St Mark's Summit - September 3 2022
North Vancouver Area, West Vancouver, BC
1356m
This is the second (third, if you count the south summit of Strachan as peakbagger.com does) summit of my modified Howe Sound Crest Trail (HSCT) attempt, and this report picks up coming down from the summit of Mount Strachan via Christmas Gully.
After a short walk down from the peak along the trail up, I forked skier's right at about 1400m and entered Christmas Gully. Sadly, it did not leave a great impression. The first half of the gully was basically just "walk down the dry creekbed", hopping along small rocks and boulders in the dark down a moderately steep path. After suffering this for fifteen minutes, the path finally veered skier's right into a bit of forest and became dirt, which was much easier to navigate. I spent the same length of time going down that, until I bottomed out at just under 1100m, where I finally managed to rejoin the HSCT, and got on a much easier trail.
The trek up to the summit post (not the true summit) was not very eventful, just 50 minutes of walking on easy dirt paths with a gentle grade (mostly). There were a couple spots people had clearly walked in random directions that made navigation a bit hard in the pitch black, but nothing that wasn't corrected within a minute or two. I encountered a tent closer to the top of people I hopefully didn't disturb with my headlamp light, but otherwise I was just walking through the forest without much else going on.
Once there, I checked my GPS, and was surprised to note that the true summit was not, in fact, the viewpoint I had visited on a trip with some friends in past years, but actually in the dense forest to climber's right. I breathed a small sigh, and started bushwhacking up. There were a few faint trails I attempted to follow, but it was still definitely "glad to have full length pants" territory. This is also where I first found notable bugs, every time I whacked a tree, I seemed to anger a swarm of small insects. I spent between five and ten minutes fumbling about until I lined up with the peak on my GPS, and couldn't see anything higher. I snapped a quick picture, and then headed down.
Well, at least I thought I did. I ended up following a well-beaten path which seemed to head back toward Cypress Resort (but parallel to the HSCT rather than heading toward it) for a few minutes, then had to go back up, and more carefully follow my GPS back the way I came. I eventually managed to fight my way out, then walked up to what I thought was the viewpoint, but was actually another group of campers I hopefully didn't disturb. Turns out it was a few metres further down the trail. Once I got there, I appreciated the small amount of view I could see, took a short break, and headed out once more.
Since the last time I was here with friends, it was fully clouded in, I still have no clue what the view is like, but that was never the reason I decided to endure this suffer-fest, so with 3.5 hours now under my belt, I headed to [Unnecessary Mountain] (link here).