Su-Laine on Sumas Mountain:
“How does a 6-hour hike end up taking almost 9 hours? The trail to Sumas Mountain from the west is mostly well-marked, however just after the creek and before Chadsey Lake, the main trail is blocked by a fallen tree and a new trail also branches off. After inadvertently taking the new trail, which isn’t shown in the ‘103 Hikes’ book, we found ourselves walking west, not east, on a trail that looked familiar. We stopped for lunch and met some locals who confidently gave us entirely incorrect information about where we were and where we should go. More walking in the wrong direction followed, and we met the only other people we’d see on this trip, who were just as lost as we were. Eventually local pair #1 caught up with us and told us where we really should go, and we turned around yet again. The new trail, we eventually realized, forms a loop, and we weren’t the first ones to be caught in it like some space-time vortex in Star Trek: https://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26394.
I was glad the group had all stuck together and gotten lost as a unit – if we’d been in this situation and missing a person, we could have been in serious trouble. I was also very grateful for everyone keeping their sense of humour! We all made it to the top, at which point we started another chapter in the annals of Lame Hiking Experiences by not being able to find either of the two summits described in ‘103 Hikes’; all we could find were microwave towers and a lookout. The lookout had a very good view of the east. ‘103’ Hikes is correct, we found, in its description of the west trailhead. It is indeed .5 km down the gravel road and very poorly marked. Wildflowers were not spectacular – I think the season for them on Sumas is pretty much over. Mosquitos, on the other hand, are still plentiful.”
