Elevation Gain: 2,259m
Distance: 21.96km
Total Time: 17 hours 32 minutes
Date: June 20th to 21st, 2026
After a few years of hiking and scrambling up the more well known objectives around Southwest BC, I started to yearn for something more obscure. I’m not sure what it was, but even in my early years the lesser known summits had a calling for me. I was not yet aware that there were in fact many unclimbed summits in BC, when I stumbled upon The Defendant. At the time I knew of only the first ascent, done by John Clarke, Paul Adam, Kobus Bernard and Muriel Pacheco. They also went on to climb the Witness and Judicator Peak in the same trip. The idea of getting a second ascent lit a fire in me and I spent a great deal of time poring over maps and making this a must-do trip. Then, as I was getting close to making it a reality two climbers made the second known ascent in 2022. My enthusiasm waned after and I moved onto other projects. In the mean time, my friends Seb and Chris made the third ascent in 2023 and then all went quiet for a few years.
In 2025, Trevor, Alex and myself made an ascent of Judge Howay and suddenly with our new found access the possibility of doing The Defendant was opened up again. A year later, I found myself in a group chat with Steven and Trevor discussing route ideas up The Defendant. At long last it would be a reality and we planned to set off on the weekend of June 20th.
We showed up at the Stave Lake boat launch at around 5am and our ride whisked off across the lake and then down the road to the hydro project. Just as the sun rose into the valley we left the clearing in the road and entered the forest for a days worth of bushwhacking. The first few hundred meters of ascent were actually not bad, but after that it was sustained bushwhacking as we followed the west side of the outflow of Judicator Lake. We reached a key gully that required a bit of down climbing as we trended too high and then we were on flat, but continuously bushy terrain to the lake.
Once we reached the lake we had a nice snack break and took on what are likely some rarely seen views. The next stage of the plan was to gain the ridge west of Judicator Lake and ramble in the alpine to The Defendant. One more stern section of bushwhacking gave way to open terrain at last and we basked on the unrestricted ridge line above. We followed the ridge southwards all the way to The Defendant’s Northwest Ridge. Clouds obscured the summit and we were still early in the day so we elected to wait an hour or so to see if they would clear. Indeed they did and we set off!
We had no real beta for the ridge line, but it didn’t look terribly complicated anyhow. Initially we started on the West side following a small ramp up to a chimney and then we stuck to the ridge crest until reaching a large notch mid way up. This notch required some low 5th class down climbing with Steven finding a reasonable route through. We all managed to down climb without issue and then we continued on the ridge crest until reaching one final short head wall. Here we trended climber’s left to another ramp and then up a low angle corner to regain the crest. The difficulties were now over and we had an easy walk to the summit.
Together we spent at least an hour on the summit enjoying the sun and scenery and scoping out potential bivy spots. Our goal was to get near The Witness and climb it on the following day to complete a loop around Judicator Lake. As golden hour was nearing, we left the summit and downclimbed our ascent line back to the notch. Ascending was much easier and then we descended off the Northwest ridge down snow slopes on the north side of The Defendant. Those slopes lead us to the Defendant-Witness col where we found a nice level heather camp spot to set up for the night.
We opted to go light on this trip so everyone had just a sleeping mat and sleeping bag to their name, but the weather was perfect for an open air camp anyhow. After a well earned meal we enjoyed the sunset lighting on the Judge and then fell asleep in preparation for The Witness the next day.