, we made it safely off the summit.
With all the new snow it was still a chore to get off the mountain but we got to the bottom eventually. Tired and wet.
It was great to meet you Evan. Thanks for getting us out there Dean, for doing the majority of the driving and for the cold jeep pizza!!
Also swiped some of your pictures of me because it's hard to take pictures of yourself and some of these shots are pretty epic!
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