Zorah Peak

July 20, 2019

2282m

Pemberton / Upper Lillooet FSR, BC

“Zorah Peak” is an unofficially named summit south of Mt. Sampson in Pemberton Valley. This is not an attractive summit from any mean but does boast more than 100 m topographical prominence as well as a fairly impressive profile viewing from north-west. There’s no reason to just do Zorah Peak and in fact, it makes perfect sense to grab this summit while approaching Mt. Sampson from the south side. That’s the plan among Alex, Paul and myself so all of the approach and planning is written in Mt. Sampson’s trip report.

From the south shoulder we had two options. Option 1 was to traverse up and over Zorah Peak to shorten the overall distance but the downside was to carry heavy load over the summit. The north side of the peak didn’t look too bad but certainly was not “walking” neither so we had to do our own exploration. The option 2 was to drop the pack and tag the summit up and down via SE Ridge but such would add considerable amount of distance. I voted for the carry-over and that’s what we would do. I feel better to claim this summit by doing a traverse.

Sampson Group peak-bagging. GPX DL

The ascent to the summit via SE Ridge was just a walk with nothing worth noting, but as soon as we started dropping down the NE Ridge we encountered steps here and there. One particular notch required a few 4th class moves to get down into. More 3rd class scrambling with careful route-finding was needed lower down on NE Ridge to get back onto easier ground, and carry on towards Trapeze Peak and Mt. Sampson.