BC is peculiar in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that there are quite a lot of situations where there are two things with very similar names in wildly different places. Think of the Lillooet River and the town of Lillooet, nowhere near that river, for instance.

Another one of these pairings are Dewdney Peak (Mission/Hatzic), and Mount Dewdney (edge of Manning Park). This trip report is about the latter one. The most popular route to this summit starts from the Whatcom Trail at the Snass Creek parking lot, then blazes a very steep route up a scree-covered, bushy hillside to the col between Dewdney and Mt. Ford (another double name by the way, not the Ford Mountain in the Chilliwack Valley) and on to the summit from there - an unaesthetic grunt that seems to mostly get done in the springtime when you can use snow.

But, the Sowaqua Creek Road runs back to the north and west sides of Dewdney, and the west ridge of Dewdney from Ghost Pass is mostly meadows with only a little bit of steep forest. So that seems like a much more enjoyable way to summit.


Dewdney from Outram NE ridge last year

Doug and I made plans to go out in the mountains one day when I got back from working up north. I caught some sort of plague in camp, so I got home at midnight on Friday 21st and spent Saturday blowing Rorschach blobs in various colours of yellow and green into a collection of hankies. Sunday was mountain day, but on Saturday afternoon the Washington smoke blew in, and it was still around Sunday morning. Looked like we'd be tucked in a smokescreen with no views to speak of.

We drove up to near Ghostpass Lake, got out of the X-Trail and hiked up a few meters through the clearcut, then steeply up through a spindly forest to the summit ridge. We followed this along, past a couple of interesting chasms in the ground and a number of very vivid mushrooms, to break out into the subalpine at the Kingdom of the Marmots. Views were very gray in all directions.


Doug stares down a local warlord.


Gray summit in silhouette ahead. Follow right skyline.


Sidehilling on the south side of the ridge through steep open meadows. No need for crampons here.

After a couple hours of this we reached a col where a subsidiary ridge drops away to the south. We had a tenuous view here to the east, and could just barely see the silhouettes of Snass and Snazzy through the smog.


Doug indicates an important feature of the local topography.

There was one more bump to swing around via goat trails on the south side of a rocky knob, then it was the final climb up to the summit. We were walking along here, near the edge of the talus field that drops away to the NW, totally minding our own business, when suddenly we heard a strange whistling noise in the sky. I just had time to pull out my camera when WHAM! a meteorite, easily a meter or so in diameter, came ripping down out of the sky at a sharp angle, hit the scree slope about 40 m below us, made a big crater, bounced, and then rolled down over a cliff and out of sight. I reflexively pulled the trigger on my camera just as it hit and was rewarded with this photo. I've sent it to NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, we'll see what they have to say about the matter.



Feeling kinda shaken up, and glad we weren't hit by a falling space rock, we pressed on to the summit, which was occupied by a flock of ptarmigans.


Peep peep.

We found the logbook in the summit cairn, which was soaking wet even in its plastic bag inside a plastic tube, I think because someone had put the tube in the cairn with the screw-off end pointing straight up, so snowmelt could soak in through the rubber seal. Out of a dozen or so entries, about 10 came up from the east, and only two from the west.

We waited a while, but no more meteors fell, so we decided to bid the birds goodbye and head back down. The smoke cleared out very slowly so we could actually see the silhouettes of Tulameen and Hatfield through the murk, but nothing further away than that. I bet on a smoke-free day this summit has pretty impressive views.



Heading back down.

The descent was uneventful, we retraced our route with no real issues, except some minor sore feet from all the sidehilling in light approach runners. It was a pretty good day to be up there, despite the smoke - no mosquitoes, and only a few horseflies posed a minor nuisance.


Sidehilling through the meadows


Twin princelings.

The total time round trip, including ducking meteors and an hour or so of lounging on the summit, was about 7 hours car to car at a leisurely pace. This was a good one, and I'd happily do it again on a clearer day. Make sure you take care to avoid active logging trucks on the lower Sowaqua Road - Aspen Planers has an active block north of Dewdney and we heard the brakes of one loaded truck during the day. Later on in the season this area is pretty popular with hunters too - don't get shot if you decide to hike wearing a deer costume or something.

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Holy crow! My first instinct was to accuse Dugger of trundling something to create a big crater, but that smoke don't lie!
I think I should head up there cause I like marmots

Excellent day for sure Bro! good investigative work on finding the correct logging spur for our outing.

If that had not been such a steep shitty scree slope I would have went down and grabbed a chunk of that meteorite......

Do trundlers troll or do trolls trundle?

DUDE! A most excellent adventure .

that is quite something to happen!

Wow , epic trip and report. The chances of a near miss by a sizeable meteorite are incredibly .........tiny. imagine the odds ?

This Mt. Dewdney has been on my list a long time... Thanks for the alternative and easier way to get up there.

K

what happened with Nasa and the CSA ? I can't believe you passed over this so easily . You have a very valuable experience there, a large meteorite , witnesses , a story , a very rare story. these things make that meteor quite valuable . Jeez go down there set up a grid, and find the bloody thing, easy to spot if you are standing over it. Or throw some Day -glo rocks over there to see where things land. Can't believe everyone so blaze [ blah zeh ] wake up !

OR; if thats the item in question in the air in the photo, its looks local , roadworks blasting.

We blast all the time at the mine at work at and this definitely looks like fly rock from a near by blast. But who knows it might also be a meteorite! Most of been quite the experience though!!

no, if the rock you can see in the air is 'the one' its too light in color, meteorites are dark , being iron rich and roasted. Remarkable photo though, if it was a meteorite it would be historic.

An interesting trip report to be sure. Whatever you saw hitting the talus slope, it was most certainly not a meteor. Meteors travel far faster than the speed of sound therefore you would have no audible warning of its approach. In addition, an object 1 meter in size travelling that fast would contain an enormous amount of potential energy - an impact that close to you and your friend would have probably killed you both. In addition there would be a detectable seismic event that would be easy to confirm.

Good luck out there and please stay clear of falling objects, whatever they happen to be.

noman , i've watched a lot of ' meteorite men' so i'm qualified LOL , but my impression is that small ones can land without too much drama. The real question here is , is the mid air stone we can see in the photo the projectile in question ? Dru ?

also '' this '' calculates no great effect

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/c...s=1&tdens=2750

hmmm. good question. the astrophysicists and planetary geologist I consulted didn't know what to think although one suggested that aerobraking on a meteorite that enters the atmosphere at a sharp angle can slow it significantly.

I would have thought it would be glowing hot though.

At this point I really don't know what it was. No blasting nearby and too smoky to see anything of the sky that day.

Dru , this situation is worth considerable $ , you need an american collector and an export permit , and a meteorite of course which would be not hard to find under the cicumstances , unless that grey mid air rock is it. not to mention [as i have] a historic photo]