Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak - 2159M

1829M Prominence

50.05469, -126.10077

June 14, 2025

7H C2C, 6H 30M Moving Time, 10.5KM

1100M Elevation Gain

Victoria peak is the 3rd highest on Vancouver Island, and one of the Island Qualifiers that I wanted to climb most urgently. I recruited Tyler to come to the Island with me yet again to come climb Victoria and the Warden. This is the first half of the weekend's story. We caught the 5PM ferry over on Friday, and when we got to Comox we had to make a few stops to pick up some materials for my work, but then we got driving towards Campbell River, then to Gold River. By the time we got to the community of Gold River it was getting dark, but we still had an hour of FSR driving North to get to the Victoria Peak trailhead. We took the main line and then eventually spurred off onto a side road. The road was in good condition, with a handful of deep but wide cross ditches on the upper section. The Tacoma did fine though, and we made it to the base of the trail and immediately set up camp for the night. The next morning we got up and packed our bags in no particular rush. We started hiking at 6:30AM and the trail was in optimal condition. The trailhead is already at 1140M, so patches of snow started to appear very soon. The snow was supportive and the forest was very broad and easy to navigate. We made our way up through the sub alpine on the mellow South ridge, bypassing the hut and the tarn. We then traversed below the upper part of the South ridge. This part was just a lot of side hill hiking on 25 degree or less snow. Eventually this traversing took us into the South East bowl, and by this time the white out conditions were worsening and we couldn't see the upper section of the mountain anymore. We still continued on as it was not raining. After crossing the snowy bowl, it took us to the start of the rock scramble at 1800 meters. We scrambled up slightly off route but still made it up to a bit of a heathery ledge. We then squeezed by a moat besides some snow and then up a bit of a lowly vegetated scramble. This took us up to the 5th class corner. The corner was easily distinguishable by a piece of rope hanging down. We debated not roping up as it looked relatively easy, but ultimately we roped up because it was quite exposed and we did not know what lie above this move. Tyler took the lead and I belayed him up to an anchor with a rap ring after 2 fifth class moves. From the anchor we un roped and put away the rope for the rest of the upper mountain. We worked our way up the South East face on some dry rock for a bit, then to cross over to the Western side of the South East face, we traversed some steeper snow with our ice axes. We avoided the snow when rock was available, but it wasn't too sketchy as the snow was supportive and not terribly steep. The snow eventually receded the last 60 or so meters from the summit, and an easy third class scramble took us to the top of the mountain. It was a good feeling and we were both stoked despite not being able to see barely 50 meters in front of us. It took us 4H to reach the summit. We hung out on the summit and ate some food as it was surprisingly warm and there was no wind. After about 20 minutes though we started to make our way back down as we didn't want to get caught in even worse white out conditions, and rain was predicted for the afternoon. We descended the same way we came up across the face and quite easily followed our footprints in the snow. Once back at the 5th class crux, we pulled out the rope and did one 20 meter rappel off of the anchor with the rap ring back down to the belay ledge. From here we packed up the climbing gear and made our way back down to the initial scramble off of the snowy bowl. This time we found the correct route and an easy gulley was much nicer to descend than the face scramble. Back on the snow we pulled out our ice axes and trekked our way back past the cabin and back into the forest. A few views of the upper mountain briefly opened up, but the clouds lingered. We made it back to the truck at 1:30PM and started to make a plan for the afternoon and the next day.