Mt. Lucille is the most prominent peak seen from the McBride, BC townsite. It was the destination for Sunday’s excursion of the Ozalenka Alpine Club. Lucille has always been my choice for taking people up a mountain, because it has such a pointy peak, it really feels more like you are on top of a mountain, rather than some of other nearby mountains, that don’t have such an obvious apex.
The group once again started the expedition with the wind in our faces, bouncing along a very steep and rough road in the back of Glen Stanley’s pickup truck. I have been up Lucille many times, but not for a while, and I was disappointed to find that the BC government, in order to negate responsibility for the road, had dug out all the culverts, leaving the poor road even rougher, now with deep gullies crossing it. It was sad to see another impediment thrown up in front of local hikers on one of our few accessible mountains.
Unfortunately, because the Robson Valley is hazed over with smoke from far away forest fires, the joy of seeing for miles and miles and miles was greatly inhibited, but when we got to the top of Lucille and sat down at 7,800ft (2,380m) elevation to eat our lunches we could tell we were on the top of the world. We hiked up the edge of the mountain on the right side of the mountain (photo above), ate lunch at the top then came down the left side into the alpine meadow. Some of us went skinny-dipping in the very cold clear water of the small lake you can see in the foreground of the photo below, with the McBride townsite showing through the haze.
Once I was back home and looked at a clock, I was surprised to discover it was only 2:30 in the afternoon, the whole hike had only taken us 6.5 hours.
See my paintings at: www.davidmarchant.ca
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