Mount Huntley

Mt. Huntley stands above three lakes – Clearwater Lake, Hobson Lake, and Azure Lake. The trailhead is on Azure Lake at Four and a Half Mile Campground. The trail is actually the Huntley Col Trail, established by Hugh Neave and friends and documented in Roland Neave’s book, Exploring Wells Gray Park. The only access to the trailhead is by water.

The first part of the trail climbs steeply through cedar-hemlock forest. There is a fair amount of windfall, but it is all passable. As the trail climbs into the subalpine zone, the route becomes overgrown and difficult to follow. Good route-finding skills are needed and at one point deadfall and overgrown shrubs completely hide the trail. There is a 5 minute bushwack required here, bearing northwest. Devil’s club, alder, and thick brush line and overgrow the trail so long pants are recommended. As the trail climbs, it enters a slide alder zone. The trail winds through openings and openings, like an alder tunnel, emerging into overgrown meadows. The trail then follows a small dry watercourse up toward Mt. Huntley. As this route climbs, the rocky watercourse becomes more pronounced; it is part of a slide zone drainage below a dry waterfall. At this point, about 60m below the face of the waterfall, the trail veers right through a gap in the alder and heads up to Huntley Col, less than a kilometre away, but 270m higher.

We missed this junction on the way up, but found it on the way back down and placed a cairn there. We ended up climbing the waterfall, then chose to attempt to go to the top of Mt. Huntley, and loop down to the col. We traversed high onto the south face of the mountain scrambling the steep slopes and outcrops. We tried three routes to the top, but did not succeed. The final chute we tried was exposed and unsafe and we turned back only 50m (or less) from the top. We were higher than the col, but could not traverse over to it because of sheer cliffs. The going on the high slopes was very slow. The meadows were overgrown and all the route was steep. We looped back slowly to the dry watercourse and made our way down the mountain, a total of 10.5 hours.

We had hoped to get into the Col for the views to Garnet Peak and the north end of wells Gray Park, but we were always below the summit of Huntley so we could not, but from 2230m we could see the length of Clearwater Lake and Azure Lake, Zodiac Peak, the high peaks of the eastern Cariboo Ranges, the river, and the remote ranges to the west.

When we found our way back to the missed junction, we could look up to Huntley Col, only a kilometre away, but we had to turn down the mountain because of time, so we will have to return to complete the hike another time.