We decided to bag this peak from 103 hikes because we figured we could start around 4pm and still finish before nightfall and we had not previously hiked in the Golden Ears/Maple Ridge area. We managed to finish this right at 4 hours as described in the 103 hikes book with a minimal amount of jogging down the logging road at the end.
The trails are all very wide, so easy to walk on but it doesn't really feel like you are on a hike on the wilderness, so some may like it and some may not. Most of the elevation gain was on the large logging road in the first 45 minutes to hour.
Highlights of the hike are passing a pretty decent sized pond a little while (20-30 minutes?) before the viewpoint (pond in pictures) and the viewpoint offers some pretty nice views to the South and West. Unfortunately, there were fires in Harrison and Washington the day we went, so views were a little obscured by smoke.
As far as navigation goes, most of the trail is on google maps app and the stock map app for iPhone, so we used that while also looking at 103 Hikes and only took a wrong turn once for a less than 5 minute delay.
Main decision points on trail:
- Large sign at beginning (in one of pictures), stay to the right
- Stay on this large logging road for approximately 45 minutes, there is one fork spot which you stay to the left around halfway up this road
- The logging road starts to dwindle down and branches after 45 minutes, make sure to stay to the left while the right branches leave (i think there were two branches in a row at this point)
- Follow this trail all the way through the ponds, to the view point and past
- The trail leaving the view point is a nice narrow, dirt, wooded trail that descends through a gully and eventually reaches a cross roads as you reach a flat spot, take the left branch
-Follow this trail until you get back to the main logging road that you started on and turn right to go back to the start
-You will notice that the trail you just came off of has an ATV Trail sign marked "Upper Connector 17", so you could probably reach the view point faster if you simply took this branch on the way up.
Overall, this trail was ok. I wasn't crazy about the trail, too much like a road and there were some rocky areas that would be easy to twist an ankle on if you weren't careful the whole time. The view and the pond were nice, but not as nice as most of the ones in the Chilliwack and Coquihalla area that we have hiked to recently. We probably won't go back to this one, so I wouldn't really recommend it to someone unless they are simply looking to check it off their list or maybe if they are looking for a low elevation hike.