Unnecessary Mountain - September 3 2022
North Vancouver Area, Lion's Bay, BC
1548m
This is the third summit of my modified Howe Sound Crest Trail (HSCT) attempt, and this report picks up after St Mark's Summit.
After leaving St Mark's, the trail narrows and gets a bit windier through the forest. It is also less of a "packed, flat dirt trail" and more of a typical forest hiking path, full of roots and requiring a bit more care to navigate. I took a few minutes after first departing to figure out which of the many diverging paths was correct (the dark definitely doesn't help there), but once I got on the trail, it was easy enough to follow.
I spent the next hour and a half just grinding out the unnecessary (maybe that's part of the name) descent down to 1200m before gaining back up to about 1550, and grabbed some pics. I didn't linger for long, though, and continued off toward the north peak in short order.
Before I made the second peak, I crested a small ridge and found yet more campers as the sun was rising. I decided to stop and talk with them for a bit instead of just cruising past like I'd done for all the other tents I'd previously encountered. We chatted for about 15 minutes, I got some pictures of them, they grabbed one of me, I stashed my headlamp (finally), and I set out just after 6:15am. Given the fact that there's at least a 40% chance my noise woke them up, they were quite friendly and nice to chat with.
From there, it was a short walk up to the second peak. There was a rather unnecessary rope on the way up to the north peak, perhaps another part of this mountain's etymology. There were a few tents on top of the peak, but nobody exiting these ones. I grabbed some pics, and continued on so as not to disturb them (plus I had plenty of hiking left to do myself anyway).
Before this picks up in the trip report for West Lion, I just have to include this picture of another unnecessary rope coming down the north peak toward the Lions.