Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 13-15, 2026

2843m

Lytton, BC

Siwhe Mtn. is one of the highest peaks in the loosely defined region of SW British Columbia with the nearest higher peak being Mt. Brew, somewhat 25+ km away to the north. These peaks are connected via some high ridge systems so there’s only 800 m prominence. What really makes Siwhe Mtn. special is the remoteness as at a distance reasonably close to Vancouver this peak requires at least 1 full day to approach no matter what. The most logical way had been from Texas Creek but the road’s gated and decommissioned by the First Nations a couple years ago, that even a dirt bike couldn’t have made it. Nowadays one has to climb it from Fraser River which is basically a sea-level assault, and any of the 4 published approach options involves arduous amount of up-and-downs on mostly unpleasant terrain. Because this peak is known to be tough for decades I’m giving a bit of a review besides providing my own trip report.

• Walk or bike up Texas Creek FSR to near Devil Peak
• Bushwhack up Siwhe Creek to either N/NE Ridge (Fred Touche, 2003) or contour further E. and to SE Face (ClubTread, 2012)
• Stein Valley to Ponderosa Creek (Ben and Amy Eby, 2024)
• A high divide traverse from Stein Mountain (Seb Gulka, Dean Perez, 2026)

As usual I didn’t come up with the idea until Seb did his trip 3 weeks prior so I actually hadn’t read about these amazing sufferfests until coming home AFTER the trip. They all sounded harder than what we just did, even though our trip involved over 5000 m elevation gain entirely on boulders, bushes, choss and snow. Seb’s beta was sufficient enough to get the job done as my plan was to basically copy and paste his itinerary, but over 3 days and with the addition of Evenglow Mtn. I didn’t feel the need to gather more “beta” from the other approaches but those trip reports listed above are legendary and should be read by anyone interested in the peak or the area in general. With a favourable weather window coming up I managed to convince Vlad and Alex R. to come along and this was basically the most ideal team for these kind of adventures – remote but not technical. In terms of the gears I opted to go “ultralight”, wearing trail runners for the entire trip carrying only aluminum ice axe and crampons. The crampons were actually needed so good thing we didn’t leave them behind like Seb and Dean did. I’ll make a list of the gears I used on this trip at the end of this trip report for those interested, as going light and fast was absolutely essential for the success when the stats get this big. There’s no water for the entire 1900-m approach so we unfortunately had to carry 3L of water each. Again, contrary to Seb’s trip (only 1 L) all three of us drank most of the water that we brought on the first day.

To further complicate things Lytton Ferry had been closed for a while due to high water but the local mountaineer Ben Eby provided the important last minute update that it had just started to run again. That saved us at least 2 hours of detouring through Lillooet. Ben also helped to confirm that most, if not all of the fresh snow had melted, so the final trigger was pulled. The three of us left Surrey at 5 AM and made quick work up the Fraser Canyon. The ferry was indeed running, so we got to the “trail-head” by mid-morning. This was excellent as with the entire day ahead we wouldn’t need to rush. Alex had done Stein Mtn. over a decade ago so he knew where exactly to park (in front of a spur road that only lasts for 100 m). We all had Seb’s GPX loaded so with the modern technology we really didn’t need to rely on Alex’s knowledge from the previous trip. Reading Fred Touche’s trip report afterwards I could see how the paradigm had shifted in the past 25 years when it comes to beta gathering and navigation.

As expected there’s no trail on Stein Mtn. whatsoever. The spur road quickly gave way to a path but the path disappeared shortly after in the middle of a gulch feature. We bashed up the climber’s left side and ascended the rib paralleling the gulch. The going was decent for a while but the terrain quickly became some of the worst choss I’ve encountered in SW BC considering it was far below treeline. The feeling felt volcanic but I know it’s not, and to make it worse the entire forest had been burnt so we had ashes and charcoal on top of the choss making the upward progress tediously slow. I nevertheless led the initial 450 m elevation gain in an hour and we took a break afterwards. Vlad then led the next 200 m gain before calling for the next break. This was going to be a brutal grunt that’s nowhere as “easy” as Seb/Dean made it sound like. We also encountered bands of bushwhacking with fair amount of route-finding to avoid the worst of the bushes, even with the help of an existing GPX track. Higher up the pick-up sticks gave way to the 2-ft tall fire weeds and eventually we crested the long and undulating NE Ridge system at 1500 m elevation. The ridge was not much easier with a few steep stretches but I helped us optimizing Seb’s route higher up by bypassing the obvious bump on the left/east side. Alex claimed that they went up and over it back in 2012 as well but I saw no point in doing that. Indeed, my hypothesis worked out excellently with only one annoying side-hilling section on talus. The forested travel eventually gave way to an open and scenic ridge walk as we rambled southwards along the broad ridge. We could see Lytton and Fraser River 2000 vertical meters down and our first objective another 700 m higher up.

There’s a sting in the tail for this approach as we must somehow make our way down towards the lake with roughly 200 vertical meters of loss. That’s where Dean and Seb camped, but again I challenged their “beta” by stating that we could traverse and stay higher and camp 100 m above the lake. I think we found the best optimization between “too much elevation loss/regain” and “too much side-hilling on choss/boulder” on the return but our route going in wasn’t too bad neither. We stayed too high and encountered some massively unstable boulders. I think at one point in history this area was covered in a glacier so the rocks hadn’t stabilized yet. The area circled by Seb indeed had a tarn but there’s no running water. We did find a reasonable spot to pitch two tents but weren’t fully satisfied about this camping location. Alex and I went around to scout things out and confirmed that we wouldn’t having running water until much higher up in the valley, and who knows if we could find a flat spot to camp that’s also not on snow, so we reluctantly accepted this camping location without flowing water. I did bring a filter and that was surely handy in situation like this. It had taken us 6 hours to get here with lots and lots of long breaks, and Vlad stated that we weren’t even that much slower than Dean/Seb’s pace so we could probably on par with their time on the summit day.

The plan was to start hiking by 4:30 am so we got up at 3:30 am to cook breakfast. The night was a bit chillier than forecasted and as a result, the snow had undergone refreeze. I had debated about taking Seb/Dean’s east ridge or Alex/Dean’s SE Face up Stein Mountain and the final decision was made in the morning to go the SE Face, staying on snow for as much as we could. I made my own judgement here that the valley travel on snow should no way be slower than boulder hopping on the ridge. The going up the valley was a cruise but we did eventually need to strap the crampons on. This was my first time testing the theory provided in this video clip, and honestly it worked out fairly well on the uphills. The heel pieces weren’t as locked in as I was hoping for but maybe I hadn’t strapped them on hard enough. In any case the crampons needed no adjustment for the entire way up the SE Face on 35-40 degrees firm snow and that itself was impressive for a pair of ultralight set up. We did eventually merged climber’s right onto rock once the terrain became more “steppy”, as the choss lower down didn’t seem inspiring at all. The scrambling was mostly class 2 with occasional class 3 moves mostly to avoid dropping choss down on each other. This peak was quite loose even by Rockies standard and I wondered if the rest of the way to Siwhe Mtn. would be similar to this. I was hoping for a negative answer. There are several summits on Stein Mountain and the highest is the easternmost, which required a few exposed moves over a subsidiary pinnacle. Alex could have bypassed it but opted to summit Stein Mtn. a second time with Vlad and me. The views were stunning as expected, but I was mostly looking at the rest of the route.