Elevation Gain: 1,348m
Distance: 9.14km
Total Time: 7 hours 57 minutes
Date: June 22nd, 2025
When Andrea and I hiked up Elliot Peak in 2023, several summits to the north really caught my eye. Chief among them all was Mount Nraiteskel; a steep granitic peak just beyond the twin lakes area near the headwaters of Downton Creek. Access was a big on again off again problem into that valley, but finally in 2024 a chance would open up. Jacob, Ashley, Trevor, Andrea and myself wandered up Mount Seton and again I caught a glimpse of the neat looking summits at the headwaters.
Almost another year would pass but, weather and friends would align to finally go check out this area. Steven, Elise, Francois and myself were planning a trip together and I was quick to throw out Mount Nraiteskel. Steven thought we should add on Downton Peak as well and that made the most sense as up to 30cm of snow was expected in the alpine. Nraiteskel has some 4th class scrambling so we could go up Downton and bail as a worst case if the weather didn’t allow.
All of us were free to car camp the night before so we made the call to leave Vancouver around 8:30PM and drive as far down the road as we could. Steven had driven most of the way down Downton Creek FSR the year before and a recent report showed that it was bushy but doable to Viola Lake. Looking at satellite imagery I could see the road beyond was very overgrown but that would only require a few extra kilometers from Viola Lake to get where we needed.
We reached the Downton Creek FSR around midnight and made decent time to the Viola Lake spur. Here the road did indeed get extremely overgrown. In fact we could only make it a small sliver of road as we crawled our way through. It was a full on bushwhack in the truck and I destroyed my passenger mirror in the process. Finally around the 16km mark we hit a large opening and called it for the night. The drive put us within just a few kilometers of Downton Creek so a 7am start was in order.
After a quick breakfast we kicked off the morning with some car wash bush whacking to the end of the road and up an old cut block. The misery ended quickly as we entered unlogged forest and then eventually open heather meadows. I was all smiles here. The sun was out, I was dry and the mountains looked as lovely as ever. Downton Peak looked like a walk up and indeed after a few hundred meters of scree bashing we reached the snowy summit without a fuss.
To the west we could see the phenomenal looking Nraiteskel and we wasted no time heading over.