Mount Erskine

November 8, 2025

448m

Salt Spring Island, BC

Mt. Erskine in the immediate vicinity of Ganges is one of the more popular hiking objectives on Salt Spring Island. The summit offers expansive views on a clear day. A rare but brief weather window lined up nicely with Clair’s reading week break so I booked two nights of stay on Salt Spring Island for us. The primary objective of this trip was relaxing but I also decided secretly to tag some peaks. It wouldn’t be possible to bag all of the P100m objectives on this rather-large island but at least I could try. Clair decided to join me on some of those. I also messaged Maria who’s now based in Victoria on Vancouver Island since the ferry connections from Victoria are rather cheap and frequent. Not to my surprise Maria was able to join on the first day.

Unfortunately the ferry schedule wasn’t in our favour coming from the mainland so Clair and I only had about 2 hours of daylight to work with on Saturday. The first objective we picked was Mt. Belcher as it’s almost a drive-up. Maria wasn’t too keen on joining on that one so she waited for us at Mt. Erskine’s trail-head, together with her local friend Stephanie and visiting friend Jessie. The original plan was for everyone to hike Mt. Erskine together but it was obvious that we would be descending in the dark. Stephanie and Jessie decided to head home first to give a head start on dinner preparation whereas Maria would come with us on the hike. Stephanie had invited all of us to have dinner together so this was shaping up to be an eventful evening, but peak-bagging came first.

Mt. Erskine via the long and undulating SE Ridge. GPX DL

I authorized Maria to do the route planning as there are several trails to choose from by simply looking at the Gaia map. Maria had picked the longer but more gentle SE Ridge route. This was fine as Clair was due for exercise anyway. It was apparent that most hikers do not come up from this side as the trail was not very well travelled and crossed path with several (private) logging roads. There were also fair amount of undulating terrain on the ridge and the horizontal distance was quite uninspiring in the fading light. Fortunately this was still overall a quick ascent so we made the summit before sunset. The views were as expected, excellent so we took our time soaking in the experience. Mt. Erskine turned out to be the “biggest hike” we did on Salt Spring Island in this trip.

Maria leading the way since she was the one picking this route

At times we were plodding on deactivated FSRs

There was a ongoing fire in the vicinity..

Clair taking over the lead for a brief while

Traversing the undulating ridge to search for the true summit

Maria arriving at the summit of Mt. Erskine

Clair and Maria on the summit of Mt. Erskine

The gorgeous sunset behind the hills on southern Vancouver Island

The industrial area of Duncan with Mt. Prevost behind

The straight that separates Salt Spring Island with Vancouver Island

Clair and I on the summit. We weren’t disappointed about the views

There’s some confusion as to where exactly the true summit is, so we tagged a forested high point slightly away from the main trail. The Peakbagger App has the dot marked on that spot so we wanted to be 100% sure. I however do not think it’s higher than the official summit with the expansive views. We then rushed back across the undulating ridge but eventually had to turn on the head-lamps for the steep descent back to the trail-head. I then drove us to Stephanie’s house near Duck Bay for the evening party.