Mount Arrowsmith

Mount Arrowsmith - 1819M

1419M Prominence

49.22373, -124.59455

August 16, 2026

8H 6M C2C, 7H 10M moving

950M Ascent and descent

8.6KM

Mount Arrowsmith one of the most easily accessed, well known, and prominent peaks on the island that somehow I just had not climbed yet. There are so many interesting routes that this peak could be climbed by, and I sense that someday I will go back for another one, as there are so many good options. I am glad I saved this peak for a time when I could do a more interesting route, and with my climbing game as strong as it has ever been, I decided to have a go at "Time Machine, 5.10C (Sport)". My sister Stella was instantly sold on the idea of sport climbing a multipitch and summiting a peak. After doing a longer mission that was more in line with my type of climbing the day before in the form of Redwall's North Face, a more chill sport climb the second day seemed like a great idea. We camped out just across the gate on a dirt road the night before, but with the gates opening at 8 AM, it is a pretty chill start no matter how early you decide to get up. The road in is pretty much immaculate with only a handful of potholes, and it was no issue with Stella's VW Jetta with zero clearance. The climber's trail starts just off the FSR and quickly drops into a ravine, then the ascent begins once you cross the creek. The trail is great and quite enjoyable with the creek to the left and increasing views of the red rock of the Arrowsmith massif. After ascending the majority of the trail there was a fork, and we turned left. Soon after we exited into a meadowy area with the "International wall" to the right. I was quite surprised that we had already made it to the wall, but it was quite obviously the right one and the route became glaringly obvious with the sight of the first bolts and a quick cross check with the topo. To gain the base of the climb I crawled up the loose gravel to the left of the rock and then was able to go right onto the big belay ledge. due to the fact I wanted to take the lead on the crux pitch, I led the long pitch one (45M, 13 bolts, 5.9). The start was mellow and trended right, then soon steepened up with some more challenging vertical climbing. Stella led pitch 2 ( 35M, 9 bolts, 5.9), which was another solid and more consistent pitch of climbing leading to the base of the crux pitch. I then looked up at the layback flake of pitch 3 (25M, 12 bolts, 5.10 B/C), and geared up for the send. The layback moves were a blast, and I thought the pitch was more or less over, but the crux turned out to be the traverse above the layback moves. A tricky left trending balancy traverse was definitely the crux, especially after going to far up and having to downclimb a move. Stella followed up and enjoyed the pitch equally, then geared up for the next pitch. As we wanted to both do a 5.10 pitch, Stella decided to link the next two pitches, which ended up working quite well with a few extended draws. She linked pitch 4 (20M, 8 bolts, 5.8) and pitch 5 (15M, 7 bolts, 5.10A). Pitch 4 ended up being a bit of a curveball with an unusual chimney section that felt a little hard for the grade and a little more challenging than it looked at a first glance. Pitch 5 was definitely a little thin and solid 5.10 climbing for sure. The final pitch, Pitch 6, (20M, 5 bolts, 5.6), was a bit of a freebie. One more difficult move led too some scrambly terrain in order to get to the final set of anchor bolts. I decided to extend my anchor further over to the edge for a less awkward belay stance. Once we both made it to the top we hiked over to a chill flat spot to the side of the upper pitch and had our first break. The clouds had rolled in pretty well at this point and not much visibility was available for the rest of the ascent. After eating lunch and packing up the gear we continued to hike on. We scrambled up and over "The Beehive" which looked a little intimidating at first but was rather chill. After dropping down over the other side of The Beehive, which definitely had some bees on it, We made it to a incredibly chossy col between it and the next bump "Peter's Peak". Peter's peak looked quite gnarly to get over and was not necessary, so we carefully traversed the choss and downclimbed a little further to a ledge on the side of Peter's Peak that brought us to a fairly steep and fairly vegetated drainage gulley. The chossy mess was over once we got into the gulley and we followed it with ease almost straight up to "The Judge's Route". The Judge's Route is the most popular ascent route by far on arrowsmith, and goes at a very easy class 3. After following the final few steps of The Judge's route we were on the summit of Arrowsmith along with the large crowds. I was expecting the peak to have other climbers up there, but not so many as over a dozen people. After chilling on the summit for a good length of time and admiring the complicated massif riddled by a thousand bumps, we started the descent. We only chose to return down The Judge's Route at this point. Hiking down the ridge and Rappelling back down Time Machine felt like a pretty time consuming descent, and any of the other gulleys required more research which I had not done. The Judge's Route offered a very quick but unenjoyable way back down the mountain. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to climb Arrowsmith does so by any other route. It is next level slippery with the loose dirt and gravel anywhere, and is seriously eroded by all the traffic it sees. Going down this way was already unenjoyable enough, and we were both thankful to not have come up this route. Once we got back down to the old logging road and were at the bottom of The Judge's Route we began to see trucks. We had to descend along the road and piece together a route to make it back to the Main Gulley trailhead, as they do not start in the same place. After a bit of road walking we turned right on a different spur that went back uphill for 100M or so. We hiked the road until the creek that we traversed earlier in the morning was basically in sight, then descended the steep ravine. There was tons of blowdown in the creek area which made travel difficult, but we made use of a few very large downed trees and crossed the river. From the other side a short bushwhack through some salal brought us back to the Jetta, and we called it a day.

Typical Arrowsmith bumpy terrain

Time Machine on the International wall was easy to find, here is an 
approximate route

Looking down on pitch 1

Stella leading pitch 2

Pitch 3's layback flake

Standing on top of the layback flake

Stella finishing off pitch 3

Top of pitch 5

Scrambling up The Beehive

Scrambling up The Beehive. Photo Stella Mazurek

Scrambling down The Beehive

Scrambling up a gulley to get to the top of the Judge's route. The Beehive
in background

Mount Arrowsmith summit

Fishtail and Hidden lake

"The Nose" route follows the arched ridge, Mount Cokely is in behind

Panorama North

Descending Judge's route

Exposed log crossings

Looking back at the massif from the road

Mount Arrowsmith route