CASCADE MOUNTAIN 2940m 9646′
Situated on the watershed above the head of Cascade Creek. The large lakes three kilometres west of Cascade Mountain are the Marion Lakes.
Difficulty: D2 very challenging
Elevation gain:
Key elevations:
Distance:
Time: 17+ hours
Season: Mid-July to August
Assess: Very bad – roads are totally overgrown, bridges have all been removed and it is undrivable
Map: 82K/6 Poplar Creek
Drive: Use the Cascade Face FSR to the first washout (2 km) and then bicycles (slow) for 10 km.
1. Northeast Ridge.
Route. From camp below the Triple Peaks, pass over the south-central col and descend east 150 meters on the glacier. Proceed west on loose rock across the south face of South Triple Peak for 0.8 km to a mossy bench. Ascend on sound rock, then by flakes of rock at odd angles, and a gully to the small summit northeast of Cascade.
Descend the south ridge, and jump a small cornice to a glacier to the south. Stay on the south side of the northeast ridge of Cascade on snow.
On the return, descend east of the small summit to an ice-filled tarn. Glacier (II,4,s).
August 1, 1974(a).
2. Northwest Ridge.
Route. Approach from the south fork of Poplar Creek (road overgrown, 2015; see Mount Marion, Route 2) and Marion Lakes to the west. Do an ascending traverse to the foot of the northwest ridge. The northwest ridge is Class 3 on loose rock. (III,3,s).
FA Wm. Fix, Rand Palmer, Lorna Ream, mid-August 1974.
Drive. Use the Cascade Face FSR to the first washout (2 km) and then bicycles (slow) for 10 km. Cross to the south side of Cascade Creek, bushwhack and camp at lakes. The party moved camp to the north of the Cascade- Marion col, avoiding the Cascade headwall, and climbed the northeast ridge. They hiked in the Wilson Creek area, and later Dan Richardson climbed the northwest ridge.
3. South Ridge. Descended and ascended in 1975; See Mount Marion, Route 2.
4. West Ridge. Ascend from a helicopter camp at 1920 meters at the head of the north fork of Wilson Creek (now in Goat Range Prov. Park). The traverse is easy; ascent is 4 hours from camp. Descend the south ridge to the Cascade-Marion col. (II,3,s).
JK, RS, August 1976. See the paragraphs below also. The party continued, climbing Mount Marion, Route 2. The Kootenay Mountaineering Club Hiking Camp personnel hiked out over the col north of camp to the helicopter takeoff site on the Poplar Creek road.
Drive: This is the old description – none is drivable now.
0.0 From Highway 31 turn southwest onto the Poplar Creek Forest Access road (overgrown, 2015)
16 or 17 km sign (809-766) take the left fork.
At the first fork, keep left and uphill. The road then bends into the valley draining Marion Lakes (795-741).
At the next junction continue straight (not the switch-back going up left and back). It is a high-clearance four-wheel drive near the end.
Park where the road becomes quite bad and switches back left. Walk up this left switchback to another landing.
Route: From the landing, take the skid road going up and right. After its end, continue parallel through timber and in 20 meters or so pick up a flagged route.
After about 20 minutes one is out of the timber on a trail and in a sub-alpine basin on the northwest side of Cascade Mountain (about 803-720). Pass east of the lake at 801-715, and head for a scree slope on the north side of Cascade’s west ridge. It is an eight-hour round trip from the end of the road (the landing).
To reach Mount Marion, go from the col west of Cascade, traverse east and south through alpland on the southwest side of Cascade passing through a col at 816-695. Then continue east toward the Cascade-Marion col, at the rotten north spur of Mount Marion.
CASCADE MT – GOAT RANGE by Kim Kratky
Here’s another trip report that could perhaps be useful. The weekend of October 7-8 Hamish Mutch and I went to Cascade Mtn. The access will probably be of most interest to you since we travelled via Poplar Creek. All references are to 82K/6 Poplar Creek.
From Highway 31 turn W. onto Poplar Creek Forest Access Road, which begins just N. of the Poplar Creek bridge. There’s a prominent BCFS sign at the beginning of this smooth 2WD road. Around the 16 or 17 Km. sign (809-766), take the left fork, which follows the first north-flowing tributary of Poplar Creek. This spur is an excellent 2WD road until about the last kilometre.
