Located at the Southern end of the Yuon Peak ridge system lies Peak 1778. It wasn’t listed on any maps like Bivouac, Peakbagger or OSM but it looked worth visiting. I had planned to ascend it as part of a two day trip to do Yuon Peak with Calum. I had a feeling that Yuon was likely climbed despite not finding any records, but Peak 1778 is quite out of the way and less prominent than the taller summits to the North.
As it were, Calum and I had indeed found a cairn on Yuon during day one of our trip. Now at 5am our alarms broke the peaceful silence along the northern end of Yuon Lake. We begrudgingly rose out of bed and after a quick breakfast started our traverse along the west side of the lake. Trending about midway up we avoided any difficulties and crossed the outflow of Yuon Lake as the sun began to rise above the horizon.
At the southern end of the lake we found more cairns and I was beginning to think the entire area might be more visited than I thought. We followed the ridge south and scrambled up an attractive horn about 1.5km south of the lake. There was a small pile of rocks resembling a cairn on top but I’m not sure who might have left it there. I’ll hazard a guess someone taking a float plane in, but who knows.
Calum and I debated turning around here as we were tight on time, but curiosity eventually won out and we scrambled down the south side to the col with Peak 1778. We stuck to the north face and scrambled up lovely slabs and and solid granite all the way to the summit. Now to our surprise there were no cairns at all. We took a few minutes to build one and then with that 5pm water taxi pick up on our minds quickly headed off for camp.
The return journey took awhile navigating all of the boulders and slabs but we reached camp just before 11am. We quickly tore things down and then made haste for Falk-Chickwat col. On the way in we had spotted a potential line that might avoid the worst of the bush and it involved taking a separate set of roads back to our bikes. As we reached our proposed alternative, we found what seemed to be a reasonable line through the steep cliffs below.
We down climbed through a section of large blocks and boulders and then down a 4th class chimney. Then a short section of loose talus took us to some vege belays and then one more 4th class down climb on ledges through slabs. With that we were through the difficulties. What remained was a tedious section of mossy wet boulders and some bush until we hit open forest.
After that it was smooth sailing to the end of the roads where we had to ascend up a creek and forest to reach our bikes again. By the time we reached our bikes we appeared to have beat the time crunch. Gravity did the rest and we arrived at the dock with 30 minutes to spare! On the way down we ran into a dirt biker who had managed to get his bike onto the dock and then up the road. He returned to the dock shortly after and offered us some amazing espresso. Shortly after the water taxi arrived and we were back to civilization.
For the price of admission, this was a fantastic area to visit. Logging has taken a big bite out of the forest, but the alpine remains pristine and the remoteness adds to the appeal.