Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 3, 2026

2264m

South Chilcotins, BC

Poison Mtn. is perhaps better known in the 4WD community than among hikers but itself does boast over 300 m prominence and offers some nice views. A rough dirt road goes all the way to the very summit but I think only the ATVs and the jacked up 4WD vehicles could have made it, but a standard Jeep could probably at least do the China Head traverse from Mud Lakes to Big Bar Ferry and that road goes fairly close to the summit of this peak. I underestimated the driving difficulties or I probably should say that I never actually did my homework. I assumed that based on the hype of this area on the internet the roads would be suitable for the Subaru Forester. It was definitely not the case.

In any case Poison Mtn. was never the primary objective as I wouldn’t drive all the way there just to do this peak. Adam, Frances and I were aiming at Red Mtn. which is in close proximity but more prominent. We firstly tried the Mud Lakes connector but turned around not too far in. There’s at least 10 km stretch in the middle that required at least a Jeep Wrangler and we didn’t have that. We then did a 8-hour detour through Gold Bridge, Lillooet, Clinton and Gang Ranch that involved 168 km driving off the pavement (one way) and that positioned us right at the base of Red Mountain. The hike itself only took 3.5 hours so we wanted to add Poison Mtn. to make full use of the day, and to justify that much of abusing to the vehicle. Unfortunately the road that goes towards China Head Mtn. had one massive obstacle that was nowhere “doable” in a Subaru, but we did drive a couple kilometers further on the lower spur that parallels the standard 4WD route. We eventually were stopped by fallen logs as we didn’t even bring a chainsaw. This position was unfortunately too far away for Adam and Frances so I did this peak solo.

I spent a few minutes to evaluate my options and the decision was made to follow this new logging spur for at least the next few kilometers. The spur extended far beyond what’s shown on the maps and actually went towards the NE slopes of Buck Mtn. I eventually made the decision to bushwhack up towards Buck/Poison saddle, which involved fair amount of level-3 thrashing in pick-up sticks. I had to climb up and over a lot of them and that significantly slowed me down. Thankfully I was able to jog most of the logging roads so the overall average pace of the entire outing was still over 5 km/h. I had to lose a bit of elevation to get to the roads on the other side of the saddle and then followed that road briefly. I thought about to simply follow the roads to the top but that route was too contrived for my like. Instead, I went into the bushes again and the thrashing was again, more difficult than I thought. The bushwhacking was nevertheless tolerable so I made quick work up the NW flanks towards the sub-peak. I traversed around the sub-peak on some snow slopes and then took a straight beeline towards the south summit of Poison Mtn. It was unclear which of the two peaks were higher so I tagged both just to be sure.

On the descent I followed the standard road down the north ridge of the north peak until it made sense to do a short-cut through the bushes. I always prefer to make my GPX track as “straight” as possible but the bushwhacking punished me again. There was fair amount of level-3 thrashing in the tight timbers but at least I was now going downhill. Once joining the main road I came across two bikers clearly carrying multi-day equipment. They were most likely very experienced but I didn’t bother to socialize as I was sure they wouldn’t know who I was and I wouldn’t know anything about them neither. I then jogged and power-walked the rocky and narrow road to roughly 1 km from where we parked, and then bushwhacked down to the lower road. The thrashing in this area was surprisingly quite open so I probably should have taken this route both ways. I could have also added Buck Mtn. which is both officially named and P100m but I didn’t want Adam and Frances to wait for too long. My round trip time was exactly 2 hours and overall I should say the outing exceeded my expectation, both from the views and from the challenge perspective. The next 8 hours were spent driving home and I eventually got back to Surrey by 9:30 pm.