Pope Mountain

At Fort St James, 1hr 45min drive northwest of Prince George, is a run from Lake Stuart to the summit of Pope Mountain, 1472m elevation.

We started on this side of the log shown in the picture and ran about 3-4 km to the forested hills and then about 6km up the mountain to the peak.

The trail through the forest was beautiful with frozen dirt tracks to run on amongst various pine trees. Parts of the track were quite steep so I couldn't actually run all the way.

The views at the top were astounding. This one is looking westward over Stuart Lake. The whitish stony line at the bottom of the picture is the limestone gravel path up to the peak.

Looking northwest up Stuart Lake. It's about 50km long and 10km wide. The island is called Battleship Island for obvious reasons!

My photo was quickly taken as proof of my feat and then back down into the forest out of the cold breeze.

Pinchi Lake and Tezzeron Lake to the east. The small looking hill to the right is the Murray Ridge ski area.

Back in the shelter of the forest a camp fire awaited, warming hot chocolate or cider, and a home made biscuit to re-energise you to run all the way back again.

At the finish line we had to jump over the log on the beach to cross the finish line!

After 2 1/2 hours some people had to soak their feet in the freezing lake water to recover!

We were lucky with the weather - a week latter it snowed 20-30cm snow which blocked the only access road and cut off power to most people in the area.