“Cesura Peak”

February 28, 2026

1450m

Vancouver Island, BC

“Cesura Peak” is the unofficial name of one of the many P600m objectives in the northern ranges of Vancouver Island. This one is overshadowed by the bigger neighbours such as Mt. Ashwood and “Naka Peak” but even those bigger neighbours are obscured. There had been no information online about this peak whatsoever. Matt J. had made an attempt last weekend via the south slopes but turned around 300 vertical meters from the summit due to heinous trail breaking on increasingly steep terrain. Matt planned to come back a week later and managed to put together a team for the final 300 m of trail breaking fair. I decided to join as the weather looked promising. The condition was rather mediocre that this was basically the biggest objective we could safely attempt over this weekend anyway.

Mel, Miranda and I all gathered at Matt’s house at 5:10 am and the four of us (plug Twig) all had to pile into Matt’s Jeep. Needless to say the cargo space was very limited. I had to pack as if I would be doing some air travel so the mountaineering boots etc. all went into my backpack. I did bring two pairs of snowshoes as I really had no clue about the current conditions. If there’s significantly more amount of snow than expected then my 30′ snowshoes would be needed for the team’s success. Otherwise I would be wearing the more comfortable 25′ Lightning Ascents. The crossing to Nanaimo was uneventful and then there came the long but familiar drive northwards past Campbell River to the land-of-no-cell-signal. We made quite a few stops for gas and food such that we didn’t turn off the highway until 10:30 am. The driving on FSRs was not difficult but quite long, and the final few kilometers were rough/snowy enough that a 4×4, HC vehicle was required. We did manage to park in front of the downed tree that stopped Matt’s vehicular progress a week prior, and didn’t start hiking until 11 am. Given that we must catch the last ferry back home our time contingency for the round trip was no more than 6 hours.

At the very last minute I decided to just wear the 25′ snowshoes which wasn’t the wrong decision in retrospect. The trail-breaking turned out to be harder than expected as the new snow was wet and mushy, but the amount of fresh snow was only 30-40 cm at the maximum. The first stretch was a boring slog to the end of the FSR. Matt insisted on us strapping the snowshoes on from the Jeep, which was not needed but did save a transition 10 minutes into the trip. The road walking was longer than I thought and due to the fog layer we didn’t get to see much in this stage. Matt’s tracks were still very visible so we mostly stayed on his tracks. Any attempt to walk beside the track would result in post-holing through breakable crust. We briefly attempted to follow Matt’s short-cut through the lower cut-block but didn’t like the mushy conditions. The alternative was the kilometer-long plodding to the road’s end which still involved fair amount of post-holing (since Matt didn’t take this way in the previous weekend). Our gang went somehow from Mel, Miranda, myself and finally Matt, and each of us was post-holing on top of the previous persons’ tracks, which I thought was hilarious. We somehow managed to perfectly line ourselves up by weight and sizes.