Trip Reports

The Gargoyles

Trip Date: March 24, 2012

Participants: Brittany Zenger, Alex Le, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger

Difficulty: 2

Report: Obligations to friends and family kept me in town Friday and Sunday, which left us with a wonderful Saturday to make the most of.  Although we had been planning to go to Mt. Frosty (as I did on the last weekend of March last year) we made a late change of plans Friday evening after realizing that over 50cm of new snow was reported to have fallen in the Manning Park area.  Keeping things simple, we decided to head up to the Diamond Head area and just go as far as we felt like.

A reasonably early start got us up in Ed’s X-Trail to the Diamond Head parking lot at around 9am, and we were out on the trail at about 9:20, and with firm yet non-icy snow on the road, we made quick work up past the Red Heather Shelter to Paul Ridge on a well beaten track.  It was an absolutely blue bird day with not a cloud in the sky and I couldn’t help but be slightly envious of Jeff, Petr, and my other friends who were ahead of us doing a neve traverse.  Nonetheless, we had fantastic views in all directions on our way along Paul Ridge, ranging from Atwell and Pyramid to the north, the Mamquam massif to the east, and Alpen and the Sky Pilot group to our south.

Three of us reached the Elfin Lakes hut at around 12:30 (somehow my dad managed to beat us there by 30 minutes even though he was with us as we came around Round mountain…), and after eating all of my meagre supply of food (much of my lunch was left in the car) and sharing my skin wax with the grateful throng at the hut, we set out for the saddle between Columnar and the Gargoyles a bit before 1.  Within minutes of leaving the hut, the ski tracks ended, and we had to begin breaking trail.  Although the temperature was hovering around 0, the intense solar radiation was melting the snow, leaving it heavy and a real slog to break trail through.  Alex and I alternated breaking trail, which served to exhaust both of us, and we were all grateful when three locals caught up with us and broke trail for the last leg up to the saddle and from there onto the main peak of the Gargoyles, which we reached some time around 2:40.  After a short break, we descended wonderfully consistent slush and corn down to the low point below the Elfin hut, and began our skin back up Paul Ridge.

The return skin was uneventful, even with a brief detour over the sub-summits/bumps of Round mountain, but a severe lack of calories consumed left me completely exhausted by the time we came around Round mountain and were able to take off our skins for the ski down.  Luckily, Britt had half of a mushed up former sandwich in her pack that served to fuel me just enough to make it down to the car.  The road was surprisingly soft for the evening and we made a quick run down the road, reaching the car in the vicinity of 5:45pm.

In all, it was an amazing day trip with perfect weather, great views, and just enough distance and vertical to leave everybody satisfied with their accomplishments.

Rating: 3/3

(Photos by Alex Le)

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Mt. Fromme

Trip Date: Feb 12, 2012

Participants: Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger

Difficulty: 2

Report: With Britt’s recent back injury, and a rather rotten forecast, I wasn’t going to be heading out of town this weekend, and so the question became one of finding a reasonable trip to go on without driving far, that I had never done before, and that wouldn’t require good weather.  In the end, I managed to convince my dad to head for a quick jaunt up Mt. Fromme from Prospect Road.  We set out in a slight drizzle, ascended up the mountain biking trails to the Peer Jynt trail, and then up Bill’s Trail to the summit.  Remarkably, despite it being early February, our snowshoes stayed on our backs and we made the full ascent and descent without needing to put them on.  We didn’t encounter any snow until around 775m, and the snow wasn’t continuous in the trees until around 850m!

It was snowing slightly at the summit despite the temperature hovering above 0, and at the summit we had no views whatsoever.  From the perspective of wanting an interesting destination or wanting great views, Fromme isn’t a great place to go, but it is somewhere slightly off the beaten track despite its closeness to the city, and at this time of year, there are no crowds whatsoever.  Total return trip was around 4 hours 15 minutes.

Verdict: 1/3.  Go there once, or if you just want some exercise on a rainy day, but there are better options nearby.

