Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

November 8, 2025

399m

Salt Spring Island, BC

Mt. Belcher is rather a pimple on Salt Spring Island but it boasts over 100 m prominence making it a legit independent peak by the international peak-bagging standard. This is also an officially-named peak. However, Mt. Belcher is arguably the least attractive objective on this rather-large island because the “ascent” requires trespassing. I’m not sure if the summit itself is owned by anybody but the most logical way requires one to dash up/across the driveway of several private houses. This is confirmed by the selected few trip reports that I managed to dig out. I nevertheless put it on the itinerary for completion purposes. If the house owners happened to be around during my visit then I would simply turn around and come back another time.

Clair and I saw a brief weather window at the beginning of her reading week break so I booked two nights of stay on Salt Spring Island and reserved the ferry tickets. This was my first time visiting the island mostly because of the inconvenient ferry schedule. It’s almost impossible to slam these peaks as a day-trip return from the mainland even though the hikes are rather short. I personally could pull through an “all-nighter” by taking the midnight connecting ferries but that’s not quite possible with Clair. Instead we had to book the expensive 12-2 pm direct ferry from Tsawwassen. Considering the time change we would have less than 2 hours of daylight on our first day of visit, but it it what it is. I thought it made sense to do Mt. Belcher and Mt. Erskine on the first day. I then sent a message to Maria who’s now based in Victoria because it would be more fun to have more friends joining. To my surprise Maria even managed to connect us to her local friend on the island, but only Maria herself would join us for the first day, and only for Mt. Erskine. The ferry turned out to be late by half an hour, but I still wanted to grab Mt. Belcher so we had to hurry up.

I really didn’t think there would be a way to completely avoid the private properties so I simply drove up the “Mt. Belcher Road” to near the highest end. The absolute end would be too obvious so I parked at a rather large area in front of 2 or 3 of the private driveways. The situation was worse than I thought as I was originally expecting a quick bushwhack through the forest to the highest point, but apparently the entire area is now riddled with houses and driveways. At least there wasn’t anybody around and the “ascent” would be quick. Clair wasn’t too stoked but reluctantly agreed to come along. About halfway up we turned right/north away from the houses, and the final ascent was done on some open slopes. The summit itself offered some nice views to the west but we didn’t linger long up there for obvious reasons.

The descent was uneventful except for me taking a spill not paying attention to the slippery grass. Clair and I then immediately drove away before anybody could notice our unusual and suspicious presence. We then drove away and met Maria near the trail-head for Mt. Erskine. I cannot say I would recommend Mt. Belcher for obvious reasons but I personally found sneaking around to tag this type of peaks quite satisfactory sometimes.