Mount Fraser Southern Peaks - October 10 2022

Tenquille Lake Area, Pemberton, British Columbia
816/1465m

So... the original plan for the day was to head up to Mt Seton and bag another ultra, but Google Maps apparently had other plans. Despite the original route looking about right, and our biggest concern being "what if the bridges on the FSR are uncrossable" (seen mixed reports about that), it seems when we stopped for gas the route reset, and instead we were brought up to D'Arcy. After realizing that we wouldn't have time to backtrack and head up the proper route, we first decided to scope out the southern access to McGillivray and Whitecap, since those are interesting objectives and nearby.

We (me, Bhaskar, and Shayan) drove up highline road, which is medium-clearance and 2wd accessible, but when we hit the fork to the McGillivray Creek branch toward the trail we had on our maps, things got narrow and harder fast. There was one obstacle that I think necessitates at least AWD, and you definitely need to be okay with pinstriping. We only got a few hundred metres before hitting impassable deadfall, though. Some chainsaw work or bikes you can lift over logs would be necessary to try and go further, and I have no idea how long it goes either. But at least we got some information, so we turned around, and headed back to Pemberton.

Once we got to town, we had a delicious lunch, and tried to figure out how to salvage the day. We ended up finding "Mt Fraser" was nearby, and had an access road that gets one pretty high. It also had a lot of subpeaks on Peakbagger, which of course we found appealing. So we hopped into the Jeep once again, and started up the road. The McKenzie Basin FSR is well-graded, and high-clearance accessible (a few water bars) for the majority of the drive. However, we did not quite go all the way at first, for our first subpeak was just off the road at about 800m. When we got close to the peak, we found a spur road going a bit up the hill, so we turned off up there. We only drove for a few metres, though, as it got narrow and seemed rather pointless to pinstripe when the peak was so close.

The forest was pretty thin, so stomping over the deadfall floor was pretty fast, and I'm pretty sure we were on animal tracks as well for a lot of it. We got up to find a real trail (for mountain bikers) at the ridgeline, then crossed to try and find the true summit.

However, upon a phone check, it wasn't quite it, so we had to go further along the ridge. For some reason, we chose not the nice bike trail, but just hopping more deadfall instead. Given this was only another minute after an initial five, though, this wasn't really a problem. We soon arrived at the "true summit", only to find that the bike trail basically went right there anyway 🙃

We went back down using the real trail, jogging most of it until we got close to the car, and bushwhacked back. The trail would've exited at the road for a more convenient access, but since we had a car to get back to, we didn't have that luxury. No matter, though, it was only a fifteen-minute excursion, so we weren't really concerned with peak efficiency. With that out of the way, we headed back up the road to the "bigger" peaks.

Once back on the main FSR, we continued up. It got a bit rougher as we got higher, and at some point I'd say it transitioned from just clearance to also AWD being necessary. Near 1000m elevation Google Maps stops having the road, and we had to rely on our GPS maps to get us in the right direction. The road is pretty straightforward, though, so just following the biggest/most obvious road works pretty well. Once you get to 1180m the road forks. The right fork leads to a real trail, I believe, though it starts at about 1200m elevation. We forked left as we had no information about the trails, and just went as close and high as possible. This spur road was a bit tougher, with some ditches that my companions were surprised I tackled, but the Compass did well (good angles and the new tires to deal with debris and logs in the ditches were very helpful). I drove past an Emergency Shelter whose name we did not record, and ended at the top of a cutblock which seemed to be fairly recently cleared, with a lot of debris/deadfall surrounding the area. We parked at just about 1330m elevation.

From there, we started whacking up to the forest line, which was less bush whack and more stepping on dead branches and over logs. Thankfully this was pretty short, so in about 5 minutes we got up to the start of the living trees.

Once we got into the forest, we crossed the official trail but ignored it since we were going for a subpeak off the beaten path. The bushwhack was mostly BW2, not too thick, and a decent amount of animal paths to follow.

About fifteen minutes in we got to a small opening with a pond I'm sure creates tons of bugs in earlier months. Thankfully, that was not the case for us.

Shortly after that, we hit a short scramble section (which could be avoided, though we all preferred the rock) near the top, and about 5 minutes later, we topped out about half an hour in.

We bushwhacked for about 20 minutes to get back to the trail, but also going further northwest along the ridge to hopefully not lose and regain elevation as much in the process. There were a couple annoying steep spots, but otherwise still fairly benign as bushwhacks go. Once we got back to the trail, though, it was quite well-maintained, and things picked up quickly.

Once back on the trail, we picked up the pace, putting about another kilometre on in just over 10 minutes. However, at this point, it was already 3:30, and we had quite a while to go before the next set of peaks (the main "Mt Fraser" peaks, and the much more prominent peaks further north on the ridge). With it being a few kilometres each way of probably more bushwhack, we didn't really want to risk being home too late since it was a Monday (holiday) and we all had to work the next day, so we decided to turn back here and save the other peaks for probably a winter ski/snowshoe, to make the forest a bit less of a problem.

We once again jogged the trail back until we had to fork off to get to our car. Therefore, we spent about the same time covering 1.5km as the last 250m. The overall outing took an hour and a half, though if you don't scope out the trail further north and circle back, that could be cut down a bit.

On the way down, we spent some time exploring the emergency shelter, which was actually quite nice. Tons of water, first aid supplies, stretchers, some seating, some spots to sit or sleep inside... it was quite nice. We hung out for a while here, then drove back down to Pemberton, deciding to bag one more little trash-peak before closing out the day.

GPX Track + Map