Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

March 23, 2026

Harrison West / Chehalis Area, BC

“Coon Peak” is the unofficial name of the highest of the peaks in the vicinity of Coon Creek. This is a rugged group of peaks and the highest of them boasts over 600 m prominence and is also the highpoint of the long divide south/east of Tretheway Creek. Despite the iconic profile and the topographical significance there’s not a lot of information and in fact, I would be surprised if this peak had seen more than a handful ascents. On the internet we could only find Doug Kasian’s first ascent notes in 1978 in which he scrambled the NE Ridge “with a few moves” and carried on all the way to “Kessler Peak”, as well as Matt Juhasz’s attempt a couple years ago but Matt turned around well before even starting the scramble. Those first ascensionists in the old days could easily scramble terrain that I normally would want a belay, so the difficulty of this peak had been mysterious. I had a few pictures of the NE Ridge taken from Traverse Peak but the vantage point was a bit too far away and the iPhone camera was never the greatest for zooming in the details. I had a feeling that the route could be harder than expected, and unfortunately I was correct.

The access of this peak is also troublesome and any route seemed to involve 1000 vertical meters of bushwhacking on insanely steep and bluffy terrain. This is no longer the case anymore as the recent logging activities had reactivated Coon Creek Spur such that it is now a pleasant plod to 700 m elevation. The roads were not drivable due to washouts and downed trees but at least it was wide and open for foot travel. Alan B. had been watching the satellite images closely and noticed this nice change. I went onto Francis Bailey’s backroads site and confirmed that the cut-blocks were indeed made in recent time. After confirming the access situation I was instantly sold on the idea, and we were able to convince Katie, Sean P. and Chris H. to come along. All of the planning was done within 12 hours from the starting time so people had definitely been watching for this objective. Both Sean and Chris had reliable 4×4 vehicles to handle the insanely rough 61-km drive up the West Harrison FSR, and Alan even sent out a few messages to the 4WDABC Facebook page to confirm the status of this road being “in” after the apocalyptic floodings we had been having recently. I planned the technical part of the trip and the decision was made to carry one 30 m rope, two axes each, steel crampons and real mountaineering boots. These turned out to be the bare minimal amount of gears for me to get the job done, but to bring everybody up and down safely we would need at least one 60 m rope and several pickets.

The decision was made to do this trip as a home-to-home styled push so I woke up at 4:20 am in order to grab Alan and Katie from Mission an hour later. The five of us then met at Sasquatch Inn at 6 am. It wasn’t possible to squeeze everybody and the gears all into one vehicle so I opted to ride with Chris’ Jeep Wrangler, whereas Alan and Katie would hop into Sean’s F-150. The road was more or less as expected, rough going with zillions of pot-holes that the average driving speed was less than 40 km/h. Chris drove a little bit faster than Sean since he’s overall more experienced in off-roading. Passing the Trio Creek (Grainger Peak’s) turn-off it was all new ground for me, but the going wasn’t as bad as people made it sound like. Chris thought the road had seen some improvements since he drove out this way back in January after his Robertson Peak’s trip so maybe it’s normally not as good. In the current condition I could have easily driven us to the starting point in my stock Subaru. The correct starting point of Coon Creek Spur was right at the “big bend” crossing Tretheway Creek, and given the higher-than-expected snowline we decided to drive this spur road to as high as we could. I was hoping to drive a few hundred meters higher but an impasse at 0.5 km forced us to park and walk. This wasn’t a major wash-out but deep enough to block any vehicular access.

I had packed a pair of trail runners in the vehicle and I was glad that I did so, because we had a few kilometers of plodding on the dry FSR and it’s much nicer to do so wearing trail shoes while carrying the mountaineering boots. We encountered a major downed tree that could block our access within 20 minutes after starting, so we didn’t lose much. The roads were definitely confusing so I saved a few screen shots from the recent satellite images, and made no navigation error to the highest point at 750 m elevation. The road continues further but wouldn’t give us more advantage. A few minutes were then spent swapping the footwear and then we dived into the bushes. I was fully expecting some horrendous thrashing but the forest was surprisingly open. There was hardly any bushwhacking though we did have to cross a few old roads chocked with alders, and find our way through a few bluffs. We encountered several centimeters of fresh snow but by 1050 m elevation we were bootpacking on the old snow surfaces. The condition was definitely prime as the snow was supportive but not icy, such that neither the crampons nor the snowshoes were required. Alan and I took turn leading the group traversing a long ways due south to the bump at 1450 m elevation where we got our first glimpse of the objective. Needless to say it was not looking good. I wished I had brought two technical tools instead of the Gullies but there’s nothing else I could do at this point.

