Day 328 - The hike to Needle Peak

John, Michael, Peter and I left for Needle Peak trail at 8 am on Saturday morning. Located in Coquihalla Summit Recreation Area a few minutes out of Hope, the trail is an 8.5 km moderate hike to the summit of Needle Peak and back.

Peter, John and Michael leaving the car park.

We hiked for about 1.5 hours up-hill, constantly waiting for the trail to level out and give our hamstrings a rest. We found a spot amongst some exposed rock and ate the banh mi sandwiches we bought earlier that morning. We ate half of our sandwiches, leaving the other half for the summit.

Continuing up the trail, we came to a point where we found people waiting at a bottleneck. There was a single rope to help hikers climb up to reach the summit. We waited for another hiker to carry his dog up the rope. We then took turns pulling ourselves up, scrambling over rocks and looking for markers to get to Needle Peak’s summit.

We ate the remaining half of our sandwiches at the summit, before the treacherous journey back to the car park. The descent was mostly downhill, destroying our knees and having us crab walking on all fours just to manoeuvre down some tricky spots. Towards the end, Peter and Michael took a slip on the muddy steps, but was back on their feet at the car park. We ended the day stopping by Popeyes to taste the limited-time-only chicken sandwich, then meeting up with Jack at Damso for all-you-can-eat pork belly.