A smaller number of participants for a fairly spectacular hike(the Carnarvon Lake part anyway). The weather at the start looked promising and it remained quite nice all day except for a very strong wind above treeline.

We were off @ 8:45am for this longish hike. The first order of business was to get across the Highwood River which was easily accomplished since everyone had water gear. We managed to do a side tour up McPhail Creek for about 10 minutes until we determined this was not taking us in the right direction. Back we went and crossed the said creek and proceeded on. We missed the turnoff for the Carnarvon Lake trail and proceeded down to the outfitters camp. Knowing that we had gone too far we retraced our steps to the first logging road heading west. This turned out to not be the trail we wanted but did bring us back to the main Carnavon Lake trail. We continued up to the headwall.

Carnarvon headwall

Janet on Carnarvon Headwall chains

Carnarvon Headwall chains

The chains made the ascent fairly easy and we retired to the west end of the lake for lunch. It should be noted that the wind was howling through this gap, so Rita who had planned to do a lake swim (she even carried up her bathing suit and water walkers) was thwarted. Just too cold with the wind!


Carnarvon Lake

After lunch it was off to do the summit. We climbed up to the col behind the lake and walked over to the obvious drainage on the west slope. The climb was mainly a scree bash up to the summit on the south side of this drainage. All four of us were on top by 2:45pm.

Summit of Mt.Strachan: John, Bob, Janet

The trip back down to the lake was uneventful. Most of us had fun doing chain repels down the headwall. The walk out was a little more direct with no sidetrips. The crossing of the Highwood River on the way back felt so good for tired feet. We were back to the cars shortly after seven and stopped briefly in Longview for drinks before heading back to town.

Thanks to John, Rita and Janet for good company to a lake with interesting access and a great day in the mountains from Bob, coordinator and scribe. Only the coordinator had previously done this trip so hopefully the other participants were suitably impressed with the setting of this lake. For wildlife we saw a coyote and a rather irritated and aggressive ruffle grouse??(we passed fairly close to her chicks while on the rough logging road).

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