Hkusam Mountain

Hkusam Mountain - 1671M

1534 M Prominence

50.33492, -125.84069

April 27

4H 25M C2C, 4H 10M Moving

721M Elevation gain

Day two of Tyler and I's Island trip started just as early as the first one. At 4 AM we woke up and quickly hopped in the truck to start making our way North towards Hkusam. We followed HWY 19 towards the small village of Sayward, and before getting to the village we took a turn onto the logging road that would take us to the start of the climb. The logging road was in acceptable condition for the most part, but there was an incredible amount of cross ditches to crawl over. I lost count after 20 some ditches, but fortunately none were too deep for my Tacoma. The road took us even further than we had expected, and we were able to drive up to 950 meters, where the snow started. We packed crampons, an ice axe and a tool each, prepping for the steeper section nearing the summit. We got going at 6:25, and hiked the rest of the road until taking a right hand turn into the forest where the creek was. We sketchily side stepped the log bridge with our snowshoes on, and traversed to the makeshift shack on the other side. From this point we continued up the forest keeping the heavily flowing creek to our right. The old growth forest was gorgeous and quite a treat to walk through. The early morning light was delicately shining through the spread out old growth trees, and it was fantastic. Towards the end of the forest the terrain started to steepen up a bit. A small rock wall with a stream of water opened up in front of us, and we steered to the right of it and climbed the snow and trees. The snow was already soft as could get, and the sun was shining bright on this aspect of the mountain. We feared what was to come, but from where the trees started to thin out, we could see that the whole north bowl was in the shade. This meant that we were hopeful the snow would be more firm, and we wouldn't trigger any wet loose avalanches. We made our way towards the bowl through some pleasant and less steep terrain. Just as we came up to the rim of the dished out bowl, we had a snack break and ditched the snow shoes for our crampons. What lie ahead was a quite scenic 45 degree snow climb up a wide gulley that split the summit block and a smaller sub summit to the west. The gulley was roughly 100 meters tall. We pitched it out in 2 sections, and I let Tyler climb the first half, then seek a sheltered area to the side, before I made my way up. The snow pack was bomber, and very firm, but it was good practice anyway. The icy snow offered secure ice axe placements and front pointing on the crampons for the most part. After the second pitch we both arrived at the top of the gulley with the wind howling in the notch. We climbed up above one more steep move and then were able to hike our way up to the summit from there. The wind died down on the summit, and the views were absolutely spectacular. We could see as far as the eye could see in the Coast Mountains, and we had an awesome view of Victoria Peak. We didn't stay on the summit for too long in fear of the lower slope above the forest being cooked by the sun. We made our way back down the gulley the same way we came up, and downclimbed for a good chunk of time. At the base of the bowl we picked up our previously ditched snowshoes and made our way back down to the forest. I kept my crampons on until we were back at the truck. They helped immensely while sliding down the mash potato steep snow in the upper section of the forest. The rest of the forest was more shady, so the snow was more supportive. We made it back to the truck, and agreed that that Hkusam is an incredibly fun little climb for the time it takes.