Windy Joe Mountain - October 6 2024

South Hozameen Range, Manning Park, BC
1843m

After a painful week following my last adventure, requiring the assistance of some prescription-grade painkillers and muscle relaxants to relieve the combination of a big hike and the side effects of my latest colitis medication, I decided to only go out one day instead of two on the following weekend. Since I only got sore well after I finished hiking on that trip, I figured this was a good way to play it safe. So, I hit up my good buddy Kelly, and he was planning to go after Frosty Mountain. This is a very popular hike in the fall due to the abundant larch trees turning colour before winter, so I was a bit leery of it, but with the potential bonus of Windy Joe on the way up, and two summits on Frosty itself, plus a very good hiking trail without much technicality to get in the way if my issues did flare up, I agreed. Plus, as we're both residents of the Sea-to-Sky corridor, it was nice to share gas costs, since this was the far end of Manning Park, a decent distance from home. So, armed with some backup pills in my pack, we set out on a very nice Sunday morning for the trailhead.

With a Tims run in Abbotsford for breakfast, and the subsequent bathroom break at the Manning Park Lodge (thanks to them for operating public facilities in this area), we weren't there quite at the crack of dawn, but we got parked at around 10:30am. We chose what was, more or less, the closest parking area to the start of the Windy Joe Trail that was on the west side, as that's closer to where the Frosty Mountain Trail terminates (this was going to be a loop, not an out-and-back hike). After confirming there were no "don't park here" signs, we geared up, and got moving at 10:36am, looking to knock the easiest peak of the day out first.

After a short walk along the road, we quickly found the Beaver Pond Trail by the Horse Camp, which was more or less just an old road. It made for easy travel, at least, and allowed us to dispatch with the ~1.5km heading east towards the Similkameen River crossing in about 15 minutes.

Once we got to our turnoff, we found a sign noting the trail was closed due to flooding, but as we crossed, we saw a perfectly fine trail, so not sure what that was about 🤷 Perhaps that referred to sections of the trail further east or west, but what we needed was intact.

We had a short hike from there to get to the actual trailhead for Windy Joe. All in all, our approach was a bit over 2km, and took just about 20 minutes for us to dispatch. A good pace to start things out!

The next 70 minutes were just a straight-up grind from base to top. I didn't feel compelled to stop for trail pictures because, well, it was basically just a forested plod up an old road the entire way. Once we arrived at the false summit, and the lookout tower on top of it, we'd travelled about 8km and gained 650-700m. Not bad for a total of 90 minutes of work! Kelly sure knows how to get me to push myself 😅

We hung out at the top for about 15 minutes, enjoying the views, checking out the hut, and for me... coming to grips with my apparent new reality. While I'd done pretty okay getting up that big push, by the top, my left calf was getting a bit sore. Once I stopped, though, it went from a bit sore to "pretty damn unhappy" 😅 So, while Kelly took a short bathroom break (there is a pit toilet up there), I popped my first muscle relaxant in the hopes that it would calm me down, and we started making our way towards the much-less-frequented true summit.

We did our best to take a fairly direct line to the true summit, though deadfall and thicker/thinner patches of bushes forced us to make some detours. The bush wasn't that bad, though, being fairly easy to brush aside and just stomp through. After a bit over 10 minutes, and one false rocky bump, we made our way to the high point, which had middling views (not as nice as the lookout), but for us, was the real prize nonetheless.

On the way down from the true summit, I did my best to cut a more efficient line towards the road, but the bushwhacking was a bit worse, so it probably didn't end up saving much time 😅 Once I did get onto the road, though, I realised that my pain/swelling wasn't really going down with just the muscle relaxant, so I popped a T3 as well, and ambled on down to meet Kelly (who'd taken a less direct, but easier route to the road) at the fork between the trail to Frosty and the way we came in, where I'd have to make a call to continue or not.

Once I got there, we rested for a few minutes, and the meds kicked in just enough that I figured with a more measured pace to avoid having my blood flow kick into high gear, I could probably tough out some more hiking for another peak. We're both pretty efficiency-driven when it comes to peakbagging, so if possible, we both would've liked to continue, so I was pretty motivated to make it happen. So, with that questionable decision out of the way, we continued on towards Frosty Mountain's East Summit, where this trip report continues.

GPX Track + Map