Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

April 27, 2025

782m

Maple Ridge, BC

This unnamed peak boasts over 200 m prominence and is the northernmost summit in UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. It was not labelled on any map nor registered in the peakbagger.com database. I noticed it only because Xinran was doing her field trip and I was legally allowed to drive in past the gate to visit my girlfriend. But since I’m a peakbagger by heart I thought I had to take full advantage of that. A few days ago Xinran and I bushwhacked up “Loon Lake Hill” which is another P100m objective to the immediate west of her expensive dorm building. I went back to the maps after getting back home and dug out this objective and subsequently entered it as “Peak 782” as there wasn’t a nickname that made obvious sense. I would have another oppourtunity to drive in past the gate on the last day of the course (to pick her up) and I proposed this “hike”. Xinran initially wasn’t too keen on another unknown bushwhacking adventure, but reluctantly agreed at the very end. The field trip had been very laborious and being put in a 9-person dorm meant she could not get much sleep over the past days. But then this would be my last chance of doing this peak in the stealth fashion and it made sense for her to do a bit of pushing to support my peakbagging career.

This was a Sunday and I was supposed to finish work at around 4 pm. The itinerary of the field trip stated that the presentations would be done by 5:30 pm but Xinran actually got everything done before I even finished my work. I quickly rushed to Maple Ridge from White Rock afterwards and thankfully the gate’s key still worked (thankfully). I managed to pick her up at 6:30 pm and we quickly drove north along the FSRs. The condition of the main FSR was excellent but then I decided to drive up the spur road north of Katherine Lake. This spur road was not in a great shape by comparison and was definitely pushing the limit for my stock Subaru Forester. The objective was however, to spend as little time on this “trip” as possible as we also made plan to have a fancy Japanese barbeque dinner in Richmond afterwards. I didn’t know how far up that we could get, but we ended up driving all the way to basically the very end of the road, within 50 vertical meters from the summit.

Looking at the satellite images I knew the “ascent” could not be a “walk in the park” even from this position as we had to thrash through some ugly secondary growth. We knew what exactly to expect from the adventure on “Loon Lake Hill” a couple days ago and we were definitely correct. The bushwhacking was horrendous to say the least and was a sustained Level 3/4 throughout. The only aspect that I was somewhat happy about was the lack of thorny plants. I kept the bearing directly aiming at the summit to (hopefully) minimize the time spent in the ugly forest, and eventually we ascended onto the south ridge with some older growth. The summit was then quickly attained. There was already a cairn up there so despite the complete lack of information online this was not a first ascent.

Not doing any unnecessary lingering we retraced our route back to the vehicle and quickly drove away. I made sure to check GPS frequently to stay “on route” because it’s simply smarter to deal with the knowns at this point. On the drive out we stopped at Gwendoline Lake to check out the water and this turned out to be the exact spot that Holly, Matt and I visited on our “Gwendoline Peak” trip a few years ago. There was again, nobody around but we weren’t fan of swimming so didn’t bother to do that. We then drove out, past the gate and straight to Richmond. Xinran fell asleep almost immediately but I managed to stay awake. The BBQ restaurant turned out to be extremely busy and required at least an hour of waiting. I thought that meant the food would be really good so we got our number and went to check out the beach. The timing was perfect for the sunset and in retrospect we should have stayed for at least another half an hour as the restaurant’s waiting turned out to be much longer than an hour. The waiting was worthy though.