Summit Elevation (m): 2850
Trip Date: August 25 2024
Elevation Gain (m): 1800
Round Trip Time (hr): 8
Total Trip Distance (km): 22
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you break something
Difficulty Notes: Easy to moderate scrambling with some route finding to keep it that way. Some very loose terrain and some steep(ish) slabs.
Technical Rating: SC6
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
After a successful ascent of the very misnamed Mount Pushover two days previous, I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for on another beautiful August summer day. I spent some time humming and hawing over ideas and finally settled on what turned out to be another misnamed peak. In 2009, Andrew Nugara dubbed a peak sitting north of Highwood Peak, “Crumble” due to its rotten rubble and scree. David P. Jones dubs this peak “North Highwood” and since this is the published name I’ll stick to it. It’s also more accurate as you’ll find out on further reading. Unfortunately, despite checking my usual sources for beta on obscure peaks I missed the fact that Cornelius recently added his 2021 ascent to his web site. I didn’t realize he’d even done this peak (and it’s lower south neighbor) until I came home and went looking after seeing his name in the summit register!

I admit that had I looked at his report beforehand I likely would have chosen the same approach as Cornelius used (the old decommissioned Picklejar Lakes trail) over the Mist Ridge trail. This is likely the trail that I found blazes along in the upper south Cliff Creek valley as I crossed it. More on that later. Despite being a little miffed at myself after getting home that I could have approached this peak almost entirely on trail, my route did work out for me, considering I added all three Mist Hills to my day. More on that later too. I left the Mist Creek Day Use Area on a cold, clear morning at around 08:00. Leaving from hwy 40 would save a few hundred meters but I wasn’t in a hurry. I quickly followed the Mist Creek / Ridge trail before it branched steeply around the north end of SW Mist Hill. The views were getting pretty good already as I gained the col between the south end of Mist Ridge and the north end of Lower Mist Hill and got my first views of North Highwood Peak.
Nugara is a little vague in his whole trip report with only a mention of a “recent report on the Old Goats website” by the indefatigable Mr. Alistair Des Moulins. I couldn’t find this report so his references to it didn’t help me much. There’s mention of a “horse trail” in the south Cliff Creek valley but that’s about it. Nugara also mentions “extensive bushwhacking” which didn’t make a lot of sense to me while planning the route simply because it’s not that far from the Mist Ridge col to the west alpine bowl under the peak. Of course, now that we have Cornelius’ report and route there is no need to use the Mist Ridge trail for North Highwood unless you are adding Mist Hills like I did. Since I didn’t have this resource I set off from the Mist Ridge col through light bush down towards the south branch of Cliff Creek. I didn’t know it until return but I was 50 meters left of a perfectly good trail at this point too. Dang it! 😉 The bushwhack was easy and short and I even crossed a trail on descent but ignored it since I had no idea where it went. From the creek I could easily spot the shoulder I had to cross next to gain the west alpine valley under my peak.
Quite soon after crossing south Cliff Creek and bushwhacking up the intervening shoulder I ran into more trails. Again – I kind of ignored them because there was little chance they were going where I was. It turns out that both of them did pretty much go where I wanted to go. Oops. The ‘whacking was relatively short and easy so I didn’t mind too much but I was wondering at all the blazed trails in this obscure little valley. I broke into the west alpine bowl to a lovely summer scene and North Highwood Peak towering above.
Using only Nugara’s report from 2009, I was expecting rubble and scree slopes to a crumbling summit block. Sticking with the vague theme of his report, Nugara doesn’t go into any details about the scramble itself, not even noting which side of the summit block he ascended. I assumed he ascended from the south side but the whole summit block didn’t look that straightforward from his photos or from my vantage below it to the west. I immediately noticed a very attractive line up tilted slabs off the rubble that I wondered about. Why hadn’t Nugara used this slab route? Was it cut off from the south ridge? A line of cliffs did look to be potentially problematic on climber’s left of the slab but it also looked to break down at several points.
As I continued to approach the ascent slopes I decided to take a chance on the slabs for ascent. They were simply too attractive not to try! Sure enough. The slabs were AWESOME. “Crumble” wasn’t even close to the best moniker for this ascent! I’ve followed attractive lines with unfortunate results more than once and was slightly nervous all the way to the south ridge about running into cliffs or other terrain issues. Thankfully my recent stint of routefinding luck held and as I transitioned to the south ridge everything became much simpler including the summit block. It only took me around 50 minutes to ascend from the bottom of the slabs to the upper south ridge – it is a very efficient and very fun route and can’t be recommended high enough over the rubble crap to climber’s left.
As I hiked the south ridge towards the summit block an easy route appeared on its east side. Phew! That west side looked complicated. I made short work to the summit on easy to moderate terrain before stepping onto the summit of North Highwood with views in every direction and even a summit register for once.


