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Mount Mahony

 Mount Mahony - 1086M

845M Prominence

49.948536 -124.455216

April 5, 2025

900M Elevation Gain

3H 11M Vehicle to Vehicle

3H Moving Time

It's been a while since I've been meaning to get up Mahony. This relatively low lying forested summit is nestled between Powell Lake and Haslam lake, making it quite prominent. Recently over the last year or two there has been a big boom at the base of the mountain, and heaps of top notch mountain biking trails have been built. I have been coming here to use said trails a bit recently, and have been eyeing up the heart of the park, Civil Disobedience. This trail is the long runner that runs about 600 meters down hill. The approach is long and arduous on a bike. The incentive for me to ride this trail lied in summiting Mount Mahony itself, before biking down all 900+ Meters gain straight back to the truck. Unsure of how to really obtain the summit we just started biking. We started at the main parking lot, and began climbing via the more scenic and enjoyable climb trail instead of the gravel road. After only about 150 meters of gain though, the climb trail tops out and you are left with gravel roads. The roads are fine at first, but then slowly start to degrade. This is definitely a shady day activity. I couldn't imagine cycling up these wide and exposed roads in the sun, hopping from clear cut to clear cut. After 10.3KM of biking, we were at 950M of elevation. The last 100 and some meters were to be done by foot. There was too much snow to even attempt cycling past this point. I threw on my gaiters and broke trail, after a short stint of snowy road walking, we got to the point where we had to throw ourselves into the bush if we wanted to summit. A short and relatively unenjoyable bushwhack took us the remaining 50 meters of gain uphill to the summit. The snow was soft and unpleasant to travel in with running shoes. Thankfully we only sunk to our ankles. The summit is most definitely nothing to write home about. A forested area offering 0 views. The summit was broad and quite unclear, but we knew we were in the right spot when we found an oregano jar as a summit register. We had a laugh and then hiked our way back to the bikes. Eager to hit some trails and make the long haul worth it, we got going immediately. We biked down the chunky crushed rock roads, enjoying the speed for a change. But after only 300 meters of descent, my rear tire blew out and went flat in less than a minute. I still had 600 meters of downhill to go, and we were not even low enough to reach the Civil Disobedience trail head. I was very bummed out. All that work was for nothing really. Tyler flew down some trails on the way down, and recruited a buddy of his that he ran into down the road to come give me a lift. His friend graciously drove up the steep road and met up with me as I was pushing my bike down hill in defeat. He took me back to the main parking lot where we had started approximately 3 hours ago, and we drove home from there.

First and only real views of the summit
















Good views of Vancouver Island from the main clear cut
















A far away view of Freda from where we dropped our bikes




















Oregano Stump summit register




















Summit register, I forgot what year it is.















Tyler picking up a phone call on the summit




















Me on the summit




















Route





















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