Mt Cartier, Revelstoke

Ok, this hike was epic! In every sense of the word. To put it into context, everyone who heard we did this was impressed. And that's coming from locals from Revelstoke who hike every spare second they have.

Thankfully the smoke was still cleared out of the valley so we set off just after sunrise for the gruelling 2000m of elevation from the base to the summit. Of the 15km to the summit, the first 12km was through thick forest along a winding path. Making the elevation even harder was an unbearable amount of mosquitos that swarmed around each of us making any stop to catch our breath very short-lived. Eventually we broke out of the treeline into the alpine and found some relief. From here the view opened up to see how far we'd climbed. However the view below us was overshadowed by the summit that still loomed high above us. With our legs burning and knees aching I was already dreading the return leg.

We reached the summit well in need of some lunch. The view out over the surrounding mountain range was stunning. We had started the hike with one of Mitches mates who had brought his mountain bike planning on pushing it to the summit to ride the epic downhill trail. Having left him well behind us in the first kms of the trail we were convinced the bike would be too hard to drag the whole way. Yet before we had even finished lunch he emerged to join us on the summit! What an effort!

From here it was the downhill slog. Retracing our steps into the forest the mosquitos became our unwelcome distraction from our legs screaming for a break from the constant impacting descent. Finally we emerged to the carpark having covered 32kms in 11 hours.Read more