Meslilloet Mountain, Meslilloet NE1

Meslilloet Mountain - 1990M

Meslilloet NE1

Meslilloet Mountain is known to be the closest glaciated peak to Vancouver. I have heard many tales throughout the past few years of climbs and attempted climbs from Jason Addy, who has a thing for this peak, and consequently has a boatload of interesting history about it too. It is a quite seldomly visited peak, due to it's quite out of the way nature, and the fact that almost every approach researched prior to my trip is said to be a bit of a nightmare that will take most parties at least 2 days. I couldn't really believe my eyes when there was a three day weather window on a long weekend in mid October, and it would have been foolish to not make the most of one final peak in dry conditions before winter really hits. I was originally thinking of doing something more mainstream, such as Robie Reid. Some little voice in the back of my head made me research a little more into Meslilloet one day after work, and it turs out it is a very quick hour-ish drive in from my house in Squamish. I managed to quickly find a partner for this trip, Molly, who was somewhat foolishly interested, mainly due to my little white lies surrounding the nature of this trip. On Saturday night we drove up and slept at the junction at the end of the driveable Mamquam. Sunday morning was frosty and cold, and consequently we got a slightly late 7:40AM start. We began the hike up the South Mamquam FSR, then soon veered off onto the infamous S100 spur. 10 years have passed since Steven's trip report on this peak came out, where he descended via this spur. He said it was quite a manageable bushwhack, but our experience was far different. The next 4.5 KM on the S100 spur was likely the worst bushwhacking I have every done. Extremely thick slide alder covered 90 % of the road, and pushing our way through, above and underneath with some army crawls in sections took around 3 hours without breaks. Thankfully the morning frost remained frozen throughout, and we were at least saved from being utterly drenched in dew as well. We were both ecstatic by the time we got to the point on the spur where we would turn off and make a steep uphill dash to begin to make our way up to the sub alpine. We crawled up the bank off the spur and began working our way up the open forest, which was a breath of fresh air. Soon we came face to face with a steep rocky outcropping. We looked around a bit, and found that the easiest way up was via a vegetated ramp on it's left side. The ramp was steep, but shrubs and trees became thicker here, so holds were plenty. Above the ramp the forest continued to be very dense with blueberries, and we continued to work our way up keeping the creek canyon feature far to our right.