Mount Myra

 Mount Myra -  1803M

780M Prominence

49.54447, -125.60602

March 23, 2026

1540M Ascent and descent

8H 47M

17KM

I have had an eye on Mount Myra for a while now. It is one of the more prominent peaks in Strathcona park, and despite not being the most aesthetic of summits, it offers so much terrain. It seemed like the perfect ski touring peak, so I knew I wanted to save it for the winter or spring. Being away from the coast all winter and still wanting to get it done this year I had to settle on missing the winter ascent time frame by just a few days. Finding partners for ski touring isn't always very easy, especially on the island where I don't know many people, but I got lucky when I made a post in the Facebook group for Island touring and Rich Priebe got back to me. He has already summited Mount Myra, as well as being one of the select few people to climb all 53 peaks of over 6000 feet on Vancouver Island. Knowing that I had a competent partner I packed my bags and took the ferry over to the island. I car camped the night in Cumberland and then Monday morning we got an early start to complete the 2ish hour drive to the Strathcona Westmin mine where we would start the trek. This is also the same parking lot as the trailhead for the Golden Hinde from a few years back. The climb started with some road walking, then crossed a bridge, before continuing on to some more road walking up a steep road. This road carried on for quite a ways. It follows Tennent creek up to Tennent lake where there is a dam. Before reaching Tennent lake though there were a few river crossings, one of which required some careful balance to traverse the slippery pipe. After crossing the pipe we eventually made it up to the edge of Tennent lake. From here we navigated some undulating terrain in direction of Sandbag lake. The ascent never got too steep, but for a few steps here and there I opted to remove my skis, mainly because I do not own ski crampons. Before arriving to the true summit we were forced to bypass the South West bump, which is a bit of a false summit. We traversed over to the south of it, then went down a few meters to the col between the sub summit and the true summit. This col was the entry to the line we wanted to descend, so we dropped our ski gear off and climbed the remaining 120-ish meters to the summit. This part is what I will refer to as the summit block, as it quite distinctly sticks out of the surrounding terrain. I threw on my crampons and grabbed my ice axe and we climbed the nearest snowy ramp from the col, which was probably around 40 degrees. The ramp was quite short though, probably only around 50 meters tall, and then it levelled out again with some easier terrain up to the summit. There was nothing to be seen on the summit, so we soon downclimbed back down to the col where we left our ski gear. At the col we took 5, then geared up for the descent. Dropping in from the col into the West bowl was a bit steep, with the first few turns being a bit at my limit, but following the first few turns was some great snow for a hundred meters. The snow changed noticeably upon descent, becoming rapidly more sloppy near the bottom of the skiable terrain. The terrain abruptly got a bit sketchy though, so I opted to remove my skis. The bottom offered some steep downclimbing on some shrubs between some icy sections of snow. There were also some deep holes caused by the drainages that one would definitely not want to fall in. The picture did not do it justice but this was very unenjoyable for a while. After this part the terrain mellowed out again and we descended to the bottom of the bowl where East Tennent creek drains out of a bit of a plateau with some tarns and creeks. The terrain was quite flat, so I threw my skins back on and we skinned out from here. We crossed the creek and then followed it's right side back down to the dam access road. There were footprints from someone else's descent a few days prior, so this part was easy to navigate, although I did opt to take my skis off again as it was quite densely treed in in parts. Back on the road we hiked back down to where we left our hiking shoes this morning, then swapped out footwear and hiked back down to the car.

Me very carefully crossing one of the pipes across a creek. Photo by Rich Priebe

Tennent lake

Steep-ish section before exiting the trees

Looking up toward the summit

Rich skinning with Thelwood and Moyeha behind

View in direction of Thelwood and Moyeha

Photo by Rich Priebe

View of the summit from the East side of the sub summit, snow ramp we climbed is right leaning
just below the visible summit

Rich climbing the summit block

Me on the summit. Photo by Rich Priebe

Rich on the summit

Me downclimbing the crux of the summit block. Photo by Rich Priebe

First few turns from the col. Photo by Rich Priebe

The garbage we downclimbed/skied on the lower part of the descent. Photo by Rich Priebe

Looking back up at the summit (in clouds left), the col we dropped in, and
the sub summit (right of the col)

Mount Myra route (red)