Ninja assault on Mt. Arrowsmith

“Hey man wanna climb Arrowsmith this weekend?”

That seemed to be how outdoor trips have been initiated/organized lately. Not having anything else planned for the weekend I took Colin’s offer to go climb Mt. Arrowsmith on Vancouver Island. For those not familiar with BC geography, Mt. Arrowsmith is the highest and most visible mountain on southern Vancouver Island. Rising to a majestic height of 1817m (5962 feet), the Mt. Arrowsmith massif dominates the skyline from both sides of Vancouver Island.

The original plan was to take Friday off, camp somewhere on the ridge Friday night, which would give us tons of time to summit the peak on Saturday. However due to prior commitments I wasn’t able to take Friday off so our plans quickly changed to ninja camping at the trailhead Friday night and doing a quick ninja assault on Sat.

After some information gathering on the internet throughout the week I hopped on the ferry Friday afternoon carrying pretty much all my outdoor gear minus the skis. Considering all my outdoor and camera gear, they probably valued somewhere around $2500. Certainly didn’t wan to lose anything on the ferry ride!!! When I reach Nanaimo I was then picked up by Colin along with his buddy Matt.

Friday night was just as I expected, driving up the logging road in the dark. It was kind of spooky considering we were the only one on the logging road. After unable to drive up further due to snow on the road, we set up our ninja camp and went to bed just after 10 pm.

Ninja camping in style!

We woke up nice & early just before 7 AM on Sat. After a bit of faffing around and sorting out gear we left camp shortly before 8. The snow on the logging road was firm but when we reached the trail head the snow became quite soft. We began to sink on every step. Going up the forest soon became a slog fest…

Ascending steep snowy slope, it was hard to get firm steps

Looking back at our tracks, man that was hard work!

Checking out our route, we wanted to go to the bump in a distance

Ascending a steep gulley

We eventually reached the ridge after a few hours and proceeded to rope up. The route we were taking involved going up a 40-50 degree exposed ridge. The weather was deteriorating, the snow was softening, and we were slowly getting trapped in the fog. When we reached the “summit” around 2:30 pm we were quite disappointed to find out that we were actually on the south summit, 80m below the true summit.

Hiking along the snowy ridge

Very cool snow formation

Colin & Matt just before the steep section

Greetings mate!

Me belaying Matt up the slope

The route description we obtained said – “traverse the “Bumps” with some class 3 to arrive in about one hour (from the saddle) in a small col below the summit block – the “Nose”. Note that the “Bumps” are almost as high as the true summit.” Looking around, to get to the classe 3 traverse trip we would need to rappel down a cliff and scramble up a ~60 degree snowy slope. The true summit was quite far from where we were and would probably take us another 4-5 hours to reach it. Since the conditions were deteriorating (very foggy, warming up), we decided to call it for the day and began descending. All together a 10 hour day trip and around 2000m (6000 feet) of elevation gain & loss. The true summit will have to wait till next time!

The gym is that way!

The true summit is quite a bit away

Port Alberni is that way! Oh wait we can’t see anything in this fog!