Paddling to Christmas Lunch

As veterans of opting out, it never occurs to us to do anything except opt out of the various and increasingly common commercial holidays that punctuate the year. This year, however, I was trying to visit my Mum in Sydney, but that trip was put off by the extensive and overwhelming bush-fires ravaging the coast and the consequent highway closures.

Summer 2019

We were, however, invited to lunch at a friends house in Nelligen. What better way to opt out than paddle to our lunch engagement. In Monty Python fashion, we would be paddling against the tidal current in both directions so weren't sure how long the 18 km one way trip would take.

Tollgate Islands on the horizon

Accordingly, we allowed ample time, and left our local beach right on 8 am. The Tollgate Islands looked interesting in the morning light as we paddled past Snapper Island northwest to the bridge over the Clyde River. About 50 minutes to the bridge.

Snapper Island

Upstream of the bridge there are lots of oyster farms, easy to paddle past on the high tide and then a couple of small islands, unimaginatively named Big Island and Little Island. The shortest distance to Nelligen is to west of both. The river between Batemans Bay and Nelligen is generally fairly quiet and it was so today. Pleasant paddling upstream past swans and eagles. At 11.00 am we pulled up to the steps near our friends house and had a swim in the clear cool water before going along to lunch.

Black Swan

And then the journey back. We got away at 4.00 pm with the standard summer northeasterly blowing. The way the river winds downstream we were able to sail quite a bit but the last 3 or 4 kilometres was into a steady headwind and I started to feel tired. We got out for a brief leg stretch at the bridge, and then it was a steady paddle out the channel until we got to the end of the breakwater and our sails helped a little bit.

Fire Red Sun

Our local beach had a bit of a shore dump, pretty normal with a summer northeasterly, and we were glad to arrive. The return journey was perhaps 15 minutes longer than paddling up. A bit over 6 hours paddling, I think we earned Christmas lunch.

Needle Peak: Coquihalla

Although we had driven over the Coquihalla at least a dozen times - if not more - when we lived in Canada, for some reason, we had never actually stopped and climbed any of the quite impressive looking granitic peaks. The area is quite popular with decent snow in winter and lots of easy scrambles in summer and some very long rock climbing routes.

Yak Peak has several long, run-out rock routes

Doug and I were heading east in our "hashtag van" - a Honda Odyssey minivan with a quick but highly effective van conversion (done by Doug) - and had a couple of trips planned off the Coquihalla. The first was Needle Peak. Ideal when we had a two hour drive from Vancouver to start the day.

The Hashtag Van blends into all surroundings

The standard scramble route on Needle Peak ascends the west ridge after a short but steep hike up the mostly forested north ridge, and is really popular. Likely explained by the fact that the ascent is short, sharp, scenic, within driving distance of Vancouver and does not require a four wheel drive. With under a 1000 metres of elevation gain, it's also a relatively quick trip to the summit and back.

Needle Peak

We found the trail-head easily enough, although if you don't know where to turn off the highway it would be frighteningly easy to miss the exit and have to travel a considerable distance in the wrong direction before being able to turn around.

Needle Peak from the approach trail

The track is almost gentle by BC standards, but is still pretty steep and although there are some trail markers and a BC Parks sign at the start, I don't think this trail was ever constructed simply walked in by climbers.

Low angle slabs at the start of the west ridge

Somewhere around 5,000 feet we hit discontinuous snow and shortly thereafter we were strolling up big granite slabs towards Flat Iron Pass. There was a big group hanging about at the pass and many hikers coming down off the summit.

Overlooking Flat Iron Peak where the 

trail enters the sub-alpine

Once you reach the west ridge, there is only about 230 metres of elevation gain left and you get a good view of the granitic summit of Needle Peak. The standard scramble route - class 2 to 3 - follows the west ridge in its entirety. We somewhat foolishly followed a flagged track around to the south side of the rocky summit pyramid and ended up scrambling up some very loose and somewhat sketchy terrain to regain the west ridge. Definitely not recommended!

Sidling around onto the south side:

Not recommended

Once back on the west ridge some good old fashioned "following your nose" route finding up a few steps and slabs leads to the surprisingly spacious summit. As we had started our hike at 11 am we had the pleasure of having the summit to ourselves as all the other hikers had already started down.

Doug near the summit

We enjoyed a pleasant lunch break in the sun with grand views of the spectacular Steinbok Group, the peaks of Zopkios Ridge as well as Zupjok, Llama and Alpaca Peaks which we planned to traverse the next day. We avoided the south side route on descent and went straight down the west ridge.

Alpaca, Vicuna and Llama