Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

December 22, 2017

1425m

North Shore Mountains, BC

Over the past decade a group of local hikers and mountaineers had been working on assigning the “second peak of Mt. Seymour”, or the “2nd Pump” an official name in honour of Tim Jones, a long time member of North Shore Rescue. The status was finally approved by the government in 2016 so now all three summits of Mt. Seymour have separate (official) names. To me this means they are three different peaks despite the lack of prominence of the former two. I’ve hiked to the top of 1st summit (Pump Peak) in the summer of 2009 as a high school student, and I’ve attained the 3rd (true) summit of Mt. Seymour in February of 2016 as a winter climb. Now with the second peak gaining its official status I just had to come back, and “claim” it as well – as typical a peak-bagger’s mindset as it is.

An ascent of Tim Jones Peak is a no-brainer at any time of a year and for the sake of this reason I was nowhere particularly keen on this outing. The decision was a completely spontaneous last-minute call as I virtually didn’t make up my mind until 1 pm of the day. In fact I wasn’t planning to get out at all but then a clearing trend towards north and west made me change my mind. I spent about half an hour packing up and then off I went. The traffic in the city wasn’t terrible but not smooth neither that I didn’t start the hike until almost 3 pm. That’s not a bad timing actually as I would just watch sunset from the summit. Seems like perfect plan.

After the parking lot gong show I joined the hordes marching up the packed Seymour main trail. The snowshoes stayed strapped on my backpack as they were absolutely not required on this day.. By the time I reached Brockton Point I didn’t feel like having done enough warm-up yet. The south face of Pump Peak was heavily tracked out by skiers with a fat boot-packing trail in the middle. I had never done this “winter direct” variation and I have to say this line looked uber sexy comparing to the boring trail option so why not. The hike to the base of Pump Peak’s south slopes required a bit of post-holing on undulating terrain but still, the snowshoes weren’t required.

Once starting up the face the grade was actually not as steep as appeared from afar. It’s mostly a 35-40 degree ish staircase walk following the heavy boot steps. The snowpack stability wasn’t a concern on this particular aspect and in no time I topped out. The hike to the actual summit of Pump Peak required a bit of extra work (unexpected) and post-holing but the views were really good now under the evening lighting.

Not doing much lingering I soon turned my attention to the next peak aka. Tim Jones Peak, but first of all I had to lose about 50 meters of elevation down to the saddle. The snowshoes were still not required. The heavy foot traffic continued on upwards towards Tim Jones Peak and my job was as simple as following the beaten peak to the summit. I got there about a couple minutes after sunset with the evening horizons towards all directions.

It was cold and windy so after taking the mandatory pictures I decided to slowly retreat. I didn’t bother to take picture on the descent anymore as my camera does not work in low light and I simply did not have the patience to play with the tripod and settings in this cold temperature. There’s also no point in down-climbing my ascent route so down the hiker’s trail I went. The trail was slippery as expected but didn’t impose too much of an issue with my Nepal Evos and the microspikes stayed in my backpack as well. The rest of the hike back to the parking lot was a pretty short and fluent process but had lots of up-and-downs in the micro-terrain. The drive home was without event.