Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 14, 2026

305m

Abbotsford, BC

“Pilgrim’s Knob” is one of the handful P100m pimples on the lower flanks of Sumas Mountain not far from the city of Abbotsford. A few trails run all the way to the summit but the view is limited, if not non-existing. This objective falls into that category of “dumpster diving” and I originally had no intension of doing it in summer. However, a pimple like this could be used as an after-work exercise to walk the cat, so why not.

Clair wanted me to take Cheesecake somewhere for a walk mostly to get some videos and pictures but herself wasn’t keen on hiking. I decided at the last minute to check out this “Pilgrim’s Knob” thing since the drive would be very short. Clair and Cheesecake were already in White Rock and I had about 3 hours of work in the afternoon. The temperatures at 5 pm would be still “too hot” for the cat but at least the hike would be mostly in the shade. The cat survived most of the afternoon in the vehicle with AC running while I was working. The drive took about an hour but the trail-head was simply a pull-out. There were various starting points and I had no time to do any research. I picked the western of the two southern approaches shown on Gaia map and this turned out to be a poor choice.

The start of the trail was hard to find and the trail quickly became overgrown with lots of thorny plants. I thought about turning around to find a better trail but decided to keep pushing, as I was on a trail, after all. Thankfully the bushwhacking didn’t get worse so I slowly made my way upwards hoping the trail would improve once merging with the other branch slightly to the east. Indeed, that one was definitely the correct trail. There were still fair amount of up-and-downs to reach the highest point of this pimple but at least I was following a decent trail for the entire way. The views were next to none, as expected, but at least I was able to let Cheesecake out exploring for a short while. There were gun shots in the distance so Cheesecake wasn’t too keen on going out of the bag.

On the descent I took the “correct trail” which was the eastern of the two trails shown on the Gaia map. I decided to let Cheesecake explore a bit of the forest once we couldn’t hear the gunshots anymore. The round trip time was exactly 1 hour. We then went for a pho restaurant in Abbotsford before driving all the way back home.