Stats: 8.64 km / 667m gain / 1976m high / 4:15 hours MT
This mountain was a mistake. A good one though. We were halfway there when we realized we were on the wrong trail. There were several reasons in play...
Our first mistake was that we drove a bit too far up. Why? Because the driving instructions in the "105 Hikes in SW BC" by S Hui are confusing. He writes: "Turn west off Hwy 99 onto Callaghan Valley Rd., 3 km north of Brandywine PP." It should've said that 3 km after leaving Hwy 99, you stay left at a junction. This resulted in us setting our odometer too late, which was not good on this FSR because of all the roads branching off of it.
We parked at 1400m with our high clearance 4WD. There was pink flagging along the trail.
Now that we were in the open alpine, instead of pink flagging, we just saw weather-worn blue ski poles or pieces of them. The trail was almost non- existent.
Mt. Fee and Bow Peak to the left of it. Bow Hut is perched atop that glacier. It was about halfway in that we realized we were heading towards the wrong mountain. Brandywine Meadows were to our left, but about 400m below us. Descending the cliff was not an option.
Monkey-face flowers growing by a creek.
Garabaldi Mt. & Daisy Lake.
south
There were cairns + footprints to guide the way but they were few and far between.
Brandywine Mt. is 237m higher than Metal Dome and the hike is 1.5 km longer.
Rainbow Mt. to the right -- north. I'd hiked the Skyline Trail on the other side of it 4 days prior.
Four of us were on the recent Chilcotin trip.
Callaghan Lake PP -- northwest.
We had a nice long lunch break.
Mt. Cayley to the right.
Anne said, "This is my living room".
Blackcomb Mt.
Group shot: Terry, Anne, Case, Ingrid + me.
Heading back down.
Steep slopes.
Brandywine Mt to the left and Metal Dome (a subsidiary peak) to the right.
The Black Tusk is the pointy black rock to the right.
Rainbow Mt.
Nothing went as planned this day. Including dinner. We were supposed to go to Squamish to our favourite restaurant but ended up turning around in a long line of traffic that wasn't moving close to where we'd turned off of the FSR onto Hwy 99. Instead we had dinner in Whistler at the Irish pub. We even had live fiddle music! But back on Hwy 99, 1.5 hours later, the line of traffic was just as long. We didn't get home till after 11:00pm, it having taken 4 hours to get home, due to an accident.
The turquoise line is where we hiked. The red line is the Brandywine trail. The yellow line is the road (we should've driven left of the blue line).
In conclusion, this adventure was filled with "supposed to"s and "should haves". But at the end of the day we all agreed it was a great day. We were on a peak that not many people have been to and that offered glorious 360-degree views in perfect weather. No regrets about that.
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