Mount Strachan, Saint Mark's Summit

September 08, 2025

Mount Strachan, Saint Mark's Summit

Mount Strachan - 1459M

382M Prominence

49.41313, -123.19340

September 8, 2025

Saint Mark's Summit - 1356M

156M Prominence

49.42819, -123.20616

September 8, 2025

5H 10M C2C, 4H 40M Moving

960 M Ascent and Descent

14.8KM

Stella and I got unlucky while cowboy camping in Squamish when an unexpected rain storm hit in the middle of the night. We managed to set up the tent in the middle of the night only to find ourselves in a puddle of water the next morning. The plan was never to go up these two peaks today, but rather to do more climbing. With all the rocks being soaking wet, we quickly adapted and decided to go bag a few peaks and go for a hike on a dry trail where no bushwhacking was needed either. We came up with Mount Strachan as a quick hike we could do. We hit the road and headed towards Cypress Ski resort. I didn't realize how good the access to the peaks on the Howe Sound Crest Trail are from here, and will be coming back for more in the future I am sure. We parked at 900 meters in the large parking lot just outside the resort area, packed up and got a late start at 9:45. We started by going around the bottom of the ski lift area and meeting up with the Baden Powell trail. This trail was in excellent condition, but soon we decided to take a more direct route up an older trail that clearly doesn't see as much use. It was a bit rootier and had a few downed trees, but was still a solid trail. We then made it up to the col with Hollyburn Mountain, but decided we would go up Strachan and then come and tag Hollyburn on the way down, not knowing that our plans would change a bit. At the col the terrain became a bit swampy for a bit, but then picked back up on a bit of a steeper trail adjacent to the ski slope. The ski slope would definitely have been faster, but it is a serious eye sore and I much prefer being on a trail in the woods. The ascent from the col took us past the plane wreckage site, which was also interesting to see. After climbing up that trail a bit we made it to the top of the South Summit of Strachan where the chairlift arrives to. Even with the foggy morning we could still tell that this was obviously not the summit as there were trees above us in the North East direction. We continued on and descended into the col with the Sub summit and the main summit, where a descent of 40 or 50 meters was necessary in order to gain the main summit. The trail was yet again decently steep in this section, but still just a hike, with no real scrambling needed. The summit was actually quite enjoyable despite the fog and the low elevation of this peak. I was barely able to make out some views of the Lions and some other North Shore landmarks. On the summit I convinced Stella that we could extend our short hike and make it a little longer by continuing along in direction of HSCT North and making our way to Saint Mark's Summit. Unfortunately this left Hollyburn Mountain not very reasonable to come back to, but maybe I will tag it on another day, as it is a short distance from the starting parking lot. Stella agreed and we started making our way down into the ravine that would take us to the main trail up to Saint Mark's. This part of the day was by far the most rough, and at times the trail was a little hard to follow. We started by making our way down some sort of bouldery creek bed, then the trail appeared more and more. The descent was around 400 meters from the summit of Strachan until we hit the highway of a trail that takes you up to Saint Marks. As soon as we started hiking up to Saint Mark's we started seeing loads of people even though it was an overcast Monday in September. This trail is well maintained and there is not much to be said about it aside from that there a few parts that are quite rooty and there is an unnecessary amount of switchbacks that makes it longer than it needs to be. That being said the old growth trees around are lovely and the hike is very chill. We made it to the viewpoint with no view that most people think is the summit, and decided to stop for a lunch break. After lunch we quickly bushwhacked up the final few meters to the summit only to realize after that there is actually sort of a trail. We then Hiked our way down the final 5 kilometers South of the Howe Sound Crest Trail back down Cypress where we had left the truck. It was a fairly quick and uneventful mission but this left time to go back to Squamish and climb a bit at the smoke bluffs.