Elevation Gain: 1,341m
Distance: 16.69km
Total Time: 6 hours 45 minutes
Date: September 13th, 2025
While my work generally offers great flexibility to get out and explore, every few months I am required to work oncall. That means being in service over the weekend and it usually results in me sticking around the city. So, what is one to do when the weather is perfect but they need to be close to a laptop and cell tower? Well I theorized that one of the front country peaks around the Fraser Valley must surely be the answer. Nicomen Peak in particular has an established hiking trail and was almost guaranteed to have cell service. This is not a particularly exciting summit as it’s a heavily logged and forested peak, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to get outside.
I left Vancouver at a casual time and I pulled up as some hikers appeared to be returning. I followed the obvious trail along Norrish Creek and then steered upwards on trails running up “Little Nicomen”. This spat me out at an old spur road that was covered in spider webs. I flailed my pole ahead of me until reaching a newer section of road and then followed that to its end.
Here a trail picked up where the road left off and climbed up through an overgrown cutblock. I had come armed with some tools and did my best to battle back the bush before continuing on to more open forest. Above the logging roads and cut blocks the terrain was actually quite pleasant. There was lush open forest and the trail was easy to follow.
I took this up to the ridge and then a false summit of sorts. More pruning was required and then I hiked the last bit up to the top. There were no views at all, but a pin on my map seemed to indicate a vista was not far beyond. I followed a more overgrown trail through some dense thickets and reached the opening a few hundred meters past the summit. There was a nice vantage towards Baker and I was happy to have made the trek out.
From the clearing I returned back to the summit, dispensed with some more overgrown sections and slunk back into the forest. After that it was the same mix of logging roads and trails to take me down to Norrish Creek. I stopped for a quick swim in the creek along the way. It was the warmest one I’ve been in to do date and a very worthwhile stop. Finally, I walked the last few hundred meters to the truck; content with a nice outing despite the circumstances.
