Elevation Gain: 1,455m
Distance: 18.35km
Total Time: 4 hours 9 minutes
Date: October 26th, 2025
Mineral Peak and its surroundings are an area rich in mining history. The valley to its north along with several of its aspects formed the Britannia Mine. This mine was the source of 17% of the worlds copper in the late 1920’s and according to the mine’s history has over 210km of tunnels. It was also a major source of water pollution due to the nature of the rock/mining which results in “acid rock drainage”. Eventually the government resolved to restore the area and protect the water systems by building a water treatment plant and other decontamination systems. Where mining stopped, logging picked up and the area has seen spur roads zig-zag across the valley and up Mineral Peak itself. Fast forward to 2025 and these roads are all gated to protect the sensitive monitoring and decontamination equipment. They were allegedly vandalized over the years and gates finally had to be put in. I’ll hazard a guess that the government didn’t want people wandering down mine shafts either.
All of that makes getting to Mineral Peak a bit tricky. One can certainly bushwhack as they please from the highway, but there’s so many cut blocks and old roads that it’s bound to be bushy. Another option is coming in from the Mountain Lake area to the east, but you’ll need a gate key to make that feasible. Finally, from the Britannia Mine side, there’s also a gate, but newer logging roads run up the north side. I didn’t really have a plan in mind, but earlier this year a few groups found a new biking trail and that ran most of the way to the top from the Britannia side and I figured that would be least bushy option.
My time to finally hike up this forest summit would finally arrive while looking for holes in the otherwise rainy forecast. It seemed the rain would subside by 9am and a few cloudy hours of hiking would at least be free of precipitation. I jumped on it and came equipped with an e-bike to bypass the gate and dispatch with the logging roads. As I left Vancouver on the Sunday morning, it was dry and looking promising. That quickly changed as a I wrapped the bend around Horseshoe Bay and the rain picked up. By the time I reached Britannia, it was falling in sheets.
I pulled over near the museum to check the weather radar and it looked ugly. Nonetheless, I was out here and maybe I could wait it out. I drove the paved end of Copper Drive and waited for 30 minutes until the rain did start to fizzle out. I quickly changed, hopped on the bike and pedalled up Branch 30. Perhaps no further then the first switch back, the rain fell in sheets again and I started to get soaked. At the 4.5km mark I grew fed up and turned back. I rode 30m downhill before stopping again. I was already wet… so what did it matter. With that I stayed the course and started biking back up hill again.
Once I reached the last of the logging roads, the rain had turned to snow and I was no longer getting soaked through. I hid my bike and found the trail through the cut block where my on foot ascent began. To my surprise I started to dry out and the beyond the cut block it was open and pleasant forest.
The snow started in earnest around 1,200m but was easy enough walking. From 1,350m and up the depth picked up and by the time I was on the ridge it was around 1.5 feet deep in most places. Beyond the mountain biking trail, the route had been flagged on the ridge and I was able to pick it up despite the deep snow. I simply followed that the best I could, post holing all the way to the summit about 1.5km beyond.
At the top there weren’t any views, but it was a pleasant winter wonderland and the falling snow created a nice persisting silence. My shoes were soaked, so I didn’t linger and followed my route back down the ridge and onto the trail. The e-bike made for a speedy return to the truck and I was back in time to catch the ferry traffic on the bridge.