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As predicted, the final bit of climbing to the top of the spire was easy - a bit of steep hiking around a few scrubby trees. The top was fairly small - only perhaps twenty feet across. To the north, east and south, the land dropped away quite precipitously.
On top of Morrison Spire
Marble Meadows
Brian on Morrison Spire
The summit provided a full 360-panorama of nearly all of Strathcona Provincial Park. Looking back east, we had a broad view over the entirety of the plateau of Marble Meadows. Seeing it from here - and having just experienced walking across it - you realize that it isn't a featureless, flat plateau. There is a fair bit of elevation difference and local ups and downs that make it more rugged than its name would suggest.

Also visible from atop the spire was Wheaton Lake - our basecamp location for our stay here. We were only about 3 kilometres direct-line distance from the lake, and we could clearly see two of our three tents on the far left shoreline.
courtesy BConnell
Limestone and McBride
View South
Mysterious summit bugs
Soon after arriving on the summit, we noticed that there were flying insects here. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. We hadn't noticed them even a few minutes before arriving on the summit, and they certainly hadn't been in evidence at any time earlier on our hike. But here, they were everywhere - especially on the summit cairn, and on our hats and packs. Maybe they liked highpoints for some reason. They didn't seem to be biting, but they were annoying. We tried to cover up our heads and faces to avoid having them fly into our hair, ears and eyes.
Close up of summit bugs
The majority of the major peaks on Vancouver Island can be seen from Morrison Spire. A good time to get out the long zoom and take an inventory. Far to the south were peaks such as Tom Taylor, Mount Septimus and Nine Peaks - all quite foreign to me. Closer to our location were the more familiar sights of the Golden Hinde, Elkhorn Mountain and Kings Peak. Far to the north was the mysterious, distant double-prominence of Mount Victoria (Vancouver's 3rd-highest) and Warden Peak.
Mount Tom Taylor
Several Peaks at once
Septimus-Rosseau
Mount Albert Edward
The Golden Hinde
El Piveto Mountain
Mass of limestone
Elkhorn and Kings Peak
Distant Victoria Peak
As I said earlier, from the top of Morrison Spire, we had clear lines of sight in all directions. Looking east, I could even spy the faint lines of ski runs on the distant hump of Mount Washington, Vancouver Island's biggest downhill ski area. This, I realized, meant that we probably had cell coverage. An idea popped into my head: we could call Jenn's dad (a retired ophthalmologist) and get a quick opinion on Arn's eye situation.

Sure enough, our phones had signal, and Jenn was soon talking with her dad. Many questions were asked, but the answers Arn gave to all of them were in the negative (as in, "no, I don't have that symptom, nor that symptom, etc"). In all, rather inconclusive. He did have a general recommendation to get it looked at, but beyond that, there wasn't much we could determine.
Cool Connell
Wheaton Lake
Another Hinde Closeup
courtesy JInnes
The Old Woman
As pleasant as the summit of Morrison Spire was, it was now time to start back. The summit bugs were striving to make it an unpleasant place for a rest break, in any case.

We clambered back down the west face and began back north along the ridgecrest. We then descended back to the little finger of snow, and descended that to its lower end, where it was melting into another of the pristine little ponds of turquoise water that seemed plentiful around here. This seemed like a nice place to stop, and it allowed us to refill our water supplies, which had gotten rather low. The flying pests from the top had disappeared nearly the instant we had started to descend, and were nowhere in evidence here. Weird. Maybe they truly were "summit bugs".
courtesy BConnell
Descending snow finger
Meltwater Pond
"Making" water
Incredible Clarity
Arn showed off his rock-skipping prowess as we filtered water from the ice-cold pond. Brian stepped up and started flinging stones as well, surprising us with a powerful snap of the arm. Apparently Brian had been a very good baseball pitcher in his youth. I had no idea.
courtesy JInnes
More filtering
And more filtering...
Arn's pro rock-skipping
After goading Brian and Arn into ever more grandious stone-skipping stunts, we moved on. Soon we descended east off of the ridge down into the area of impressive limestone fossils. This time we did not stop for fossil-viewing, though, and we wound our way down through the striking white formations fairly quickly.
The Skipping Man
Skip it all the way
Back through limestone
Back in Limestone
Almost-dry pond
Karstic Erosion
Once down near the section [that] we considered an unnecessary detour, we decided to go off-path to see if we could chart a more direct and less elevation-lossy route. We did indeed manage to chart a different path, rejoining at a point beyond the lowest section, but the awkwardness and roughness of it didn't really seem all that much better than the route of the footpath. We were discovering that travel in the Marble Meadows area is not quite as straightforward and easy as it might appear on a topo map.
Hillocks of Limestone
Small, Wet Meadow
Approaching Wheaton Ridge
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