Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 13, 2020

1871m

Osoyoos, BC

Mt. Kobau is a prominent “sky island” near the semi-arid town of Osoyoos in the southern Okanagan Valley. A gravel service road runs pretty much all the way to the summit from Highway 3 and to reach the summit was a simple 10-min walk on a trail. The summit does offer some unobstructed views of the surrounding areas. This peak had been on my mind for a while because it’s in an area that I hadn’t really explored yet, and is mostly just a drive-up. The most logical way of tagging it is as a side trip while driving towards West Kootenays via Highway 3, but it didn’t happen that way for me. After completing a summit bivy on Blackwall Peak I was eager to do one more summit but this was in the middle of a busy summer alpine season and I didn’t want to tire myself out. I was looking for some dumpster-diving near Princeton but decided to drive an extra hour further and tag Mt. Kobau to see some different views.

The drive from Manning Park to near Osoyoos was not very boring because of the semi desert views. I followed the GPS turning onto the gravel road heading for Mt. Kobau. I was expecting a smooth road but it turned out there were still plenty of washboards slowing me down, but overall the road condition was still “excellent” by SW BC standard. I took my time cooking some ramen for lunch at the upper parking lot before heading for the summit. As mentioned above, attaining this summit was just a 10-min walk on a trail but the view-to-effort ratio was high. I spent almost an hour on the summit to soak in the views and to chill.

Eventually it’s the time to head down. I didn’t bother to check out other viewpoints on this plateau and drove straight down hoping to tag Richter Mountain. I turned around after walking for about 200 m into the gated road because of shit ton of cows on the road. I started by ignoring the cows but soon realized that’s a stupid idea. One cow almost went to charge me so that’s it.

I hiked back to the truck and drove down to the valley. I made one stop in Keremeos for some Okanagan fruits but they looked dirty so I grabbed some ice cream. I bought a 4-dollar worth of ice cream but the size of the chuck chocked me. It’s almost a full meal of ice cream… I ended up not eating dinner until way past dinner time as I simply didn’t feel hungry at all. The rest of the drive back home was long and exhausting but I did manage to get back before midnight, and that concluded this mini 24-hour road trip. Little did I know that within 24 hours I would be gone for another long drive and this time, northwards into Gold Bridge area of the Chilcotins…