X Marble peak, Wheaton Lake Peak, Mount McBride

September 06, 2026

X Marble peak, Wheaton Lake Peak, Mount McBride

Marble Mountain - 1761M

241M Prominence

49.69423, -125.60769

September 6, 2026

Wheaton Lake Peak - 1662M

122M Prominence

49.69773, -125.63514

September 6, 2026

Mount McBride - 2083M

912M Prominence

49.72195, -125.65026

September 7, 2026

Once a year I try and get out on a trip with my mom, who is also very passionate for the mountains. She has done quite a bit of exploring in the Qathet area, and so have I. This year we looked at a trip on the island, and we came to an agreement to get up to Marble Meadows, and maybe a surrounding peak if we had time. Early September offered good weather as usual, so we made the plan to strap the canoe to the top of the car and make our way over to the island. My sister Stella, also made the trip at the last minute, so it was a bit of a family vacation. We caught an early ferry from Powell River to Comox, and then made the drive up into Strathcona park. At around 11:30 we parked the car and launched the canoe from the Augerpoint day use area. We canoed across Buttle lake, which was dead flat, and absolutely gorgeous. After the straight crossing west, we arrived at Phillips creek campground, had lunch, then began the ascent up to the meadows. The trail was in great shape, but featured an ungodly amount of small switchbacks, which made it feel long. It was quite chill in gradient, until the final few hundred meters up to the meadows. Once we got to the meadows we were all of a sudden in the sub alpine, and the hike around numerous tarns and sparse trees was incredible. We passed by Limestone lake, Globe Flower lake and Marsh Marigold Lake. After Marsh Marigold lake we ascended 70 or so meters up to a col. At this col my sister and I decided to go do a quick out and back of Marble Peak, while my mom would wander around the meadows for a while, before meeting us back at the cabin for dinner. We had about 230 meters of elevation to go to get up to Marble Peak's summit from the col, so we ditched all our gear and made it as quick as possible. The first part offered a trail for a while, then an amazing section of cool karst limestone (the first of many). The ridge then got a bit more scrambly and more and more navigation was necessary. There were some parts where staying on the route avoided some fourth and fifth class moves, but I would say if you are able to keep track of the feint route, it is mostly 3rd class. Some fun scrambling and a cool narrow chimney later, we were on the summit. The views looking down at Buttle lake where we were this morning, and the imposing east face of Mount Mcbride were splendid. As we were kind of in speed mode, we began to make our way down right away, and simply followed the route we came up. Back down at the col we picked up our gear, then completed the hike through the rest of Marble meadows until we reached the Wheaton hut, where our mom would soon join us. We had brought tents, but the cabin was free, and there were only a few other people up there who opted to pitch tents. After having dinner at the Wheaton hut, I pitched the idea of heading up to the mighty Wheaton Lake Peak for sunset to my mom, and she was game. We continued up the trail behind the hut, and soon enough we ditched the trail and began hiking through the huge plateau of Karst Limestone. We took our time as we were looking for fossils in the 300 million+ year old rock. Eventually, just as the sun was setting I dragged my mom up to the very uninteresting true summit of Wheaton Lake Peak, then we started descending the peak back down to the cabin with our headlamps out. The following morning Stella and I got going at 6:30 AM. We set out to go climb Mount Mcbride, and due to the time crunch in getting back home to Powell River on the last ferry later that day, my mom settled for climbing Morrison Spire instead, as we had to move fast. We made really good time and ended up doing Mount McBride Cabin to Cabin in 5 hours and 15 minutes, while some had warned us that it took upwards of 9 hours. To start the day we hiked back up the trail behind the cabin which I had already been up the night before for Wheaton Lake Peak, but this time carried on down along the ridge. We followed the feint route, which then became more of a trail as we started to descend into more treeline terrain. We dipped back down below 1500 meters, Then started to make a gradual ascent up and across a plateau with some tarns. We aimed to get on top of the ridge connecting Morrison Spire to Mount McBride, and at this point the route started to become a guessing game. Past the plateau the terrain became very interesting with lots of cool limestone rock and undulating terrain. I had a GPX route that avoided the more standard route, and cut a small section of the ridge off, so we went for it. It was pretty chill in the end, and never even got all that scrambly at all. We were then on the ridge, and had a good look at Mount McBride up ahead. It appeared so far, with so much terrain between us and the summit. We cracked on along the ridge and hiked through a fascinating limestone area, the coolest one of the trip that featured some caves and gnarly sharp rock. We essentially stuck to the high point on the ridge until we descended to a low col off the ridge at 1660M. At this point we had the south west flank of the mountain before us, and a general idea of where to go. I am not sure how following the ridge line in it's entirety would be as a route, but these days the standard route is pretty well trodden, and so we just followed it. We traversed across the south west flank of the peak, across some shrubby sections and some more loose water runout features, until we got to some gnarlyer terrain and some narrower gulleys. At this point we went straight up, and slightly to the right on more solid rock. The route looked steep at first, but was only class 3, and was quite solid and enjoyable climbing.