Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

February 18, 2025

391m

Chehalis Area / Harrison West, BC

“Kilby Hill” is a lowly forested bump right next to Sasquatch Inn at the very start of Chehalis FSR, but does boast over 200 m prominence despite the insignificant status. The hill has steep flanks on all sides but no trail to speak of whatsoever. There are several logging roads running on the sides but most, if not all of them are overgrown with blackberry bushes. The extremely low elevation suggests that hoping the winter snowpack to cover up the bushes is not a practical option. A few peakbaggers had logged this one over the past few years but only Simon bothered to put up a brief trip report. This is an uttermost “trash bag” that only the few selected individuals would bother with. I reserved “Kilby Hill” for a day when I lacked motivation but still wanted to get out. I missed out the long weekend Monday and the weather was still “decent” on Tuesday but I needed to be back to White Rock no later than 3 pm for work.

My original plan was to camp out and do the more involved “Monastic Peak” in the early morning but I was too tired to drive out in the previous evening. I opted to sleep in and made whatever decision that made sense in the morning, and the objective turned out to be “Kilby Hill”. This is the kind of objective that would break the friendship so it’s better that I got it done solo, as this falls as one of the worst or the most meaningless “dumpster dives” that I had done. Perhaps Hopyard Hill and “Weatherhead Peak” were worse but that’s basically it. After driving through pissing rain I got to Sasquatch Inn at 10 am and thankfully the rain had gave way to some overcast skies. I initially went for my own route by checking out the spur roads on the NE flanks but the status of those roads was much worse than suggested by the satellite images. They were completely overgrown so I drove back down and parked next to the Inn. The only practical option now was to follow Simon’s route by taking a direct attack of the SE Ridge.

I opted to wear Trango Tech mountaineering boots with gaitors even though I wasn’t expecting much in terms of snow. I anticipated some slippery and bluffy forest and I was correct, but I underestimated the amount of bushwhacking involved. Right off the bat I encountered a band of blackberry bushes and the only way to penetrate was by going into the forest on the far climber’s left. The going was reasonable until I bypassed the first bluff on the climber’s right side. I then encountered bands after bands of blackberry and other types of thorny bushes, as well as bands of level-4 bushwhacking that necessitated some full body wrestling. I did pick a better way on the descent by staying a bit further to the north but completely avoiding the blackberry bushes was not possible. About halfway up the pissing returned and I took a selfie to reflect what sequence of decisions in life that had brought me to this position. What an awful trip. Thankfully by miracle I entered some open forest on the upper 1/3, and other than one bluff that forced me to do some scrambling by traversing far out to the right I did not encounter any additional particularly bad bushwhacking. There were about 10 cm of wet and slushy snow but leaving the crampons in the car was overall the right decision.

I knew from Simon’s report there should have some views by venturing to the south but I didn’t bother, as I wasn’t doing particularly good on time. It had taken me over 1 hour to do the 380 m ascent, and I only budgeted 2 hours round trip for this outing. I did get some views from a viewpoint above that aforementioned bluff so I at least got something. I put on my bushwhacking gloves and decided to avoid the awful route that I took on the ascent by staying more on skier’s left, and this proved to be the right decision. I had to push through several thick bands of bushes but didn’t encounter any impenetrable band of blackberry bushes. There were plenty of them to be annoying, but the situation was manageable. I eventually finished the round trip in 2 hours 7 minutes and then quickly drove away. I made one stop for gas before stopping in Mission for a big ass Donair. I eventually got back to White Rock at 2:30 pm, earning about half an hour of spare before work and I was still picking up thorns a few hours into work.