Sumas Mountain

Summer 2007 finally arrived in Vancouver, with a beautiful 27C Saturday! Mark and I decided that a hike was in order, however, due to the fairly heavy snows this season, the snowline was still quite low. With an alpine hike essentially ruled out, we decided to try hiking in the Fraser Valley. This was a change of pace for us, because for the past few years almost all of our hikes have been in the Sea to Sky corridor. We settled on Sumas Mountain, which looked like a good moderate day hike that wouldn't take excessively long to do. I brought lots of water because it was so hot. After a nice traffic-free drive out to Abbotsford, and one wrong turn down a gravel road, we found ourselves at the trailhead around 11:30am (Mark and I aren't known for our early starts). The fire danger sign said "LOW RISK," but as soon as we started walking I noticed how dry everything was.

The nice wide dirt trail started out by dropping down and then climbing out of 2 creeks, before heading fairly steeply uphill. It was in good condition with only a bit of deadfall laying across the trail (it was actually part of something called the centennial trail, which was built to commemorate Canada's 100th anniversary in 1967). After about 50 min we came to a dirt road and a big clearcut, but then ducked back into the forest. Another 50 min or fairly steep dirt trail led us to Chadsey Lake, where we stopped for a half-lunch.

After circling around the north side of Chadsey Lake, we began to climb the ridge to the summit. The trail was rougher than what we had covered before, with a lot more deadfall. It was still better than many other trails I've been on, though! About half way up we came to a great viewpoint with nice views to the North and West.

We pressed on upwards and after not much longer came to the top of Mount Sumas. There were two big imposing radio towers up there, but after a little wandering around we found the East viewpoint, which was incredible. It was a totally different kind of view from what I'm used to in the Sea to Sky corridor - the valley was so flat! It reminded me a little bit of the hike that I did in Zug, Switzerland - sharp mountains surrounding a very flat valley. We had the other half of lunch while enjoying the scenery, as well as getting a few glimpses of a bald eagle.

We walked around for a bit trying to find the other viewpoint that my guidebook described (apparently with views of Mt Baker), but had no luck, so we just decided to head down. It was a fairly steep descent, a little tiring on my knees, and also extremely hot, but we got down in fairly decent time. I definitely enjoyed this as an early season hike and I'm looking forward to hiking more of the Fraser Valley later this summer.