Skihist,Antimony and Claimpost Mountains-August 23-25 2014
I had my eyes on Skihist for a long time and was always looking into getting into that area and we decided with Ben and Marius to give it a try and spend 3 days in that area.
We left Vancouver pretty early since it's a fairly long drive and after picking up everybody we started our way to Boston Bar from where we started our long drive to Kwoiek Creek Road.
The road wasn't too bad, mostly 2WD and even the start of Kwoiek Creek Road was in great shape and stayed good all the way to Kwoiek Lake from where the road get's worse with few deep waterbars and then started to get pretty bushy.
At some point beside the noise of the branches scratching my car and we bounced over a hidden log with both passenger tires, I tough that that's it and I got both tires flat, got out of the car and they were fine, no damage to the car and tried to clear the bushes around the log so we could see it at least on our way back.
Soon we reached the end of the road just before John George Lake where there was a pretty decent parking spot.
None of use were super excited about crossing the creek but soon we got our pack on our backs and one by one crossed the fairly deep and cold creek.
After drying our feet we started swimming in those alders on the road, the bushwacking wasn't too bad just in few spots it was pretty thick and slow moving.
Later on we got another surprise once we got just before Kha Lake we saw that the bridge is missing here too and this time it wasn't an option to just cross it where the bridge seemed pretty deep and was flowing pretty fast, so we decided to go near the lake and hope to find a spot where to cross higher up.
Once we got at Kha Lake we saw that there wasn't too many options to cross the creek and the only way was just to go along the outflow of the lake walking on some logs at the outflow, wasn't a pretty great crossing but we managed to get across the lake on the other side and soon we got back on the road.
The road didn't helped us for too much since minutes after we joined it we had to leave it and get into an old clearcut and we started our way up staying on the climbers left side of Antimony Creek.
After some steep terrain, some bad bushes and some steep traverses we finally reached Antimony Lake where we had our well deserved rest.
Near the lake we found an area full with sweet blueberries where we decided to make our stop and enjoy some of those blueberries.
Soon we started our way by crossing the outflow of the lake and staying on the right side of the lake from where we started our way up towards Antimony-Claimpost Col.
We followed our way to a small glacier below the col from where we followed some slabby ledges that led us to the col where we decided to set our camp.
After our dinners we went to bed since we had to wake up early for the next day.
The next day we woke up at 5 AM and we left our sleeping bags towards Antimony Peak to get there before sunrise and get some of those beautiful sunrise views.
I was just speechless once we got on the summit, the view towards Kwoie area was just incredible and I couldn't stop looking at that mighty looking glacier and couldn't stop taking photos over and over again of that area, and of course on the other side we had the beautiful view of Skihist.
Soon we left the summit and went back down to our camp to have our breakfasts and started our way towards Skihist.
The terrain was pretty loose to get down from the col and we had to go one by one in some areas.
Soon we reached the bottom of the bowl and started our way towards the summit.
For most of the way it was a pleasant hike until we reached the boulderfiled which looked pretty good from the col but those boulders were pretty huge and some of them were moving, in some spots we had to go down where we could hear the water running and then climb back up since the boulders were pretty huge.
Finally we passed the horrible boulderfiled area and started our climb towards the summit which wasn't too bad and just near the summit there were few moves.
Once we got on the summit we were all smiling and enjoying those incredible summit views and there was a small present from a person that was there last on the summit.
We of course took our time and spent as much time as we could on the summit before starting our way back down.
The way down into the bowl was faster until we reached those huge boulders again that slowed us down again.
Our plan was to go up Claimpost the same day and we still had lots of time and we chose a gully that led us to the South ride of Claimpost.
The gully had some pretty interesting rocks and wasn't a bad way to get to the ridge.
There was few towers that we were able to go over and some of them we had to skip and before the summit we had to deal with a class 4 chimney which wasn't too bad since the rock as pretty solid and there was lots of good holds.
Soon after the chimney move we reached the summit of Claimpost and again it was time for lots of photos.
We followed the same way back down and back up to our campsite at the col where we got lucky to enjoy some beautiful sunset views.
The next morning we woke up and Marius had some of his food chewed and I had one my shoe lace chewed in the worst spot, he chewed my shoe lace right in the middle.
After packing all our gear we started our way back down to the car, following the same route.
We were back at the car around 11.30 from where we had a long drive back home.
Beautiful area for sure and great time spent with friends.
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