Anniversary Adventures 2.0 - Markhor-Needle & Tomyhoi
- Greg Luesink
- Oct 5, 2025
- 5 min read
Jas and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary of marriage in style, bagging peaks and basking in the sun.
Jas and I had a pretty great summer of smaller adventures, including a day hike with UFV Alumni friends up Conway Peak. Carl, Eli, Jag, Jenna, Jas, and I all crammed into Carl's car and started up from Jones lake for a great day catching up, exploring the old mining trail. We also enjoyed a chill long weekend in Whistler, testing out Jas' new bike (The Purple Dust Bunny), hiking with Sharon and Dale on some local trails, then Jas and I went hiking up to Wedgemount Lake!
For our second anniversary, we decided to do a couple scrambles. I'd done the Markhor-Needle Traverse solo in 2024, so I had a good idea of what it would be like for Jas. Another one we'd always wanted to do was Tomyhoi Peak, which is in the USA but is part of the iconic backdrop viewable from Chilliwack. Tomyhoi's saddle-like glacier is getting smaller each year, but it always provides a landmark to attract the eyes from afar.
Markhor-Needle Traverse - Sept 28, 2025
We drove up a familiar highway to the Coquihalla, but this time without a mattress and camping gear as we had in July when we hiked Needle on the way to Skaha, Castelgar, and Valhalla. We started up an indistinct trail towards Markhor, eventually finding a solid footpath up through the trees. Higher up, the trees thinned into shrubs, and eventually into granite slabs. We reached the top of Markhor Peak after about 2 hours and stopped to eat some food. Ahead, we surveyed our line down the slabs and over the undulating ridge towards Needle Peak. If I had not done it prior, it would probably have been a bit more mysterious and intimidating.
The first challenge of the day was descending the slabs off Markhor. These have an abhorrent tendency to accumulate "kitty litter" in the form of treacherous pebbles coating the steep granite rock. I brought a rope to rappel past these, but we were pleased to find a fresh hand-line installed. I showed Jas how to "hip rappel" by wrapping the rope around the waist to add some friction. Soon, we were on stable terrain and moseyed over to the adjacent hump. Here, we found some rap tat from a previous group to lower past a low-angle, but very exposed, rock spine. I had down-scrambled this the previous September, but knew this would be too spooky for Jas. So, I rigged the 30m RAD line and lowered down, waiting for Jas to join me below. The next section up to Needle was probably the most fun scrambling of the traverse, with moderate exposure but easy movement up the ridge to the summit. We reached the top just after 2 pm, sharing the views with a few other groups. After scrambling down the regular trail, we reached the car after just under 6 hours of total time - what a great way to spend the day!
Tomyhoi Peak - October 5th, 2025
One week later, the weather was still amazing, so we decided to do second adventure (which seemed fitting as it was our 2nd anniversary). Tomyhoi had been on our list since the year before, but we had been weathered out and decided to save it. We drove across the border and up towards Mt Baker Ski area, splitting off the road up an FSR for Yellow Aster Butte and Tomyhoi. The parking situation was atrocious, with several kilometres of cars lined up end-to-end. Cheekily, I decided to drive to the top to see if a space had opened, and we were lucky to find one 100m away from the trailhead. Just before 10am, we started up with a congo-line of hikers, and began an unfortunate pattern of asking,
Excuse me, could we pass you?
The inattentive folks were honestly very frustrating as they would ignore us breathing down their necks until finally letting us pass, or we would just scoot around when the trail widened.
Finally, we passed Yellow Aster Butte, where most of the hordes of people were headed for a viewpoint. We descended a steep slope towards alpine tairns, which were interspersed amongst fields of red, orange, and yellow foliage. The clear skies and vibrant Fall colours made for incredible views in every direction, especially of Mt Baker. We followed a well-trod footpath along the ridge towards Tomyhoi, until we reached the base of the scramble. We traded our sun-hats for helmets and stashed our hiking poles before climbing a frigid gully. While we hadn't seen hardly a soul for several kilometres, turns out they were all on the Tomyhoi scramble. It was a bit of a congo line as we reached the final steep wall, so we waited our turn as groups went up and down. Finally, we made our way up the wall, which had mostly decent rock and a few class 4 moves with exposure. The summit was hidden behind more towers than we expected, so a few more bits of 3rd class led us to the tippity top! We exchanged photography favours with another party and then enjoyed the summit to ourselves for a while, scoping out Chilliwack through our monocular. It took us about 4 hours from the car to the summit.
We carefully retraced our steps down the scramble. On the steep wall, I found an enormous block teetering, which we hadn't touched on the way up. I called out and looked around the make sure no one was below called out to a group departing ahead of us of my decision to loose it. I didn't want another group to accidentally grab hold of it and pull it down on themselves or another party.
TRUNDLLLEEEE!!!
I yelled, which let anyone know that it was an intentional action, not an accident. Aside from this spooky block, the way back was easy, and we reached our poles and brimmer hats with lots of daylight left. We trotted back along the trail, passed the hordes of ignorant hikers on the way (turns out if they hear someone running behind them, they get spooked and step aside more frequently!), and reached the car about 7.5 hours after we left. Unfortunately... we were boxed in by some fellow Canadians. Thankfully Franklin the CRV was able to muster up enough turning radius to miss the car in front of us by an inch, no word of a lie.
Two adventures in two weekends - and we had an incredible time! I'm so proud of Jas, she did so great venturing into new terrain and scrambling through some exposure. Looking forward to many more adventures, both in the mountains and also in our lifetime ahead.
Love you Jas!
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