Not another Mystery Peak TR Aug 21,2016
 

Lots of options this weekend, lots of people doing certain peaks on differing days so in the end me and Burndug ( Doug ) were planning on something up near Gold Bridge, but in the middle of all this sunshine the weather forecast for Sunday was showing 30% chance of showers. So knowing that Masiar and WTF had just been up this way meant the road was still fine, so that settled it, I picked Mystery since Doug was fine with whatever. There is a hole where the bridge meets the road, and is very deep! The stick wasn't there when we drove up, but it was on the way out. The map might help make the TR make alittle more sense.
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The plan was to car camp at the trailhead, when we arrived there were 3 other cars in the area, so we just drove to the very end of the road and set up shop. Doug had his tent, while I just slept in my sleeping bag in the back of the truck. The bugs were around, but the fire was great and kept them away, the moon was bright, the beers were cold and when we awoke it was still clear.
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I read Maria's TR and how she wasn't too fond of the start through the forest upto the pass, I suppose if you're off the trail it would be pretty crappy, but having done Beaujoulais last year I knew there was an actual trail, and it starts in the little drainage ditch with the metal pipe, you then cross a giant white log and aim straight for the pass on a fairly well traveled footpath with no shwacking involved.
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The bugs were pretty bad from the get go, Doug set a very quick pace that's I've never seen him do before just to keep them away, it had me sweating in no time. He said I looked like pig pen with a cloud of bugs around me. We hit the pass and hung a left and made our way upto the shoulder where the big views finally opened up. The sky was looking alittle iffy but nothing too threatening. With Beaujolais and Mystery just peaking out from behind the main ridge.
From the meadows we could have contoured around to get where we were going, more distance but easier. But eventually saying screw it let's just straight shot across won out. So we dropped straight down into the valley and then straight back the other side.
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Once we made our way up out of the valley floor and over the creek, the terrain was rather pleasant. Eventually we arrived into the Mystery Peak valley and finally got a look at our peak and the ominous sky around it. A steady wind, with some pretty good gusts were now common.
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The whole theme of this trip is basically side hilling, so we started our next bit of side hilling towards the lake, once we arrived we noticed someone off in the distance packing up, we gave them a wave and carried on.
Finally no more side hilling, it was now just boulder hopping upto the face, we just kept hopping along and decided to take a gully alittle more left of the one mentioned in the scrambles book.
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Finally on some more solid rock we got to play around on very short pitch to gain the ridge, from here it was great rock and big views all the way to the top.
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We got to the summit 4hrs after we started, had some grub, took some photos and then looked out towards the West, Doug joked about how it looked like Lord of the Rings and how something was brewing. We packed up rather quickly and started our way down.
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Here is the quick video clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvR...ature=youtu.be
Sure enough with the speed of the winds we were dealing with on the day, the system that we saw far far away was coming straight for us, luckily we were just at the spot where you drop off the ridge into the basin, with abit of good luck there was literally an overhanging crack and an little rock cave. I buried myself into the cave while Doug took the crack, waiting for it to arrive.
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When it arrived it was huge gusts, bitter cold winds, sideways rain, and hail. 30 minutes later we were still dry and it looked like we had some clear sailing for awhile. so we started down with sunshine and blue sky.
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Rather than take the same way back we went via the other side of the lake and stayed high and started our side hill traverse, we picked a spot on Beaujolais's ridge and went up and over it to avoid having to do what we did earlier in the day. The contour of staying high and out of the forested valley made more sense.
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Making our way back up the other side through some nice meadows that were soaking wet, we had to put up with hard hitting hail at one point that was rough on the face when it made contact.
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We followed the trail straight back to the truck, feeling the effects of the side hilling all day, quickly threw the sandals on, opened the salt and vinegar chips, drank some beers and drove home back over the miserable Hurley FSR which is full of washboard now. The traffic in Squamish was BRUTAL. It took 30 min to get from the Chief to Murrin Park at 9pm at night. No accident, just heavy volume where it merges into 1 lane which Doug said happened last weekend as well.
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Great trip report with some excellent mountain photography. Nice and neat the way you bypassed the storm. I'll be making my first trip in that area in a few weeks - hopefully when the bugs die down. They were pretty horrible at Valentine lake this weekend.

Nice trip and thanks for the details about that footpath from the road.

Awesome report, thank you!

I cannot remember a Sunday when this did not happen this summer. And it usually starts around 4PM :(

Amazing pictures!

Nice :-)

The flowers in the area were in prime shape, it was beautiful!

I put the log in there when I drove out. I got out to check the bridge supports on the way in and there was no hint of a hole so it definitely opened up sometime on the week-end.

Try dropping your tire pressure when you go over the Hurley. Aqua Terra turned me onto this years ago, I drop to 17 psi and it mellows that road right out. You significantly improved traction on rough terrain as well.

Which vehicle was yours and where abouts where you wandering around? , and yeah I don't recall driving over a hole like that on the way in, so you're right it musta opened up on the Sunday.

Bugs aside it was a sweet trip.......Thanks for driving up the wonderful Hurley Young Krumm.

You get a new camera? Sweet pix!

that looks like a splendid beer swilling area for sure! would have been nice to have camped out somewhere, and forget the drive back, kinda ruins such a great trip

Nope still the Samsung S4 that's all cracked on the front and has a rubber band wrapped around it to hold the battery in place. Photogenic area with good lighting on the day must have helped.

Only yesterday I finally got all that pin-striping polished off my truck from our trip up that FSR last September when we climbed Beaujolais. Since then I've been looking forward to going back there to climb Mystery. Looks like it was worth the drive - thanks for reporting.


I'd like to camp at that little lake below the peak and spend a few days bagging all the peaks in the vicinity.