I can’t tell you exactly how far it goes because we had to begin walking after about 1 or 2 km. Loggers had parked their cable yarder and crane right on the road and blocked it. Anyway, continue along this spur, always following the track that shows the most use. At the first fork, keep left and uphill. The road then bends into the valley draining Marion Lakes (795-741). At the next junction, continue straight; do not take the switchback that goes up left and back. As the road nears its end, you will come to a couple of switchbacks that would be 4WD territory. The driveable portion ends at a landing.
At this point, you find several overgrown skidder roads. Take the one going up and to the right. It soon becomes a bushy track that contours along the hillside. After it peters out, continue parallel through timber and in 20 m. or so you will pick up a flagged route. This is a gently rising traverse and is not especially bush-free, but it is well-flagged.
After about 20 min. you come out of the timber and into a sub-alpine basin and avalanche fan on the NW side of Cascade Mtn. (about 803-720). There’s a very prominent leaning tree near the exit point, so the flagged route is easy to pick up on return (I know that this landmark may disappear by next spring, but it’s there now). Pick your way across the basin (not particularly easy since there is a scrub forest broken by fairly deep gullies), all the while making for a scree slope on the N. side of Cascade’s W. ridge. Gaining elevation soon is probably the best bet.
Once on the ridge, the climb is a piece of cake. As Kienholz said, it’s definitely class 3; there’s no point in even taking a rope. The ridge starts as grass and then hosts a grove of dwarf trees before you reach the rock. The first rocky bit looks technical, but by a short traverse to the right, you will reach a prominent, easy gully that can be followed up to regain the ridge itself.
There’s even a cairn at the top of this. Then you simply follow the long ridge (about 2400′ to the summit from where we gained it) over several false summits to the top. There was a pretty extensive summit record, detailing ascents from 1975; there had been no entries since 1990, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it hadn’t been climbed since then.
Our trip times: 5 1/2 hrs. up, 15 min. on top, 4 1/2 hrs. return. We wasted 1 hr. 20 min. walking up the road that could have been driven, and 1 hr. 10 min. extra on the way out. Consider Cascade to be an 8-hour round trip from the end of the driveable portion of the road.
Some observations about the surroundings. I had a good look over at Triple Peaks. The glaciers that Petroske described have shrunk to a patch of snow the size of a couple of houses. I am pretty sure you could climb all of the three summits at this time of year without setting foot on snow. Mt. Emmens is a quite insignificant bump off to the NE with trees growing to near the summit.
In general, the retreat of the glaciers here is sobering. Across Poplar Creek in the Binocular-Spyglass area, the landscape is characterized by white scree slopes, which I assume is what you get after the glacier has melted and before the lichen can grow. I was struck by how much the alpine landscape reminded me of Kokanee Glacier Park in its white and gray gravelly look, except that the peaks are bigger and the glaciation greater.
I talked to a forester friend about Poplar Creek Road because there are some steep slopes above the main haul road that look as if they might avalanche this winter and sweep the whole route into the creek several hundred feet below.
He said that the BCFS will probably put the road to bed after logging is finished, which could be soon. He added that the whole drainage could well become part of the proposed White Grizzly Wilderness Area, something which would mean the end of road access. I have to confess to ambivalent feelings about the increase of protected areas since the status makes a lot of climbing virtually inaccessible.
Kim Kratky
CASCADE MTN, POPLAR LAKES AND MT MARION ATTEMPT by Dan R.
Fifteen years ago, Poplar Lakes would’ve been an easy 2-hour hike, from that I gather. In 2015, the Poplar Creek FSR was reportedly so completely overgrown as to be rendered useless. Keeping all options off the table, the plan to get there took about a year for me to work out and ended up taking us up Cascade Creek, scrambling Cascade Mountain (twice!), an attempt on Mount Marion, a dip in a few of the Poplar Lakes, and a 17hr day, all starting on July 28th.
Douglas, Cindy, and I parked at the first washout on the Cascade Face FSR (2km) and rode bikes for the next 10km. It took us only slightly less time than hiking would have. We ditched the bike at the landing before the bridge crossing to the south side of Cascade Ck and set off through the bush. Our goal was to ascend the hiker’s left of the drainage that starts SE of Mt Emmens, though we ended up on the right side. A solid hour of alder finally got us back to the left side and we made our way up through steep, moderate bush for a long time. Camped at what I’m calling ‘Cascade Lakes’. Eleven hours from the truck.
