Elevation Gain: 1,205m
Distance: 16.92km
Total Time: 5 hours 59 minutes
Date: June 1st, 2022
Despite the ongoing rainy weekends throughout May, the occasional weather window was opening up during the week and this Wednesday was looking to be one of those days. I watched closely through out the previous weekend and the forecast continued to hold. With some confidence that it’d be worth taking a day off (next weekend was 100% rain), I started asking around to see who was available. As it turned out, Elise, Phil and Steven were planning to take the day off and Steven already had an objective set in mind. I had a few ideas of my own, but Steven had done most of the ones I had in mind so I was happy to follow along.
The plan was to take a route recently discovered by Matt Juhasz (Deja vu?) to reach a typically elusive and obscure summit called Sheep Mountain. It lies on the northern perimeter of the Pasayten Wilderness area, just a few kilometers from the US/Canada border. From the Washington side it’s exceptionally difficult to reach requiring a multi-day trek on foot. Matt discovered a set of logging roads from the Canadian side that gets within 8km or so of the summit through open ridge line and burned down forest. Along the route a small summit called Border Lake Peak (also referred to as Lamb Peak) could be tagged. I had never heard of either of these, but I liked the idea of doing a nice ridge line traverse.
Steven’s idea was to drive out Tuesday night, sleep at the starting point and get up around 3am to catch the sunrise. This worked out well for me because I needed to be in Kelowna for the weekend and this trip would already get me half way there. Tuesday after work, I finished up packing a bit later than expected and hit the road past 8pm. Steven would be driving separately with Elise and Phil and were expecting to arrive at the starting point by 1am, so I was on my own until then.
I reached Eastgate around 11:20PM and turned down the Pasyaten River FSR shortly after. The road was in decent condition, albeit some sections had a thick layer of mud on top. Along the way there were periodic down pours and fog, but things cleared up as I neared the Pasyaten River Crossing around KM 27. After the river crossing, the maps indicated two possible ways to reach the starting point. Neither Steven nor I knew if they both went, so I took the driver’s left road first and quickly discovered a heavily eroded road segment. I was on my own deep down an inactive FSR, so opted to back out and try driver’s right instead. This time the road condition remained good and I followed my maps up around the cut blocks. I hit one section of dense fog, but it cleared up and by 1am I was pulled up to the starting point.
I had brought my tent and camping gear to sleep in, but with 2 hours remaining until we’d be waking up I opted to sleep in the truck instead. Perhaps 15 minutes later I saw Steven’s truck in the distance and he, Elise and Phil pulled up shortly after. They spent another 15 minutes getting ready themselves and we all settled in for a short night of sleep.
After a bit of tossing, I finally fell asleep but the alarm went off all too soon. I hopped out of the truck to use the bathroom and accidentally set my car alarm off, ensuring everyone was awake at the same time as me. I fidgeted for a bit and finally disabled it, but it was too late. Phil likely got the wake up of a life time. We geared up pretty fast after a cold breakfast and slunk into the dark forest by 4am.
The entire area along our route had been burned down not too long ago and so travel through the forest was fairly pleasant with no bushwhack whatsoever. We hit continuous snow after 15 minutes of hiking, but it didn’t make the travel much easier. In fact, the snow was in pretty heinous condition with a firm, but unsupportive crust and rotten snow underneath. As you’d step down, the snow shoe would fall through, then slide under the icy crust causing you to trip up with each step. Even following in someone else’s tracks made no difference as the rotten snow was bottomless in places.
Nonetheless, we plodded a horizontal traverse along the forest until we linked up with the ridge leading to Border Lake Peak. The original goal was to make the summit for sunrise, but with the snow conditions the best we could manage was the last section of ridge before the top. Despite that, the views were still a level above as alpen glow cast across the ranges to the south. Once the sun rose above the horizon we pushed on with Elise leading the way up the straight forward ridge climb.
Elise set a blistering pace trail breaking ahead and seemed to just float on the snow while the rest of sunk in with each step. We eventually caught up again on the summit and were welcomed with more views and a good look at the route to Sheep Mountain. After some snacks we pushed on to our main objective of the day.