Climbing Summit Peak Trail

May 30, 2019.  Today we decided to challenge nearby Summit Peak.  It presented a steep challenge:  800 meters of elevation gain in the first 2 kilometers of hiking up to Lookout #1.  We might have climbed to the full 2,000+ meter summit of the peak, but we elected to be satisfied with Lookout #1, which was about 1,800 meters in elevation. 

Here we are at the trailhead:

This trail was not bashful about throwing elevation gain at us from the very start.  Kathy rose to the challenge:

The upside of steep climbs is the quick reward of expansive views.  Here, we looked back down the drainage we were following, toward Summit Pass:

As with many of the hikes in British Columbia, the rocks underfoot were almost as interesting as the views.  Kathy found this very intriguing boulder, which was a conglomerate of agate and quartz and other mysteriously formed shapes:

About halfway up, we caught sight of our campground.  You can see our motorhome out on the point at the right end of the campground, with Summit Lake right at our door:

We also could see across the lake, toward Flower Springs Lake in a cirque that, marvelously, lay BELOW us!  We could actually see the little lake and where we had lunched two days before with our friends from Maine:

We were not alone on this hike, however.  One marmot stood guard on the ramparts and would not surrender his post.  First he looked out as us as we approached --

-- and then scolded us as we passed him:

We found out why he was so protective, because our lunch spot at the height of land was breathtaking.  He probably didn't want to share it with anyone.

We sat shoulder to shoulder with nearby peaks:

Having rested a bit and digested our lunch and filled our eyes with the views, we started back down.  In the big drainage alongside our trail, we spotted a pretty cascade that flowed straight down from Summit Peak --

-- onto a flat, slanting table of basalt, where Kathy decided to cool her tootsies in one of the rivulets.  It was COLD!

Unfortunately, Kathy had lost her national park map bandana on the way up the trail, and we worried that was lost forever.  Not so!  Further on from the cascade, she looked down to find her bandana lying right in the middle of the trail.  We wondered if it had had as big an adventure as we did...

Near the bottom of the trail and our return to the trailhead, we needed to pick our way back across the drainage.  Kathy posed in the middle, almost dwarfed by the breadth of the stream, but looking proud for having conquered this climb: