We have been hiking into the Trophy Mountains for over 40 years and we returned in early July this year to hike to the summit of Long Hill.   There are 7 summits in the Trophy Mountains and a few high ridges between.   Long Hill is the westernmost summit at 7611 feet.   We followed the main Trophy Meadows trail through the forest to Trophy Meadows, the started the climb to Plateau of the Tarns.

The hike through the forest is about 3.4 km before emerging into the lower meadows.   Small groves of trees and tarns do the hillside on either side of the trail.

The trail climbs through open meadows toward the upper end of the tarns below the summit of Trophy Two.

We hiked up the ridge overlooking Sheila Lake.   There is a backcountry campground on the shores of the lake.   Long Hill is the 2 km long ridge rising above the lake.

Rocky knolls dot the plateau, with tarns in the basins and low areas.

The shallow tarns are filled with snowmelt.

At one tarn, we can see the ridge of Trophy 2 on the left, the summit of Trophy 1 in  the middle and the triangle of Trophy 3 on the right.

We hiked west to a hart-shaped tarn under Trophy 2, then we started a steep climb to the top of the ridge.

The summit of Long Hill is really one continuous ridge with Trophy 2.   This is felsenmeer, a long rockfield shattered by repeated freeze-thaw cycles over thousands of years.   The process of gelifraction is obvious on both sides of the ridge where there are extensive talus slopes down to the meadows.

Some lingering snow still hung on the west side where a cornice would have formed.

We could see the start of a small bergschrund where the weight of the snow was splitting away from the handing snowfield.

The next mountain to the north is Table Mountain, a long 14 km hike from the Wells Gray Corridor Road.

Past Table Mountain is Battle Mountain, another long hike from the west.  We once backpacked to Fight Lake and did the double summit and returned back down to camp the next day.

Below us on the west we spotted Buck Hill, a 140m high cinder cone that erupted 10 000 years ago, then was covered in ice.

After having lunch on the summit, we climbed down the steep slopes to the tarns below.

Past Sheila Lake we wound through the rocky knolls and clumps of trees in subalpine meadows on our way to the lower meadows.

At one viewpoint on the way down, we could see the Trophy One, a more difficult mountain to get to.    The Trophy Traverse is a long day of challenging hiking.

As we headed down the trail toward the forest, the north side of the Raft Range (just 7 km away as the crow flies) called us for anther return hike.

The entire hike is about 16 km taking about 6.5 hours.    Although it is a longer hike with lots of elevation gain, much of the hike is in subalpine meadows and on alpine ridges with rewarding views for much of the day.

More Information:

• Trophy Mountain 2016
• Trophy Mountain Subalpine Meadows #1
• Trophy Mountain Subalpine Meadows # 2
• Trophy Mountain Alpine Wildflowers