Otter Mountain

September 28, 2021

1124m

Tulameen, BC

Otter Mountain is a lowly forested summit immediately next to the small town of Tulameen. There’s hardly anything worth to recommend about this objective as the summit is forested and there’s no trail to facilitate an ascent. This peak is however, a little bit more recognized as it’s rather isolated and very visible from the town. Brandon and I saw this peak on the map and because of that we must bag it. Earlier in the day we had slammed a handful summits in the area and now we only had a few hours of daylight time left. The driving direction is pretty straightforward as we just needed to follow the roads on my Gaia map that traverse towards the south-east side of the peak. The road’s condition was a bit rougher than expected. I even made a spontaneous decision to drive a few hundred meters up a dirtbike/ATV trail and parked at the first switchback which was basically the only spot I could turn the truck around.

Otter Mountain ascent route. GPX DL

We continued along the ATV track for a few more hundred meters on foot before bailing into the forest. We knew there’s no trail to the summit so we must bushwhack. The forest was actually not too bad with only minor amount of dead-falls but the grade was pretty steep. After about 100 m elevation gain the slope angle eased. Near the summit we decided to stick to the ridge crest and scramble up and over some rock steps. The true summit had no view.

I probably should have parked lower but this spot worked too..
Looking down into Tulameen River valley
Brandon plodding up the single-track ATV road
The steep ascent up the south slopes
Looking across Tulameen River towards Mt. Jackson
The terrain petered out but we had more dead-falls to negotiate
Near the summit we had some easy scrambling to deal with
Brandon and I on the summit of Otter Mountain

After a short break on the summit we descended the exact same route we had used on the ascent with only minor variations here and there. I checked the GPS many times to make sure we didn’t deviate too much from the ascent route. The drive-out was a bit intense at the start to get back onto the “proper road”. We even found a better way to get back onto Coalmont Road. By this point we had finished all objectives planned in Tulameen area but we still had time for another bag. Brandon suggested Mt. Kennedy south of Princeton so that’s where we headed next.

Looking downstream of Tulameen River towards Coalmont area
The typical dry forest on the descent
We tried to avoid the dead-falls but there were still some..
Another photo of Tulameen River from the ATV track
Impressive storm cells while driving towards Princeton