Back to Find Mt. DeCosmos' Summit

Poor quality pano from the top...1st and 2nd Lakes 4000 odd ft below...(Click to enlarge all images)

We were up on the Mt DeCosmos roads around mid-July for the second time when we rode up the second lower summit as far as roads would take us.  Not enough--we've wanted to get right up to the summit and look over the other side at the Nanaimo Lakes for quite some time now.  So, this was today's plan:  Follow much of our July route and hike to the summit.

The route:

1.  Entered the Lantzville Foothills roads through the Harwood Drive Workaround and followed the beaten path to Bonnell Main (Sundew Main)
2.  Left turn to join the main logging roads (Bonnell)
3.  Round Lake and Kidney Lake area
4.  Left onto Branch 142 towards Boomerang Lake
5.  Right turn after Boomerang
6.  Turned right on the "Power Line Trail"
7.  Exit left towards Mt. DeCosmos (see photo directly below for additional details).
8.  Through "ThE HeLLeVaToR" trail... (bwaaaaahahahaha), then turn left on DeCosmos roads.  (Actually, the trail leading towards the "Hellevator" suits the name better.  We've tamed this hell spawn wannabe--little softy satanic trail that it is....pffff).
9.  End of second summit road.  Parked and turned left to hike up the slope to the top.
10.  Not a bad hike.  We had to stop a few times to catch our breath, but it was fairly easy going for the most part.  Bring water! 
11.  Stopped for a while at the transmitter that sits at the summit.
12.  Lots of trees to hike around to find the good viewpoints of the Nanaimo Lakes.  We found a couple of rock outcrops that get past most of the trees.  Photos below ;)
13.  Retraced our steps to the Alternate Tank Traps.  (This route has recently become usable again after two recent dig up sessions by the logging company)  Works for now, but get in quick folks, because when they find out...
14.  From Doumont to the Black Bear Pub to celebrate our victory!

Some additional details for left turn at location #7

Colour Coded Altitude Track:  Range = 103.5 m to 1331.6 m (339.6 ft to 4368.77 ft)  

Google Earth Screen Capture Showing Elevation Profile (Click for Better Detail)

Here's a GoogleEarth flyover video of the route.

Here's a "fly on the map" 100x animation of this track.  I left the GPS sitting a couple of times, so you'll have to be patient with the occasional 100x wait.  ;)

Looking Back Towards Okay Mountain from DeCosmos 2nd Summit

Transmitter

Some guy who was working on the transmitter

Looking SE towards First Lake

Clearer View:  SE Towards First Lake

Looking NE Towards the Winchelsea Island Group 

"Crash Corner" is directly above the "NE" in the above caption...Our first attempt at summiting DeCosmos left me with months of physiotherapy, and Andy with a damaged bike...You can read about that and see the route here...De Cosmos, De Crash and De Lesson...  You cannot get to this peak from the Crash Corner route (without a fair hike), but it's just possible you might be able to hike up to the "other" DeCosmos peak from the end of that road.

The Park 'N' Climb Spot...  Ready to Head Back

Shots of the riding conditions and what you can expect to encounter (surface quality and terrain) referring to numbers from the map:

Above - Between 6 and 7: The hydro-line trail was as usual dry and easy

Between 7 and 8 - Above and below - the trail connecting the hydro lines to the Hellevator can be fast and smooth, but is littered with boulders from winter runoff.  It seems longer every time we ride it!

Between 8 and 9: this gate was open in July.  The workaround is simple - the strange little gatekeeper sliding down the bank from his cave on high - directed us to the workaround (he's standing on it).  As we rode around, he slapped his leg and laughed, explaining that the joke was on us, as the gate wasn't locked!  "What's the point?!" we retorted.  He simply placed his index finger to his temple and replied cryptically that, "Tim Berwest works in mysterious ways."

Close to 9: almost there.  Look at that surface!  Dirt bike Nirvana!

8...Descending the Hellevator...You may be able to click and improve resolution, by clicking the settings button...

Track available HERE.
Fantastic ride!  If you decide to follow our track, make sure you wear a bright orange shirt so you can attract as many wasps as possible while on the summit.  This is particularly important if you want wasps to cluster around your sandwich and water bottle.  ;)

His nibs, replete in luminous orange insect attracting shirt (snicker), directing wasps, horse flies and various other biting insects to "Sit".  It must be the altitude.

EDIT:     Ah, here we are.  The proof:  "I command you to SIT!"

