“Peak 703”

February 24, 2026

703m

Hope, BC

“Peak 703” is one of the handful unnamed pimples that boast over 100 m prominence in the lower Fraser Canyon not far from the municipality of Hope. I added this “peak” to the peakbagger.com database a few years ago but kept forgetting to actually do it. Quite a few fellow baggers had logged it since then and the ascents had been done from various directions. A quick check on the various map layers revealed literally a maze of logging roads and biking trails. In the end I opted to take Alan Blair’s west/north approach as it seemed like the shortest possible way.

There were at least 30 cm of fresh snow in the alpine lifting the avalanche conditions to “considerable” or “high” across most regions, but the weather was supposed to be bluebird. The conditions nevertheless were not that excellent for me to take the day off work, so I settled on some lesser objectives that could be bagged as “before work exercise”. I got influenced by Alan’s recent trip to the Fraser Canyon so “Peak 703” would be that candidate. I wasn’t sure how low the snowline was so I packed boots, crampons and snowshoes in the vehicle. They turned out to be not needed. I opted to drive out from work at 10 pm in the previous evening since by car-camping at the trail-head I could maximize my sleeping hours. For a day with brutal amount of work in the afternoon/evening getting enough sleep was kind of important. The logging roads were very muddy but not snowy, that I managed to drive to where I wanted to park by midnight. It seemed like the snowline was still quite high. Alan pushed his truck a few hundred meters higher up but I didn’t think that was necessary. The 4WD terrain with pin-stripping was enough for me to turn around and park the Subaru. The starting point was not far from the bottom of Zofka Ridge route which I did a few years ago.

I didn’t even bother to set up an alarm and slept in till 8:20 am, and eventually dragged my tired asses out of the comfortable sleeping bag another half an hour later. Looking around I decided to leave the snow gears in the vehicle. I did encounter snow on the route but the decision to leave the snowshoes and boots behind was still correct. To be honest I didn’t read Alan’s trip report but I did have a glimpse on his route map (and remembered seeing a “loop”). I assumed he bushwhacked straight up the west side slopes but it turned out that he took this route down, so I would be doing Alan’s loop in the reverse direction. I wanted to minimize the time to reach the summit anyway, so the bushwhacking route made more sense. The brushes weren’t thick, but there were enough blackberry bushes in the cut-block to make the thrashing notable.