Hunter Trail (Mission)

March 31, 2021

Hiking

Mission, BC

Hunter Trail is not a peak, but offers a nice viewpoint of Stave Lake with minimal effort of 7.6 km round trip and 300 m elevation gain. This has rapidly become a “hotspot” on social media over the past year or two. It used to be a “local secret” but not anymore. The parking lot is accessible in a normal 2WD vehicle on a paved road. I had thought about this objective for a few times but never felt motivated enough because I couldn’t tag a new summit out of this trip. However, the view-to-effort ratio is simply too high to pass.

I only had half a day on this Wednesday and the weather was supposed to be good in the morning. Wendy was able to take a day off work to join me and I needed to come up with a “type 1 fun” kind of hike. None of my remaining dumpster-diving objectives in Fraser Valley sounded good enough so I told myself to forget about peak-bagging for once in a while and let’s get Hunter Trail done.

Wendy and I left White Rock at 7 am and drove to Mission relatively leisurely with multiple stops for gas and food. The Tim Horton in Mission was slow-going in the morning that I wasted at least 20 minutes in the line-up. The drive to the trail-head had some long stretches of curvy and narrow roads but Google did a good job this time directing us there. The parking lot wasn’t super spacious but early birds get the spot.

The hike was essentially on a logging road and the road was in a great shape for driving. There is a gate at the bottom as otherwise I could have easily driven all the way up to the viewpoint. The beginning 2 km had some notable elevation gain. The middle stretch was rather flat with minor down-hill. The viewpoint itself was as good as I was hoping for and we did manage to take some good photos.

My backpack and the dry fire pit at the viewpoint

Wendy walking to the Hunter Trail viewpoint

Me posing for a shot with Mt. Robie Reid and Stave Lake behind

Wendy posing for her shot from the same spot

Another photo of Wendy in front of Stave Lake

Just another photo of me at the Hunter Trail viewpoint.

A close-up shot of Mt. Robie Reid and Mt. Judge Howay

Wendy walking out of the viewpoint. We spent an hour up there taking photos…

Once finishing the photo-shooting we leisurely walked down to the truck and drove home. We stopped in a pizza place before entering the city of Mission for lunch, which was pretty good and cheap. The rest of the drive back home was uneventful and I even earned an hour’s napping time before the usual afternoon/evening work.