Elevation Gain: 1,493m
Distance: 15.29km
Total Time: 5 hours 2 minutes
Date: June 13th, 2024
My long time friend was looking to hike or get out in the evening mid week and so I started rummaging around for ideas. We were just 8 days shy of the summer solstice so it was actually somewhat feasible to squeeze in a long-ish outing after work. I had a think and finally settled on Hat Mountain & Fat Ass Peak in the North Shore. As is customary, I save as many north shore summits as possible for those days where I simply do not want to drive far or have other commitments. It just so happened Hat Mountain was still on the list and could be done in 6 or 7 hours which would be the perfect outing. Mike was down as always and so we met up after my work shift and drove out and started up the trailhead around 6pm.
I’ve done this approach too many times to count and I sincerely hope one day they build an upper parking lot to skip the boring road walk. In any event, we set a brisk space and were soon on the way up towards Brunswick Mountain. At the 1500m mark we took the obvious junction for Hat Mountain and hit patchy sections of snow as we traversed north underneath Mount Brunswick. From there we hit more continuous snow and simply picked the past of least resistance up to Fat Ass Peak. This summit has a paltry 40m of prominence, but for whatever reason, it’s officially named.
We dropped off the summit after a quick drive by and did a mix of scrambling and snow stepping up to the top of Hat Mountain. A beautiful green radio repeater welcomed us to the top and we hung out to catch the sunset. As soon as the sun was far enough down, we reversed course following our snowy prints back to the Brunswick-Hat junction and then sped down the trail as quickly as we could.
Once we hit the old logging roads, the head lamps came out and we slowed our pace. An hour or so at most got us back to the car and that ended a nice little outing.