A small group took advantage of the great weather to hike up to Beech’s Mountain. This trail is a good workout, rewarded by excellent views. We stopped at the broad overlook to the northeast to enjoy the scenery and then continued on to the summit of Beech for lunch. We then decided to make a loop back to the parking lot by taking the flagged route down the north side of Beech’s mountain, continuing on the old logging road for a while, and then following another flagged route along bluffs, finally joining the North Chinese Mountain trail. 6.5 km; less than 4 hours.

Debbie

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Hiking – Beech’s Mtn – 27 Sept 2015

The Chinese Mountains have recently become a popular climbing area.  On the down side, the trailhead parking lot is now often full (there are plans to fix the road into it and expand the parking lot), but on the plus side, there are new trails to explore and new viewpoints opened up.   On this trip, ten of us explored the path to what was called “Far West Wall” last year.  The new name is “Eagle Crag” because some climbers found an eagle’s nest on it.  The trip is short, only 4.4 km round trip, half on official trails and half on the new path.  And there is a section about 200 meters long where it is easy scrambling and not walking, where the path goes up a series of small ledges to reach the top of the crag.  There is about 200 metres elevation gain in total.  The view from the top of the crag goes from Morte Lake and Little Morte Lake, about 180 degrees to the south end of Cortes Island.  The view from the bottom of the crag is pretty good too.

For climbers, the guide book to this area is Philip Stone’s “Quadra Island Rock Climbs”,
http://www.wildisle.ca/quadrarockclimbs/

There are also some maps and photos online which show the climbing areas and the access paths to them.
http://www.quadraisland.ca/adventure-recreation-tours/rock-climbing/chinese-mountains.html

Norris

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Hiking – Far West Wall – 2 Sept 2015