Capturing the Art of Nature
Agassiz in Smoke
Our hike up Mt. Agassiz went well until we reached the summit viewpoint, there was nothing there!
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
Summits on the Air
2017
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After my major hike two days ago, I wanted an easy short hike just to keep the legs limber.I also had the chance to go with my third son who is not normally available. He isn’t a major outdoorsman so a short hike was in order. Agassiz is quite short but is off trail and rather steep going in places. But at least the walk is through mature forest so even though it was hot, the sun was blocked by the tree cover. I also wanted to work another summit in my summits-on-the-air program, and hopefully even gain some points for the activation!
Nick and set out mid-morning for the logging road that would take us to within a kilometer of the summit. The drive went fairly quickly as the traffic was light and free of congestion. The one thing that we did discover was how the smoke thickened as we drove east. At home it was not noticeable but as we neared the base of Agassiz the smoke was getting quite bad. Near the top as we drove, the smoke seemed a bit lighter, so we continued on not worrying about it.
Finally we arrived at the spot to park, this trip I wanted to try a slightly different starting point that I thought might be a bit easier to hike from. So we parked and started getting our gear ready. As we were almost done we glanced back at the road and saw a young buck standing there watching us. He was surprised to see us and was watching to see if it was safe to continue up the road past us. I had enough time to gather my camera and take a few photos. Eventually he decided we were not a concern and he continued up the road.
We started into the forest and soon realized the low path was quite overgrown, so I had to detour up the slope a bit to get into the thinner underbrush. We continued up slope slowly making our way to where I hiked previously, as shown on my GPS. The slope is quite steep in places and the new starting location was little improvement and may even have been worse. But Nick complained not and we slowly made our way up the slope to the summit.
Once on top we continued on to the viewpoint where there is a rock ledge with a nice view out towards the town of Agassiz. Well. Looking out we could barely see the town and the Cheam Range across the valley was completely missing! As I was ascending, I had a call from Ralph who said there was another SOTA activator on Goat mountain near Grouse Mountain in West Vancouver. If I could reach him I could get a fun Summit-to-summit contact. So I nudged Nick along a bit faster and we soon arrived. There I scrambled to get my antenna set up and heard the other activator say he was closing down! I put out a quick call in desperation and waited. Did he hear me? A moment later I hear him come back to me and we had our summit to summit contact in the log. I was then able to gather 7 more contacts while I ate lunch and wondered where the Cheam Range had gone.
The hike down went almost as smoothly as our way up, This time I was exploring a more gradual path but it led off a bit too far to the left of the way we came up and we exited below the truck on the logging road. The one issue we had was that the road was cut into the slope and there was actually a twelve-foot drop from the slope to the road! So I had to haul out my rope and use it to help us descend the last few feet. A fun extra adventure for the end of the hike. Then a short walk up the road to the truck and we were done. It was a nice hike but the smoke did slow us down a little and it certainly messed up the views.