Vista Peak Scramble on 29-Sep-2025

Participants: Sim, Carl, Jack, Jane and John

Having enjoyed the views last year during larch season, I was keen to repeat the experience, but (as I think Francisco's group found) following the usual track and starting point resulted in a lot of somewhat crazy bushwacking. Luckily, Sim (route finder extraordinaire) told me of another route, which started farther west and linked with the Storm Mountain trail with very minimal bushwacking. Naturally, she was correct and although the Storm Mountain trail had many, many logs to go over, under and around, we were still on a trail (it's a great core stability and balance workout!). Eventually we left the trail and were briefly joined by a couple curious sheep. By then things began to open up and we easily gained the ridge and continued the trek on giant rocks, many slanted perfectly like a sidewalk to the sky. Note that this was not the case between the first and second summit, where it was more like a giant pile of giant rocks but still kind of fun to balance and walk on, if you like that sort of thing ;)

The views were sadly not as nice as they could have been because of smoke haze, but still not a bad place to enjoy a long ridge, 360 views and a pleasant lunch above larches and lakes.

Stats (thanks to Jack): 9.9 km, 1180 m, 7 hours.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to routefinding, and sharing photos!

Pam