Blue Mountain - April 9th 2022

 This one was a bit of a dud due to me not being prepared enough.

We woke up kind of late on Saturday and I wanted to get out and do something not too easy, not too hard and not too far. I ended up landing on Blue Mountain in Maple Ridge because it seemed like just what I had in mind. What I didn't take in to consideration was the snow and route-finding.

Coen, Jebby and I headed out around 10:30 and go to the trailhead by 11:15. We started off and the first hour and a half was easy trekking up logging roads. It actually got quite warm in the sun but in the shade it was pretty chilly and windy. We made a slight detour about half an hour up to check out the nearby Kanaka Falls.

Originally the plan was to follow the Alltrails route and take the "Lakefront Road" trail but I noticed a MTB trail that could shave off some time and distance so we decided to do that. It involved taking "Possum Lodge" and then "Kill Roger" to connect back to "Lakefront Road" but cut off a big 2km loop. Possum Lodge was fine but Kill Roger trail was very hard to find, especially because the snow was quite deep. We bashed around a bit and found our way, mostly thanks to Coen, and when we connected back to Lakefront Road there was a ton of snow still on the trail and it was soft so the going was rough. We backtracked a bit to check out the nearby lake / pond (unnamed) but it was completely snow covered and bushy so we decided to just keep going.

At this point it had been over 2 hours so we stopped to have lunch. We still had ~2km to go and I was nervous about the condition of the trail ahead because of how poor the Kill Roger trail had been. After we got to the top we had to follow a network of MTB trails down to get back to the logging road. We had started somewhat late and it was near 2 and Coen was a bit sick, Jebby had a rash and so I got a bit nervous. I hurried Coen to eat and after we continued on a bit the trail got really crappy again with huge puddles, deep snow and thick alder overgrown. At this point I decided to cut our losses and head down as I knew that best case we would end up taking far longer than I had anticipated and worst case we could get lost.

I was a bit disappointed but we headed down anyways. We had a bit of trouble connecting Kill Roger to Possum Lodge again but found it and slogged down the logging road back to the car at ~4.

We will go back and bag this peak eventually, later in the summer with no snow it will be more enjoyable, otherwise we just have to start earlier so we have plenty of time. And with everyone in good health.

Red root

Kanaka Falls