Winchelsea Islands View and the Lantzville Foothills

It was a mixed bag of rides today.  I've been looking at a photo on Google Earth that Paul took entitled "Old Logging Terminus" and I've been wanting to get up there and check what looks like an outstanding view of the Winchelsea Islands.  The same array of logging road spurs takes you up to a couple of smaller lakes in the area that I've been curious about, so for part one of today's ride I planned to search out the spurs and take in the lakes and the ocean view.

Part two was intended only to check out the location of the Lantzville foothills gate.  I assumed it would be locked since entrance to this area is always gated from the Doumont entrances.  To my great surprise and even greater pleasure, it was open!  I went through, explored a spur and rode a beautiful trail to the Vipond Road gate.  Details posted below in the photos.

Here's the route:

1.  Entered at Doumont Trail, through the Tank Traps and on past Round Lake.
2.  Turned left and began exploring network of spur roads, (blue shaded oval).
3.  I was disappointed with the lakes... both are strewn with fallen timber and have little access for fishing.  Forgot to snap a picture. :(  They're not stocked with trout of course.  I'm dubbing them "The Crap Lakes."  Fun trails all around... lots of ups and downs.  Tons of logging; over logging really--quite sad.
4.  This is a fantastic location!  The view of the Winchelsea Islands is superb.  Like an idiot, I brought my digital camera, but it had difficulty writing the data to my memory card that was sitting on my computer at home.  Must go back and take more...  I had to settle for Garmin's navigational snaps this time around.  Could be worse; these photo are set at Garmin's highest resolution of 5MP.
5.  Back onto the main logging road, The Sundew Main Connector, and then a sharp right onto the Lantzville Foothills entrance road.
6.  Rode this fun little uphill spur road.
7.  Reached the ominous gate into the foothills.  I took a few minutes to walk around and check for any possible work-arounds:  No chance--they have that area locked down like a full-security prison, but as I said in my opening paragraphs, it was open today!
8.  Took a left at the upcoming Y and proceeded up a really nice trail.  The ground changes to a red clay base out in the foothills direction and the riding surface is either smooth clay or chunks of rock thrown down by the logging road graders.  Very steep here and there...  I turned around on one of the hills and decided to go looking for a route through the foothills towards any available Doumont gate.  Could it be open too?
9.  This was a fantastic older logging road.  Twisty and hilly with a firm base of mainly packed mud/clay with many grassy spots.  The large chunks of rocks are always about on the hills though, thanks to the logging co.          
10.  Arrived at Vipond Rd. gate.  It was locked of course, but easy to get around.

A wee bit of perspective

The fantastic Winchelsea Islands view spot,  (Paul's "Old Logging Terminus.")  The white line on the coast over the water is the town of Sechelt on Vancouver's sunshine coast.   

A panoramic image of the same area

Along one of the spurs out towards "Crap Lake"

More spurs in the same area.  No trees around there.  :(

Open Sesame!  The Lantzville Foothills Gate

 

The red trails of the Lantzville foothills

Red again...  It's like Mars out there.

Exiting at the Vipond Rd. Gate.  I was a little worried that if I wasn't able to get through this one, I would have to retrace my steps and possibly meet a closed gate on the other side where I had entered.  It was close to 6pm and they have a habit of locking things up around 5pm in some areas.  It was a pretty easy work around at this end though.  Gotta love that sign!  :)

Some kind individual must have buggered up their "keep-out" chain with a truck.  Easy as pie.

 40.2 Km...  I was completely knackered with the beautifully hot sun we've had all day!  I need to sort out a summer riding jacket to content with the heat out there.

Great ride.  I want back in there to explore some more trails.

Here are my GPS files:
GPX for Garmin format
KMZ for Google Earth format

"Speed" on left, "Elevation" on right and "Distance" on the horizontal.  "Elevation" line in green and "Speed" line in blue.  I know, I'm slow....  What can I say?

Another Cheesy Time-Lapse Movie

I decided to have another go at making a time-lapse movie today.  Galloway Gulch Trail seemed like a perfect choice; it's really local, it's below the snow line and I didn't get an accurate GPS track of it yet.  Here's the routes:

The red route (top to bottom) runs from Galloway Gulch Road to Jameson Rd.  The orange spur goes from the main trail up to a bivouac overlooking the Doumont area.  Surprisingly, both trails matched my earlier guesses of these routes quite accurately.

Here's a YouTube time-lapse video of the ride.  The movie starts at Allsop Rd (off Jingle Pot), runs the length of the Galloway Trail where it turns 180° at the yellow gate before turning left onto the bivouac spur trail.  Sure looks good on the even road surface, but the bouncing on the trails reduces the quality substantially.  The opening title is incorrect:  my iPod battery decided to cut the movie short!  In real time it's only about 40 min, and the total running time is only 2:30.  I can't believe the changes on this trail since the summer; they've logged the crap out of it!

