Elevation Gain: 1,747m
Distance: 20.07km
Total Time: 7 hours 26 minutes
Date: May 9th, 2026
(includes Macleod + Hatfield)
During Alex and mine’s excursion up Tulameen Mountain last year, Hatfield and Macleod really caught my attention across the valley. Hatfield’s north face in particular looked imposing and I was quick to do some research when I got home. Naturally the south side offered an easy scramble to the top, but I tucked it away in my mind as an area worth checking out. A year plus later and it was spring of 2026 and I was somewhat fed up of lugging snow shoes around. I was longing for some scrambling on dry rock. I recalled that Andrea had just been mushroom picking in the Manning park area and reported a total scarcity of snow. That’s when it dawned on me that the Hatfield area might be largely snow free. I set about to find out.
Armed with an e-bike I headed out on May 9th under blue sunny skies. I had intended to bring my bike to spare my truck from some of the nasty water bars reported, but I didn’t even make it that far. A new wash out stopped me just 2.5km down the Eight Mile 1120 branch. I found a nice spot to pull over and ascended the remainder of the road by bike. There were several more major wash outs and so it was lucky that I had brought a bike at all.
I reached snow just before the end of the road, albeit just patchy enough to impede biking. As hid the bike I waffled over leaving the snowshoes behind as well. Thinking better of it, I continued up the road only to ditch them a few hundred meters later when I saw almost no snow for the entirety of Macleod Peak. That’s about when I decided to do Macleod first too. I hadn’t seen Hatfield just yet, but the appeal of dry rock was too enticing.
As the road ended I briefly hiked through new-ish cut block and then only 100m of bush before open slopes. A dream come true. The rest of the ridge to the scramble was ascended under warm sunny skies. I didn’t have much, if any, beta on Macleod and now sitting under the south east ridge it appeared I had a 3rd or 4th class scramble on my hands. The ridge didn’t prove all difficult, but it sure was fun and not one spec of snow was touched in the process. Well… except the final summit plateau. Another summit down the ridge threatened to be taller, but after consulting some maps it appeared the true summit was straight ahead. I marched over and had a long lunch break before continuing back down for an ascent up Hatfield.
