Date:
August 20,
2006
Participants:
Solo
Distance:
Approximately
8 km
Elevation Gain:
Approximately 550 m (net)
Maximum Elevation: 1453 m
Elapsed Time:
3 hours
Published Routes:
Fairley and others
Published Rating:
Unrated
Difficulty - Endurance:
3
Difficulty - Technical: Trail 2.5 (sections of 3) Scramble 3.5
Not having done anything physical
for more than 2 weeks due to a bad flu I was looking for something tame to do on my visit to Vancouver. I had originally planned on scrambling Crown Mountain (Gunn -moderate) but was unwilling to climb the approximate
1300m to gain the summit from the parking lot. Nor was I willing to pay $30!!!
for a gondola ticket or climb the staircase that is the Grouse Grind to gain the top trails to Crown’s summit. So instead I sifted through my memory and remembered a seldom used scramble approach
up Mount Seymour from the ski hill parking lot. This approach is briefly alluded
to by Fairley in his treatise “Hiking and Climbing in Southwestern British Columbia”.
Basically Mount Seymour consists of
three peaks: the 1st Pump, the 2nd Pump and Mount Seymour. The
hiking trail on its own, which if in Alberta would likely be labelled a scramble similar to Heart Mountain winds its way around
these peaks. The scramble route, now days showing some wear, climbs directly
up each peak. To access this route leave the main trail after the pond on the
backside of Brockton Point and aim for the cliffs of the 1st Pump. On
the day of my hike there were dozens of folks on the trail but I was the only one on the scramble route causing some people
to stare up at me with quizzical looks.
After climbing up some magically firm
rock I stood near the summit and looked at Vancouver laid out before me, the ocean in the background, Mount Baker in the distance
and Garabaldi’s ice covered peaks behind me. I caught a faint whiff of cedar and it hit me like a blow to the solar
plexus, I was home where I belonged.
