Eagle Mountain - June 4 2022
Coast Mountains, Anmore, British Columbia
1050m
After last weekend where we (me + Logan) didn't manage to bag any new peaks (had a failed attempt to go to Rainbow Mountain where we were turned back by closed gates, a failed secondary attempt to go up Metal Dome from the wrong side which was not worth writing about, then just did the Chief in the evening for fun), we wanted some redemption this weekend. We also didn't want to go too high, as the snow is pretty terrible, and we didn't want to deal with it much. So, our eyes were set on the Dilly Dally loop by Buntzen Lake. A trip report from earlier in the week confirmed you can skip the snowshoes entirely, so that was enough to seal the deal. Saturday was picked as the less-rainy day, and a plan formed. Sadly, the gates are controlled by BC Hydro and open at 8am, so we got a slightly late start on a drizzly+foggy Saturday morning about 10 minutes after the gates opened.
We set off from the front of the parking lot back towards the entrance, as the Eagle Mountain side of the loop (the recommended direction to take) is just on the other side of the fork where the parking lot diverges from the powerhouse road. The trail here is pretty uneventful. Well-marked and very obvious, and just an uphill slog for a while. We were feeling good about hiking with no snow gear for the first time in a while (other than my spikes I never bothered donning), so we made pretty steady progress up. However, I did have to take a good few breaks to de-fog my glasses, seems I need a new pair with better lenses...
Nevertheless, just over an hour in, after some pretty unrewarding upwards walking, we arrived at the Polytrichum Viewpoint, which is at 700m (starting elevation is 150m) and about 3.15km into the trail. We snagged a quick photo, I decided to give up on my glasses and folded them onto my pack strap (of all days not to bring a case...), and we continued on up.
A short while later, we saw a decently flowing waterfall. With this year's super high and late snowpack, this was very indicative of what was to come. Another 5 minutes of walking, and we came across a fairly slippery bridge over a creek. This was the nicest creek crossing of the day, for sure.
We hit the snowline not long after, somewhere around 900m. However, the snow here was pretty rain/melt crusty and supportive, and walked on enough that you could go without any sort of traction devices. I did not bother to take out my microspikes. At about 2 hours in, we got to the Buntzen Creek crossing. It seems the late+big melt was in full effect, as despite there being a bridge, it was totally submerged and not all that helpful.
Thankfully, up at the junction where the trail splits to go around the east face of Eagle Mountain instead of our path around it, there were some extra bridge pieces, so we decided to be good Samaritans and add em on top. It worked out well, and we managed to cross while remaining nice and dry :)
From there, we took 50 minutes to plod our way around the Mountain. The snow was fairly supportive where thick enough, but it also was pretty thin and inconsistent, so that slowed us down a bit. More so than that, though was the flooding just before the Spahat Lookout (I think). A couple dozen metres of trail were flooded enough that even w/ boots you'd be over the top of your footwear, and we didn't bring gaiters or anything, so we bushwhacked up the hill and around it, which was quite thick, about BW3 in difficulty. But we got around, and just about 3 hours into the hike, or about 11:00, we got to the spot where we decided we'd go up to Eagle Mountain.
There is no trail, so you just have to bushwhack your way up. Thankfully, since there was still snow cover for the most part, and was BW1-BW2 for the most part. We got to the peaks in just under half an hour. There are 2 equally unimpressive mounds in the summit area, and our GPSes were in disagreement over which was the real peak, so we went to both. There are basically 0 views, there is no trail, and no fun or interesting terrain here so this detour is only recommended for ardent peakbaggers.
This detour took about 45 minutes from the trail overall, so you can be the judge as to how worth it that is. We didn't ponder that for long, though, as we'd burned a lot of time and still had 4 mountains left to go, so on toward Tangled Summit we went...