Baldy Mountain

November 19, 2025

Baldy Mountain

Baldy Mountain - 2283M

383M Prominence

51.46301, -120.03647

November 19, 2025

4H 20M C2C, 3H 40 M moving

775M Ascent and descent

14.54 KM

4H 30M C2C, 4H moving

Work has been awfully slow for the last week or so. When I saw the bluebird day in the weather forecast I knew I had to get out and make the most of it, even if it was a Wednesday. There are still a handful of peaks surrounding Clearwater that I will make time to climb even if they are pretty uninteresting and don't offer any mountaineering potential. Baldy Mountain (the fourth Baldy I have climbed) is one of them, and is a quite uninteresting but still fairly prominent peak In the Dunn Park Protected Area. The ridge leading up to the peak itself actually sees quite a few visits every year as there is a Fire Lookout on it, and you can drive all the way to the lookout in the summer with a 4 wheel drive. The true summit itself probably sees quite a few less visits as it is still 1.3 KM North East of the Fire shelter along the meadowy ridge. I decided to save this summit for early winter when I first arrived to Clearwater, as I was quite uninterested with a hike up a flat logging road. Come mid November I started to think about it a bit and I decided to get out and ski tour it before the snow line dropped too far into the valley for an easy outing to make sense. I left Clearwater at 7 AM and drove down to the Community of Little Fort where there is a free ferry service that operates all day and brings one vehicle at a time across the North Thompson river. After the 5 minute sailing was over I followed Windpass Road (a gravel road) to an outflow creek of nearby Dunn lake. I then made it to an intersection with Dunn lake road and soon after slowly began to drive as high up on the series of switchbacks as I could. After a series of 6 or 7 switchbacks on a pretty decent road snow started to appear, but I kept pushing the truck a bit further as I was still not prepared to hike this much road. The snow gradually increased and I parked the truck at about 1530M where there was already about an inch of snow. Being alone, I didn't want to push my luck and get stuck. I then geared up and finally got a move on just before 8:30 AM. I started off by hiking some more service roads through a series of clearcuts on some quite flat and open areas, but after a few kilometers the steeper part of the climb appeared. It was never really steep at all though as I was still hiking along a forest service road and following the series of switchbacks. It was quite an enjoyable hike despite the nature of the trail, as the forest surrounding me, although charred, and the morning light was quite beautiful. Finally at around 1950M, I decided there was enough snow cover and I was able to throw my skis on and start skinning. The trees quickly thinned out as I slowly gained a bit of elevation and I got a glance at the Fire Lookout cabin, I decided to leave the cabin for now and just continue my way along the flat ridge all the way up to the summit. There was a significant lack of snow on the broad ridge, and quite a bit less snow than I had come across At tree line. The ridge has been seriously swept with winds as evident by the look of the snow surface and the fact I was barely probing 5 or 10 centimeters. I made my way up to the summit which finally had rewarding views of the peaks in Wells Gray park and more great views of Dunn Peak. I didn't linger around for long though as I had only been moving just over 2 hours and was keen to go check out the shelter and then get some turns in before the snow got heavy. I travelled the ridge back to the cabin and had a snack break out of the wind. I was glad to be off of the ridge and heading back into the trees as there was still so many sneaky rocks out to scrape up my skins. Just below the cabin I took my skins off and began descending. There was 10 centimeters of powder sitting on a supportive layer, so I had fun in the snow for a while and skied a few laps of the more enjoyable areas. After getting some skiing in on the very mellow but enjoyable slopes, I skied back down the road as far as I could before running the risk of damaging my skis on rocks, I then boot packed the road back down to the truck. As I descended below 1900M I descended back into the clouds. This was a very easy day and I managed to keep a good pace, I am glad I picked it for this time of year as the access in a week or two would be a very different story.