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Gin Peak

Trip Date: January 15, 2012

Participants: Dave Robertson, Andrzej Jarzabek, Jamal Ahmelid, Giovanni Ghigliotti, Caroline Le Bouteiller, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger (organizer)

Difficulty: 2

Report: Despite the best efforts of the staff at Whistler Olympic Park (WOP) to frustrate our day, my second BCMC trip of the weekend ended up a great success.  Originally we intended to meet at 8am sharp at the base of the ski jumps, but the WOP officials decided that this was not to be the case.  Despite the gate being fully manned when we arrived at 7:45am, the woman inside informed us that we could not pass until 8:30 sharp, when the park officially opened.  We (along with some other backcountry users not aware of this policy) patiently waited until 8:30, at which point we were directed to go to the main lodge to speak with a patroller, who would inform us on how we could access the backcountry.  On speaking to her, we found out that we would have to pay $10 per person to park in their lot, and furthermore, that they had decided to close all access to the backcountry from the area around the ski jumps (from which the ascent route begins in Baldwin’s description), and that the only permitted access is now from the biathlon area, a km or so to the west.  Nobody we talked to seemed to understand the lay of the backcountry around the park, and I think that it is fair to say that WOP is going out of their way to discourage backcountry users from crossing their territory.

We finally got started from the biathlon facility a bit past 9am, with the intention of heading up to Hanging Lake, and from there, to Gin Peak.  On the far side of the biathlon track, there were two routes apparent to us: one, to the left, went by a box that read something like “backcountry access registration”, and the other, to the right, had no apparent sign other than one saying “ski area boundary”.  If you ever find yourself in this place, do yourself a favour and take the route to the right (the actual Hanging Lake trail), not the one on the left, as we followed the tracks on the route to the left into the middle of nowhere, and then found ourselves contouring around the hill on icy slopes for nearly an hour until we managed to hit the proper Hanging Lake trail.

The Hanging Lake trail was well trodden, easy to follow, and we made quick time up to Hanging Lake.  Of interest, we weren’t far up the trail from where we hit it, and around 1100m, encountered 3 guys hiking up the trail in snow boots, searching for their snowmobiles that they had abandoned above the knoll in the fog the previous night.  It sounded as if they had intended to descend on snowmobile from Hanging Lake to WOP, although it’s hard to see how they thought this would be a good idea, especially given how little snow there is low down.

We had lunch at Hanging Lake shortly after noon, and from there it was a quick jaunt up over the ridge to the south east, where we encountered the snowmobile highway.  Leading up from Rainbow Lake to the west side of Gin Peak was, in effect, a groomed path created by dozens of runs up and down by snowmobiles.  There were at least 12 snowmobiles idling down on Rainbow Lake, and they occasionally darted up and down the slopes of Gin Peak as we ascended them.  We all hit the summit of Gin Peak (my first summit of 2012!) at about 1:45 pm, and took some time to enjoy the views before heading down.

The powder on the first few hundred metres of the descent was fantastic, even for a while below Hanging Lake, and even once the powder ran out, the descent was quick and uneventful.  We were back at the cars by 3:30, and an excellent day was had by all.

Verdict: 2/3.  Not the most exciting peak, but has a very easy ascent, fun descent, good views, and safe in most avi conditions.

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Mt. Taylor

Trip Date: January 14, 2012

Participants: Seth Baker, Andrew Brown, Paul Cannin, Cameron Coatta, Pete Finch, James Haworth, Ilze Rupners, Monica Studner, Chloe Tergeman, Brittany Zenger, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger (organizer)

Difficulty: 3

Report: Dark and gloomy weather brought everyone together to Pemberton’s Mt. Currie Coffee Company (a fantastic spot to meet up) at 8am for the first of my two BCMC trips on the weekend of Jan 14/15, and despite some delays (a couple party members were circling the town of Mt. Currie, looking for a coffee shop), we managed to set out on the trip from our cars at around 9:20 am.  The initial logging road stretch of the trip was ridden with alder and made for slow going, and when we reached the end of the road and started heading up through the trees, found that the surface was a nearly impenetrable ice that most of the party members without ski crampons had difficulty ascending.

