East Lion, West Lion

June 02, 2026

East Lion, West Lion

East Lion - 1606M

106M Prominence

49.45619, -123.18109

June 2, 2026

West Lion - 1654M

369M Prominence

49.45783, -123.18618

June 2, 2026

1755M Ascent and descent

11H 58M C2C, 11H 20M Moving

21.1 KM

I was never super excited by the idea of climbing the Lions as I knew the West peak was an absolute tourist fest and the East Peak was a climb. When I saw the summits up close from the summit of Harvey last week though, my opinion quickly changed and I knew I wanted to climb them both as soon as possible. It seemed like a fun and relatively short outing, offering more good practice at some form of alpine climbing. I really didn't know how long of a day to expect, so Stella and I got started at quarter after 7 from the Lions Bay Elementary school yet again. The first hour or two felt all too familiar as we hiked up the road to the Lions Trailhead, then followed the gravel road. We took the turnoff for Harvey and the Lions, then continued on the road past the Harvey Trail and on to The Harvey creek crossing, where there started to be more of a trail and less of a road. The trail got steeper at this point too, and was pretty consistent up to around 1250M where we started to break into the sub alpine and into a more meadowy area with the first views of the West Lion. Around this point there was snow for most of the way up to the ridge where we connected into the Howe Sound Crest Trail briefly. We followed the HSCT, which was also still quite snowy up to the notch for the West lion. The snow was already soft and supportive and never added any challenges. After a brief lapse in route finding, I re found the HCST and we made our way towards the base of the East Lion. The approach required traversing the flanks of the bump between the two Lions names "Thomas Peak". It was also a bit snowy in parts, but I managed to find a pretty dry route crossing some dryer bouldery patches. I had already established where the exposed ledge traverse was I had seen on other trip reports was, so when we made it to the base of the ledge we took a quick break and got geared up. Traversing the ledge was actually extremely chill and it is very wide and flat. After traversing the ledge we opted to rope up. From here to the summit it is around 150 meters of mainly fourth class climbing on the South Face. Stella and I opted to simul climb the whole thing as the climbing was easy but we wanted some assurance with the exposure. I led the simul and placed extremely sparse gear and managed to climb all the way to the top of the bushy gully where I used a small boulder as a terrain belay. I managed to climb the entire face with a small rack and never needed to belay stella up to retrieve gear. The crux of the face was the entrance to the bushy gulley where the rock steepened up a bit and was probably more adjacent to low 5th climbing, although one could probably find an easier line and keep it closer to fourth class. At the top of the shrubby gulley the summit appeared and it was a simple hike to the high point. We didn't linger for too long on the summit as we still wanted to have time to tag the taller West Lion on the descent. The descent route would turn out to be very similar to the ascent route, and five rappels were necessary with my 70M rope to get back down to the end of the exposed ledge where we roped up in the morning. The first rap was off of a solid tree at the top of the shrubby gulley, and was by far the most solid rappel station. The next was near the bottom of the shrubby gulley on the climbers left, and had heaps of old webbing slung around various things. The third rappel station might have been the sketchyest, with a small, almost entirely detached boulder with some webbing around it. I tried my best to not weight this station as much as possible and try and down climb as I rapped. The fourth rappel was off of an entirely rotten but girthy tree that I backed up with a few slings around some smaller nearby trees. The final rappel was off of a rock horn with some newer slings around it. It seemed quite solid as long as the slings would not jump off. The five rapps went well and no rope got stuck, so we hiked back down to a less exposed area and had a bite to eat. After some food we re-traced our steps back around Thomas Peak and then back up to the West Lion Notch. We descended the fixed rope and started our way up the West Lion. The first few steps up the West Lion are by far the most intimidating as there is some deathly exposure, but there is also a solid fixed rope and chain to use. The rest of the ascent is mainly fun scrambling and nothing to worry about. Time was already getting on in the day by the time we made it to the summit, so we appreciated the views over Howe Sound and had a look at the South Face of the East Lion one last time, then started the descent. The summit route for the West Lion is also incredibly easy to follow due to the massive amount of traffic it sees and the orange paint markers everywhere. As we started to near tree line again we encountered the first people of the day who were also just going up for a late afternoon West Lion hike. after a very successful day, albeit a bit longer than I had anticipated, we made it back to the car at Lions bay Elementary in barely under 12 hours