Not doing much lingering I led us descending the south side of this bump while side-hilling into the basin on the east side of the subsidiary summits. Doug Kasian’s route traversed over these peaks but that’s not quite suitable for the winter conditions. Our route was definitely the most efficient way and we had previously agreed with this route choice. I tried really hard to not lose too much elevation and I think the amount of drop we did was no more than 50 m. We then stopped for a break at the edge of a major avalanche path while waiting for the rest of the group to catch up, and meanwhile I decided for us to don snowshoes. In retrospect the crampons were probably the better decision but either way we needed some traction for the next stretch. To cross the slide path and then grunt into the basin with a tiny (frozen) lake required some technical snowshoeing which was fine for me. We then continued grunting all the way to the base of the summit block and donned harness and crampons. The route didn’t appear any easier from this vantage point and the decision was still to go for the NE Ridge but the NW Ridge might also work.

I wasn’t too keen on waiting for 15 minutes for everyone to don their crampons so started the climb on my own mostly to scout things out. Even to gain the NE Ridge required some 45-degree snow climbing. I had to engage both axes in. I then descended a little bit to a spot on the ridge that was definitely not on a cornice to have a better look at the terrain ahead. I thought it was doable, but not without some difficulties. This was starting to look like a serious mountaineering objective so most likely I would be on my own, and I was correct. The grade quickly picked up to 45+ degrees with cornices on the left and exposure on the right, and I had to pick a line staying reasonably far from the edge while working my way towards the gendarme crux. At one spot I post-holed down to knee deep and that freaked me out as I thought I had broken through a cornice. I was still not 100% sure what exactly happened but I reacted quickly by high-kneeing and mantling up to the right onto firmer snow, and at this point I was basically underneath the 60+ degree mushroom. Thankfully the condition was as good as it could ever be. Without a belay (but with a rope in my pack) I made some slow work testing the moves, and a few minutes later I cleared this crux. The steepness was similar to the summit pitch on Atwell Peak but without the 500-m exposure nor the rime ice texture. The top of this mushroom gendarme would offer a natural spot to build a snow anchor to bring the rest of the group up, but there’s at least another pitch of insanely exposed traverse on 45+ degree terrain, that I wasn’t sure if they were keen. After some communication the decision was made for me to solo the rest of the way to the summit to scout out the NW Ridge option. The traverse was mentally taxing and the worst was to cross a runnel on the far end. I was front-pointing for a few steps followed by a hard mantle move, and that must be down-climbed if I were to descend the same way. The rest of the climb to the summit wasn’t difficult, but was still exposed and dragged on for a while. The amount of elevation gain from the point we topped out on the NE Ridge to the summit exceeds 100 m so this peak is bigger than I thought.

I spent a few minutes doing the mandatory photo shooting but I quickly focused on scouting the NW Ridge. Unfortunately the result was inconclusive. The top half of that route seemed like 45-degree snow with insane exposure but the bottom part had some large cornices and rock steps, so I decided to down-climb what I just did. Apparently Doug Kasian had left a register in the cairn that he built up there, but it was buried in snow and I had no time to fuss things around. It would have to be left for a summer party to dig it out to find out who else had climbed this peak. Down-climbing to the gendarme required a lot of care but not too difficult for me, and at the gendarme I decided to build an anchor to rappel. Initially I thought about to leave one ice axe behind but I changed my mind. The nature of that gendarme itself offered the perfect oppourtunity to build a snow bollard, so I didn’t have to leave anything behind. I didn’t fully trust the bollard so I more or less did a rope-assisted down-climb, using only one ice axe (as the other hand had to be on the ATC pretending I was rappelling). I down-climbed staying more on the north side to bypass that few questionable steps on the cornice but eventually I had no choice but to get close to the edge. This was unfortunately when the 15-m rope ran out, so I attached one end to my harness and resumed the down-climbing while dragging the rope down, hoping nothing would break. I then quickly packed the rope and caught up to the rest of the team down-climbing the easier pitch off the ridge to where we ditched the gears.

I decided to go for the NW Ridge with the rest of the team so hopefully a few of us could all stand on the summit. Alan did the lead climbing to the col and then we scrambled some class 3/4 mixed terrain to another pitch of 60-degree snow wall. I went up for a few moves until I could see a little bit of the terrain beyond. It might be doable, but wouldn’t be much easier or less complicated than what I just did on the NE Ridge, so we called it and down-climbed. There’s a 3rd winter route option that might offer the easiest pathway, but we were running out of time and we also weren’t keen on being underneath those bus-sized cornices for an hour long, so down we went. The snow was still mostly strong that we simply followed our own route down without putting the snowshoes back on, and only did a few deep post-holes. We took another long break in the sun before bailing down into the forest. To be honest the forested descent was quite easy. We kept crampons on all the way to the snowline and then easily boot-packed down to the spur road. I then changed the footwear back to the trail runners and jogged down to the vehicles, concluding the round trip in exactly 9 hours. The others showed up a few minutes later and then there came the long ass drive back home. I eventually got back home at 11 pm. The difficulty of this peak is still not as bad as the notorious ones like Pyroclastic Peak, Mt. Fee (North Tower) or even Atwell Peak but exceeds most of the SW BC’s winter objectives such as Mt. Howard.