Last Thursday - Sunday, Bruce (VA7SGY) and I did a hike through the Skyline Trail in Manning Park. It was amazing! The weather was almost perfect, and we activated three SOTA summits, one of them being a first time activation.
Manning Park is a huge park in BC that offers a ton of SOTA summits.
We parked in Strawberry Flats and made our way to the Mowich campsite which is a backcountry campsite offering several tent pads, an outhouse, and two bear cache containers.
I was excited to try out my new hammock, and I'm happy to say it was quite comfortable, but a bit cold as the temperatures dropped to 5C overnight. I was using a 0C sleeping bag, but that's a bit of an exaggeration, and also my underquilt is a reflective car windshield thing, and not as warm as a closed cell foam. A lot lighter though!
We arrived in the campsite late Thursday night and fortunately found it empty. If you're going to camp at Mowich, note that the water supply is about 600m before the campsite, so fill up before you get in.
Friday - Nepopekum Peak
The first day we did Nepopekum Mountain. To get there, you follow the Skyline Trail west out of Mowich, and then head north on the ridge. There's a trail marker that points to Hozomeen Ridge going south. At that point, you start your bushwack along the ridge. The first part is easy going, with lots of nice views. Further along, you go through a couple of dips that are tough going. Lots of shoulder high bush, and steep slopes. Fortunately the ground is pretty dry.
As you approach the peak, it opens up again, and is a nice spot to rest and have a snack.
Finally, we made it to the peak. It is a steep approach, and there are a few different ways to tackle it. We started on the east side, and scrambled on our hands and knees up the loose rocks. I was definitely out of my comfort zone in the scree. We finally made it to the top and Bruce set up his antenna and started the activation. I had to catch my breath, and never really got it back, so once he had four contacts, I used his antenna and got my four using FT8.
At that point it started raining, so we quickly tore down the mast and antenna to head home. We followed a gully down as it was solid rock and had some vegetation nearby.
I'm glad that we got the first activation, but I never want to do that mountain again!
Arriving back at Mowich, people trickled into the campsite as the day went on. We met some interesting people and chatted with them while having dinner. One of them works for Bob The Drag Queen, who I've never heard of, but is apparently a big deal.
Late that night / early Saturday morning, I was woken up by something crashing through our campsite. Maybe a bear or an elk? Whatever it was, it was loud and going fast through the bush. One of the other people said they heard it sniffing around their tent. Yikes!
Saturday - Hozomeen Ridge
The next day was Hozomeen Ridge. This is a well maintained and popular trail that goes almost to the 49th Parallel, and looks south to Hozomeen Mountain in the US.
We had a great activation, and spread the word about amateur radio with the other hikers at the peak.
On the way back, we met people coming out to the peak who started at the trailhead at Strawberry Flats. They were going to camp at Mowich afterwards. That would mean a 22km hike that day. Wow! Much more than I'm wanting to do.
A lot more people arrived that evening, and the two bear caches were very full.
Again that evening something came through the campsite. Bruce's watch said he was awake at 0130, and his heart rate peaked at that time too! Mine must have been too.
Sunday - Snow Camp Mountain
It was time to pack up Sunday, so we got up at 5am and left camp as quietly as possible. Cold breakfast of pepperoni and dried mangos, as we wanted to get on the trail early.
We hiked through the alpine meadows, and stopped at Snow Camp Mountain. We met a group of bros who camped just shy of the peak of the mountain because they started their hike at Lightning Lake, which added another 8km to Mowich!
After that, it was mostly downhill to the trailhead. A brief stop in Hope at the pub for lunch, and then went home.
Lessons Learned
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Separate and bag my food per day. I tried to ration my trail mix in one big bag and that was hard to estimate.
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Bring my truSDX next time. A day hike with the IC705 is fine, but it would have been better to use the smaller radio. This means I need to get more practise with it. I didn't even know it could do CW macros!
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A sleeping bag liner or extra quilt would have made my night more comfortable.
Conclusions
Overall this is a great trip and worth it to get 18 points over 4 days in BC. If you only had three days, I would skip Nepopekum due to the difficulty.
Next year, we'll have to tackle Red Mountain as it's never been activated.
Bonus Pictures