Needless to say, the ascent up to treeline went much slower than expected, and after a short lunch break, we finally found ourselves in the alpine at about 1:30pm.  By this point, a few party members were quite concerned about the difficulty of the ascent through the trees, and the majority of the group decided to turn around (a few of the strongest members pushed towards the summit, but didn’t make it all the way).

For the descent, we followed the route recommended by Baldwin, and we actually had phenomenal powder for the first few hundred metres, although there were a few short traverse sections that gave some trouble to our splitboarders.  This route barely had enough snow to be feasible as it descends through a boulder field and without sufficient snow, it would be impassable.  Following the left side of the creek down towards the valley, we managed to find the correct place to cross the creek in order to descend the final icy trees and hit the road that would take us back to our cars, but this was greatly assisted by having a GPS device with an accurate altitude reading.  Without an accurate altitude reading, it would likely be difficult to find the right route back to the logging road.

The alder was just as bad on the descent as it was on the ascent, but we made it out to the duffey lake road, and hiked back down to our cars safely, with the last party members making it down at about 4:45 pm.  In all, it was a decent day, if only for the great powder line heading down from our turnaround point, but I will be back someday to make the full ascent to the summit.

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Silverdaisy Attempt

Trip Date: January 7, 2012

Participants: Brittany Zenger, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger

Difficulty: 2

Report: Seeking a reasonable destination for a day with a poor weather forecast and with high avalanche danger in the alpine, we settled on a trip to Silverdaisy Mountain, via the Cayuse FSR.  Setting out from the car at around 9:30, our first observation was that the snow level was extremely low, even for Manning Park, with only around 40cm of snow on the ground at the parking pull out.  There was a small amount of fresh snow on the ground in that area, and the going was quick for the first few km up the road, but the amount of fresh snow increased steadily as we ascended, and by the time we reached the old mine location, amounted to around 8-10 inches.  Yet at the same time, there wasn’t enough snow in the trees to ascend the ridge above the mine as Baldwin recommends, and had no option but to follow the roads towards the Silverdaisy-Claimstake col.

Needless to say, with nearly a foot of powder, breaking trail was extremely tiring and very slow, and although the road system was easy enough to follow, reaching the col requires over 10km of skiing on the road.  We reached a cluster of plywood shelters (for tree planters, I presume) approximately 150m distant (and 30 feet vertical) from the col around 2:30, which was our turnaround time.  Skiing back down the road was fun with all of the fresh powder, and took only 1 hour.  Interestingly, on the way down we noticed from tracks that a marten had walked down our skin track for several km.  In the future, I’d recommend that people only do this trip if either there is enough snow in the trees to skin directly up to the ridge from the old mine site, or if the snow is well settled so that the road up to the Silverdaisy-Claimstake col can be ascended quickly.

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Crater Slabs (October 2011)

Trip Date: October 15, 2011

Participants: Saravie Brewer, Max Bitel, Brittany Zenger, Geoff Zenger

Difficulty: 4

To find a more detailed trip report, please see my report of the route from the previous year.

For the second year in a row, early October brought a string of fair weather days, and Max suggested that we repeat our trip from the previous October to Crown Mountain via the Crater Slabs route, and this time bring Brittany and Saravie along with us for a taste of more serious scrambling.  We met up at about a 6:45 at the base of Grouse, where we left a vehicle and shuttled over to the entrance of Lynn Headwaters Regional Park, where we parked just outside the gate (as the gate is closed from 7pm-8am at this time of year) and were hiking up the road at about a quarter to 8.  The previous year we started our trip by hiking directly up to Dam Mountain from the base of the skyride and dropping down from Crown pass to Hanes Valley, but the direct route into Hanes Valley from Lynn proved to be much more efficient, and I recommend doing the trip as a loop for anyone who’s able to organize a vehicle shuttle.

