Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 7, 2020

998m

Kamloops, BC

Ironmask Hill is rather just a pimple in the vicinity of Kamloops but is rather famous for its mountain biking trails, at least among the locals. The name is official but from peak-bagging perspective an ascent of Ironmask Hill falls into the exact category of “dumpster diving”… I tagged this summit simply because I happened to be around Kamloops with extra time to kill. I was driving back home from a successful ascent of Mt. Warren and I wanted to at least bag something to justify this long drive. A quick scan on the Gaia map saw me locking the objective on this mighty Ironmask Hill. I let the Google Map app to direct me to one of the trail-heads on the west side of the hill.

I wasn’t expecting to see many people on this hike but apparently it’s a popular biking playground for the locals. I talked to at least two or three bikers and all of them were from Kamloops. The hike was also longer than expected. I opted to not carry anything and I almost regretted that decision. The hike was long enough that bringing at least a water bottle would be a better idea. I didn’t do much research so just followed the trails on the Gaia app. The trails were actually quite accurate. I made a few short-cuts to save extra distance of hiking. The summit was lame as expected but did offer at least a bit of views.

Since I didn’t bring any food nor water I had to run down the mountain. The descent took very little time. I drank lots of water at the parking lot and drove directly to a nearly Chinese restaurant for a well-deserved dinner before resuming the long drive back to Vancouver, in pouring rain…