Hike/Climb Redwall Peak

Our first trip into the Mckenzie Range

As a few of us plan a trip to Rainier, we decided to do a trip to the Mckenzie range as a “stress test” to see how our fitness was.

We decided on Redwall Peak, as it’s a relatively short, but steep, hike in to the base of the climb. With the added bonus of some optional climbing to attain the peak.

We left Victoria at 4:30am, and arrived at the pullout at 9am. Moving on the logging road by 9:30am. packs were all roughly 10.5kg/23.1lbs.

The logging road was in good condition, it is 500m elevation gain at a 30 degree grade!. We made good time to the trailhead, which was beside a small hydro damn (it had password protected wifi!) On the logging road there was several stops for salmon/thimble/huckle berries, they were in season.

The trail went along the river, and was well flagged, and easy to follow. We made good time to the base of the ridgeline. crossing the river was easy on a single log, and we then had a brutal 500m elevation gain to the alpine. short and steep. It felt like straight up. The mossies were out, but too small to do real damage. We did slow down for the blueberries as we got higher up.

When we hit the sub-alpine, we had lunch, and then the alpine turned into cairns, and then ridge line wandering, beautiful (yet cloudy, so limited views) alpine. We made good time to the base of the climb.

One of the party members had had the worst time on the approach, and wasn’t feeling safe to belay, so I stayed with them, and the other two went up the climb. They made ok time, and were back down in ~4 hours.

We made the mistake to split the party, since we were worried about descending in the dark, and it was getting late. Jonathan and I made it back to the damn, with Jonathan twisting his ankle 100m from the end. 15-30min later the other two arrived. We had a quick rest/snack break.

We redistributed hiking poles, so Jonathan had 2, and could support himself better during the descent of the logging road. We made it back to the car just as it was getting dark. Driving back to Victoria we took turns driving and ended up back in Victoria at 1:30am the next morning.

Future Trip Edits

• On bushwacky-low-travelled routes, bring flagging tape
• stock up moleskin and rap rings
• get an emergency satellite beacon to communicate with C as the callout person