 
Here are a couple of Garmin camera shots too:

The bivouac at the end of the orange trail

From the bivouac, looking out towards the Doumont Road area

"There's Gold in Them There Hills:" Proposed Route #5

Got out again yesterday and rode the Sundew Gate to Weigles Rd standard route.  It was quite wet but it was fantastic to get out on the bike again if only for a short spell.  I'm amazed at the continued change in conditions on some of the local logging roads:  There are many spots where streams have chewed up the hard packed gravel road surface.  This is nothing new to a seasoned trail bike rider from this area, I'm sure, but it's sure catching my attention lately.  The tank traps really make me laugh lately.  There's a six inch wide route that I like to take through the quagmire... If I mess with my six inch strip, I'm stuck in the goo.  Anyway, I thought I'd post another proposed route today.  Here's another climb up Mt DeCosmos planned for after the snow melts in the spring.  Proposed route #5:

I was surfing the internet, looking at mid Vancouver Island mines, (closed historical sites).  I found an interesting page offering a parcel of land for sale in the Nanaimo region with a proven gold mining site.  The article described the mine site itself to be behind a small waterfall on Deadhorse Creek in the Mt DeCosmos area.  So, I now have an approximate position of the land for sale, the creek and a possible location for the mine/waterfall.  The trail to the mine continues up Mt DeCosmos for some distance to a second summit location which looks like it will offer spectacular views of the Nanaimo Lakes Area.  (Here's the webpage with the land for sale).

Here's some Google screen snags:

The route in orange begins at the end of Second Lake on Nanaimo Lakes Road.  The first "possible location" shown is another reference I found to the mine.  I think this might be an inacurate "within 500m" type of reference that refers to exactly the same mine.  The white squared boundary is approximate location of the mining land that's for sale.  The blue line represents the location of Deadhorse Creek.  The bright green line shows the final spur leading to the summit ridge.  It might be a bit too hairy for a ride, but a hike up this final trail would be well worth it to get to the view.  (Great geocache location too).  Red arrow shows the highest point on the road.  The elevation profile shown at the bottom looks at the orange route from lake to summit, with the vertical line showing the high point (red arrow) position.

Same roads viewed at an angle to show the contours better.

A detail of the creek in blue.  Approximate mine location is shown with the red arrow.

A detail of the final spur road in green.  The red arrow shows the high point in this trail and also the beginning of a section that may prove too difficult to ride.  We'll have to see.

Google Earth view looking East

Google Earth SW View

Two panoramic views from the top of DeCosmos:  The first is a 360 degree panoramic photo and the second is a winter 128 degree panoramic.  Both were created from YouTube videos using Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (free software).  

 
I'm really looking forward to this ride.  Looks like a full day if that mine is to be included in the ride.  Better bring a gold pan on this one!

UPDATE:  We did this ride in the summer of 2012, and we found the mine.  See here for details.  

Another Look from Beautiful Blackjack Ridge

I went up Blackjack Ridge again today.  I've been wanting to tryout the longer trail that travels along the length of the ridge because it looks like the views would be pretty spectacular from up there.

Here's today's route:

Entered trails from Weigles Road entrance (left to right).  (Click to enlarge).

 

It was really bloody cold out there today.  I met snow near the top of the ridge and chickened out from completing the route as intended, stopping instead to take panoramic photos SW from the ridge.  My original plan had been to go beyond the longer purple line above by about 1.5km.  That would have taken me to the best viewpoint on the ridge.  I really want to check out the rest of the route when the snow melts, although I have a feeling it's going to be white for a while up there.

Snow!!  Pretty nasty in places too.  Perfect for slowing the riding down a tad.  There was just enough gravel here and there to avoid the ice patches.

As high as I got today.  (End of the purple line on route map).

  

SW facing, 180 Panoramic from the ridge (Magenta line on route)

 

Overlooking Blackjack Lake... Facing SW.  (Magenta trail on the route).

 

180 degree panoramic image (low res) made from a video I took.  (Magenta trail on the route).

Same trail

With all this snow around, I had to get a couple of shots of Round Lake frozen over, so I flew over in that direction before the sun got too low.

Round Lake frozen over.  Hard as rock... I bounced several fairly large rocks across it.

Terrific ride!

Saw two large 4x4 trucks coming through the tank traps on the way out.  Very impressive.  How they got those things through there is anyone's guess.

Oops, almost forgot the 3D anaglyph shots for the dorks with the red/cyan glasses!  Here's two:

Looking SW from Blackjack Ridge.  (Needs red/cyan 3D glasses).

Looking SW from Blackjack Ridge.  (Needs red/cyan 3D glasses).