Day 2, we crossed the watershed between Cascade and Wilson Creeks and saw some heli flags nearby, the only sign of human activity on the whole trip, once off the roads. We dropped packs and scrambled up some steep snow and then the east ridge of Cascade Mountain.
Unfortunately (or fortunately as we’ll see later), I’d forgotten the summit register back at the packs! After descending, we decided to camp just north and above the Cascade-Marion col, then hiked up south to scout access for Mt Marion. Kim Kratky had reported using this ridge and then dropping down to the glacier. Douglas tried this and made it down to the glacier, but advised against it. We returned to the camp and Cindy and I scouted a route down the headwall of Cascade Creek. This gave us confidence that we could descend here, make an attempt on Marion (by ascending the glacier from below), and then hike out a low route through Cascade Creek, which looked fairly clear from above. All this would allow us to make up for lost time the first day and still get some more exploring in. Another big day, at least 10hrs I think.
Day 3, we left our camp set up and hiked down the incredible, varied alpine of the Wilson Ck headwaters. Highly recommended. After descending to the flats at the bottom of the area, we ascended to a lookout for views down Wilson Creek and up the drainage SE of Mt Marion. From there, we traversed north and over the divide to Poplar Lakes. We went for a dip in the upper and lower one and admired the big middle one. We’d hoped to check out the old campsite at the outlet of the lakes but were low on time. Douglas and Cindy decided to head back a more direct route to camp, which ended up taking them into 4th Class terrain, but with the bonus of seeing a bunch of goats. I was determined to get the summit register onto Cascade, so I hiked across the headwaters of the drainage and then up the NW ridge (easy Class 3).
The view, weather and light on top were surreal. The golden light (it was 7:30 pm) stretched across the Purcells from Mt Loki to Mt Conrad, and the view across the lesser peaks of the Goat Range to the west towards the sun was unbelievable. And me without a camera! After placing the register, I descended the south face and met the others back in camp. Twelve-hour day.
On the final day, we were moving at 6 am. Descending the vegetated headwall was slow (near impossible if wet), and this gave us pause as to whether we had time to attempt Mt Marion. We decided to start and just get some glacier travel practice if nothing else. Getting up the lower tongues was the hardest part though and once above, we decided to keep going. We made it up to the west ridge of Marion, above the glacier, but decided we just didn’t have the time needed for a quick summit attempt (looked like 45 minutes of easy, loose Class 3), so we admired the views and turned back.
We were re-packed below the glacier and moving around mid-afternoon, very aware of how much ground we needed to cover, though still able to admire Cascade Creek’s namesakes. The going started out good but numerous creek crossings and increasing vegetation bogged us down. Undoubtedly the low snow year made fording the creek a not-unreasonable endeavour. Head-high stinging nettle on uneven ground, a canyon, thick willows, route finding six-of-ones, and a half dozen creek crossings all took their toll, but the adrenaline kept us moving. We eventually crossed the creek for the last time, just above the confluence with the big SE tributary, and walked the road back to our bikes, arriving at dusk.
We re-packed and started biking with headlamps. The bikes speeded the return trip, taking a little over 1.5 hours this time, somewhat slowed by the dark. Back at the truck at 17.5 hours after starting that day, we were totally wasted. We agreed it was the longest day any of us had had in the mountains. And we still had to drive back home!
We took shifts driving, Douglas and I making it back to Nelson at 2:30 am, after having gotten up at 4:30 am that morning!
In the end, our access route was close to the best choice, in my opinion, though we could’ve saved an hour or two and possibly made it to the Wilson headwaters in a 12-hour day, knowing more about the route in hindsight (wishful thinking perhaps). Still, a long day with a lot of elevation gain. Forget using Cascade Creek for access/egress though. This is an absolutely fantastic area, and the more months that pass, the more I’m willing to consider going back someday. More lakes to explore SE of Poplar Lakes, and the whole area south of Mt Marion are ripe for exploration.
Note that there is reportedly a “14hr, sporty route” return route from Meadow Mountain Rd to Mount Marion. Worth noting also is that the Goat Range ski touring traverse route from Chic Scott’s book relied on the long Poplar Creek road for egress, and this is no longer possible, though there are rumours that this road will be opened up again in order to pull the bridges eventually, so that’s worth keeping an eye on. If anyone has done other summer trips into the area since the Poplar Creek Rd ceased to be viable, I’d love to hear about it.
Dan R
