The Beautiful Hill - Mt. Beaujolais Scramble (+ bonus engagement)
Reading through a guide book cover to cover is an all too common activity for me. Particularly ones I’ve already poured through numerous times and by now, really should have memorized verbatim.
But seriously, if you ski tour in coastal BC, and you haven’t read Baldwin’s bible cover to cover at least 14 times, do you really ski tour?
This time it was Squamish district planner and local mountain guru Matt Gunn to get the gears turning for our next adventure, with his “Scrambles in Southwest BC”. Mary and I were keen to check out a new area up the Hurley and try to get away from the crowds, and found an awesome area up the Hope Creek zone that I’ve explored in the winter by snowmobile, that boasts a stacked collection of high quality scrambles and alpine terrain.
I had additional motivation to find an aesthetic spot to explore with Mary at this time: a newly crafted engagement ring. Nerves and excitement were cascading around the where and the how, but I figured that I would bring the ring with us on the trip, and if the timing seemed appropriate, go for it.
Access to the remote Mt. Beaujolais area is deep up the Hurley Pass, a seasonal rough road connecting Pemberton to the Bralorne/Gold Bridge area through some incredible high country terrain. The access possibilities from this area in both the summer and winter are truly staggering, having explored many of the drainages in the winter by snowmobile and splitboard over the years. Turning off the Hurley Main road to head up Hope Creek to one of the more distant branches of this area, signs of other humans diminished quickly. In fact, even though this was Canada Day long weekend, after turning off onto the East Hope Creek road, we didn’t see another soul for the rest of the trip.
East Hope Creek FSR is quite overgrown, and if you care about your vehicles exterior paint, I would recommend parking a few KM up the road and bike/walking the rest of the way. We pushed about 3/4 of the way up the road until I decided to park and walk the rest of the way to the trailhead, which was a bit silly as the pinstripe damage was already done. We really need to get a pair of e-bikes to skip this part of the adventure…
The trailhead was easy to find, and although we took a wrong turn at the main pass to enter the Beaujolais Valley, we were able to head in the right direction and get on track through the lower valley instead of the high traverse that is recommended, and was our return path. The key was to stay on the ridge and continue up hikers left to stay high above the valley, instead of descending back down and up again like we did. A little bit of extra work, but easy travel and routefinding in the valley.
We made it to a beautiful alpine lake with clear views of Beaujolais towering imposingly above us. Beaujolais features the hallmark of any terrific scramble—a term typically referring to unroped 3rd/4th class travel to gain the summit, as opposed to easier established trail hiking or more technical mountaineering. From a distance, the summit appears to be protected by a challenging fortress of steep rock. However, up close, a straightforward and fun route through the spires is presented and available.
The mosquitos were definitely a factor on day one! Mary practicing a variety of techniques to keep them at bay.
Ascending alpine meadows toward the basin below Beaujolais ahead.
The mosquitos were a thing!
Camp lake
It’s hard NOT to be sexy in these situations. Puffy down pants: check. Bug hat: check. Maybe I’m crazy, but to me, THAT is the kinda woman I’m excited to marry!
Fortunately the mosquitos subsided slightly for the next morning with a bit of a breeze, so we were able to enjoy a nice relaxing breakfast, considering our route up for the day.
Beautiful lush greens in the valley contrasted beautifully with the rocky escarpments above.
The route gains the ridge down low on the far left of the valley, and then climbs to the summit.
A better view of the “crux”: low angle slab climbing above some significant exposure. Looking a little more reasonable now.
Like any good scramble, the crux was exciting but safe and straightforward. Easy ledges provided a simple ascent through the steep and exposed section.
Once on the ridge proper, the wind picked up significantly. At this point, I had made the decision that if conditions allowed, I would go for the “big question” on the summit, but Mary was quite cold, and the wind made it very inhospitable on the ridge, so that idea seemed doubtful at this point, and I was resolved to wait until the evening or later.
But I continued to rehearse my words and prepare myself for what I hoped wouldn’t be an overly stiff and awkward delivery!
After more simple blocky scramble and gaining the enormous wide summit plateau, incredibly the wind died down completely! So I rehearsed my words in my head one more time, set up my camera on the rock to take a “selfie” and went for it! I managed to completely forget everything I was going to say, mumbled some incoherent words awkwardly, but fortunately my body’s orientation and associated prop made my intentions fairly obvious to Mary, and just like that, we were engaged!
Alright, enough with that stuff, let’s get back to the mountains! Mystery Peak was another quality rated scramble across the valley to the South that we had put out as a potential day 3 mission. Looking dark and foreboding from the peak of Beaujolais.
Looking north towards the Chilcotin, the characteristic colourful rock begins to appear. Beaujolais and neighbouring Merlot peak were named due to the iron deposits and red hue.
Looking a bit steep on the way down.
Morale was high after the day’s events, and so we enjoyed a bit of wine and the sunset, fortunately with a reasonable number of mosquitoes this time. We decided against the monster day of another summit and exit the following day, and had a relaxing and fairly straightforward exit, doing a better job of route finding this time, staying high on the north slope to gain the col at the far end of the valley, dropping down the short and steep descent to Hope Creek and our truck.
Finishing the day at the Beerfarmers up Pemberton Meadows, we ran into another couple that was doing a big multi day bike ride around the region, and they shared that they had just gotten engaged the day before as well! Stories were shared, stoke levels very high.
So, shout out to Matt Gunn and all the guide book authors out there. Without you, it would be incredibly challenging to find these stunning remote locations that offer the beauty and solitude that make for such a high quality experience.
For a few reasons, this was definitely a memorable trip!