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Klitsa Mountain

 Klitsa Mountain - 1639M

1389M Prominence

49.25398, -125.23126

April 26, 2025

4H 32M C2C, 4H 15 Moving

920M Elevation Gain

Klitsa has not been on my radar for very long, and before I took off to Vancouver Island with Tyler for a 2 day trip, it was not even in the plans. We had intended to climb Arrowsmith via the North ridge, but when we arrived at the Mosaic gate at 5:30AM and found out it would be locked until 8AM, we had to think fast. Fortunately I have been doing lots of map analyzing for the Island recently, and I had a route for Klitsa downloaded. Unfortunately the access was still pretty long from the gate. After an hour and a half of driving on the poorly graded Gracie main logging road, I took the N600 up to 725M. At this point the snow started, and we inevitably had to pull over and park the Tacoma. We got our packs sorted, and I switched over from my climbing gear to my ski touring setup, and we got going at 7:15 AM. We hiked up the rest of the road, and then found the Brooke George trail. We followed the flagged trail as long as we could until the alpine. The ski touring was less than ideal for the first part of the forest, which was mellow in grade, but riddled with downed logs, tight trees, and wet and slippery snow due to the rapid melting in past weeks. After two creek crossings and the better half of the forest trekking, I Eventually I threw my skis on and was able to ascend 300 meters. I ascended until the snow became far to firm to gain any traction on my skins. At this point we were leaving tree line and views of the mountain were opening up. The terrain was simple, but some steeper sections made us gear up with crampons to tackle the rock hard snow. We continued up the West side of the mountain and then nearing the summit we ascended via the North West ridge, similar to the common summer route. About 80 meters from the summit i stepped too close to a glide crack and fell through the layer of snow that wad covering it. Fortunately my skis and arms caught me and no harm was done. After this short hiccup we were able to continue on to the summit. The crux of the day was mantling the small non threatening cornice that lead to the summit plateau. We hung around on the summit for no longer than 10 or 15 minutes and then started making our way back down. Reluctant to throw my skis on above the glide crack and on the steeper terrain, i downclimbed the first 100 meters in my crampons before gearing up and starting my ski descent. Due to the west facing slope, the snow had not melted much at all in the time that we summited and started coming down. For this reason the skiing was very similar to that of Mount Freda a week or so ago, and the alpine skiing was all concrete. I carefully skied my way down to tree line and caught up with Tyler who had ran down in his snowshoes. As I descended through the trees the snow became increasingly more mash potato like. The skiing was challenging in the forest due to tight trees, but I eventually survival skied my way back down to the second creek crossing where I inevitably had to take them off. From this point I boot packed the rest of the way back to the truck, and the mission was over.

First views of Klitsa from low down on the logging roads




















Looking back at the trailhead




















Crossing one of the creeks



















Skin track through the forest















Tyler Snowshoeing his way up















The glide crack



















Boot packing my way up to the summit




















Mantling onto the summit



















Summit shot
















Tyler hiking back down the road



















Nahmint mountain, definitely one to climb.




















Route






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