There were only a few entries in the register and none since Cornelius’ 2001 ascent. For such an accessible peak with fun slab scrambling (and a trail most of the way) this was surprising. Now that Cornelius and I have both published reports I think there will be more ascents. I personally think that Highwood and North Highwood Peak are close enough in height to be considered the same (2850m). I was planning a traverse of the Mist Hills on return so after a few minutes at the summit I started down the west face, choosing rubble over slab to see how that went.
In short, the rubble descent didn’t go that much quicker than the slab ascent had. The rubble wasn’t as loose as I’d prefer which made things a bit tricky. If you’re comfortable descending slab than I’d recommend it over my descent line. A short traverse brought me back through the west alpine bowl and into the forest. I quickly found a trail which I tried to follow and mostly succeeded – it got faint in places but fresh blazes helped a lot. The trail became more and more defined as I crossed the creek and started to ascend back to the Mist Ridge col. I lost the trail again just before starting up north slopes of the lower Mist Hill but at this point I didn’t really need it anymore.
Already when Wietse and I did Mist Ridge and Gibraltar Mountain in 2020, I’d wondered about tacking the Mist Hills onto our day. At the time we didn’t, but I’d been saving them for this trip for a while and was excited to see how the traverse went. Despite being very easy, it still adds quite a bit of time, some distance and elevation to the day.
There was no hint of a trail up the north ridge of the lower hill which surprised me until I saw the gap to the SE and highest Mist Hill. Most hikers wouldn’t love that height loss and regain! As usual it wasn’t as bad as it first appeared.

After descending the south end of the lower hill I once again picked up an obvious, blazed trail! I followed bits of it towards the south end of the SE Mist Hill before ascending easy slopes with great views back to Mist Ridge and towards the Highwood Range.
The summit of SE Mist Hill had surprisingly huge views. In the Fall this would offer some gorgeous larch scenery, especially over Odlum Ridge and towards the Great Divide. I will likely visit this small summit again with family some day. I started slowly down west slopes towards the middle elevation, SW Mist Hill. Once again, I was surprised that there were only smatterings of trail. This short but incredible scenic objective deserves more traffic than it obviously gets!



I wasn’t overflowing with enthusiasm as I started the slog up the SW Mist Hill from the col. Peakbagging starts to lose some of its appeal when the word “hill” appears in the title… 🙂 Despite my apathy I had to admit that some of the views off this ascent were stunning.
Compared to the higher SE summit (which has no trees), the SW one was a little muted but still quite lovely. I didn’t linger, but chose a line down the north ridge which looked like it could be used to link up with the old road branching off the Mist Ridge trail below.

Indeed. The north ridge worked well before cutting down very steep east slopes to intersect the old road. From there it was one foot in front of the other to the Mist Creek intersection and from there to the parking lot. What a great day this turned out to be! Despite going in with very low expectations of endless rubble slopes, I got trails, flowers, creeks and very pleasant and efficient ascent slabs. Ending the day with a traverse over the Mist Hills only made things even better. A highly recommended outing for scramblers looking for something a little off the beaten trail – but still on a surprising number of them.
Have you ever considered doing some hikes in the willmore wilderness area?
Yes. I have the map and will be looking at that area over the winter to see what trips await me there. 🙂