We quickly made our way up Lynn Valley, and then Hanes Valley, and stopped for lunch high on the talus field before the gully that starts the route proper.  In order to give a lengthy headstart to another pair that we encountered wanting to do the same route and minimize the risk of being hit by rocks kicked down by them, we took our time and enjoyed the sunny autumn air, and began our way up the gully shortly after noon.  The route was dry, and once again we were able to provide plenty of entertainment to the crowds up on the summit of Crown gazing down upon us as we made our way up the slabs.  Near the top of the slabs, I made my way off to the left hand side of the main couloir with Brittany and Saravie (the easiest way out), while Max headed out on to the slabs directly below the summit and once the rest of us had established ourselves on the summit block, he made his way straight up to us.  He reports that the upper section of the slabs just below the summit venture into low-5th territory and that anyone who found the lower slabs challenging should exit straight up the couloir as the rest of us did.

Full of adrenaline from the climb up the slabs, Brittany was strangely hesitant to climb the summit block, but in the end we all got our photos of a beautiful fall afternoon and relaxed to enjoy some home made banana bread (far superior to Clif bars, I must say).  We left the summit at around 4:15, and made our way back to the Grouse mountain chalet, arriving after dark, only to buy our downloading tickets and to find that the red skyride was undergoing maintenance and that we’d have to line up for the blue skyride.  Had we known how long the line would be, we would have hiked down the BCMC trail in the dark.  However, as we already had our tickets, we settled down in the cafeteria to eat dinner and wait… and ended up waiting nearly 3 hours, finally arriving back at the base of grouse around 11pm.  Despite this delay though, the day could not be damaged, and an exhilarating and fun day was had by all of us.

Verdict: 3/3

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Harvey-Brunswick Crossover

Trip Date: October 8, 2011

Participants: Marion Carpent, Natasha Suvorova, George Malburg, Brittany Zenger, Ed Zenger, Geoffrey Zenger

Difficulty: 2.  Steep bush descending down the north east ridge of Harvey.

Elevation Gain: ~1800m

Report: After this year’s short hiking season in August and September, early October brought cool and grey weather, but the forecast for this Saturday was for clear skies until early in the afternoon.   I had previously climbed Brunswick the previous fall with Jeff Ross and James Clarke, and had previously ascended Harvey in winter via its North Face Ramp, but had never previously ascended Harvey in summer conditions, and so a trip to climb both Mt. Harvey and Mt. Brunswick in a day was hastily arranged.  We chose to climb Harvey first and Brunswick second for two reasons: first, we weren’t sure how difficult the Harvey NE ridge would be and wanted to encounter it early in the day, and second, the trail down from Brunswick is more pleasant than the hike down from Harvey.

We met at the Lions Bay trailhead at around 8:15, and set off on the trail a bit past 8:30 under cloudy skies.  Although Brittany wasn’t feel great, the trip up the Harvey trail to Harvey’s SW ridge was fairly quick and uneventful, and we reached the ridge just as the skies were clearing up just past 10:30, and stopped for a snack and to enjoy the sunny heat.  The SW ridge is a straightforward hike with a few short sections of class 2 scrambling, although I was surprised to find that the ridge was substantially more complex than was apparent when we descended it the previous winter.  We summitted Harvey at about 11:45, had a short break, and set out to find the route down the NE ridge into Magnesia Meadows.

In winter conditions, the NE ridge was much steeper than we had expected, with a few sections of 60 degree snow and ice to be negotiated, and it was interesting to descend the same ridge in summer (although damp) conditions.  The trail was fairly rough but easy to follow, and without any serious difficulties.  I wouldn’t recommend that anybody downclimb the NE ridge without having any prior experience downclimbing steep roots and short rock steps using vegetable belays as there are a few sections with exposure, but most coastal hikers/scramblers would be comfortable downclimbing the route.  As with all routes, it would probably be somewhat easier to climb than to downclimb.

We quickly made it down to the base of Harvey’s NE ridge, hit the Howe Sound Crest Trail soon thereafter, and stopped at the Magnesia Meadows emergency shelter for a proper lunch break.  After a lengthy break, we followed the HSCT over to its junction with the Brunswick trail, reaching the intersection at about 2:15.  From here it was just the regular route to the summit of Brunswick, which we reached at about 10 to 3.  By this point, the weather forecasted had moved in, and with the fog and cold wind, it felt like we were getting our first tastes of the upcoming winter.  Nobody wanted to stop for too long, and we soon made our way back down to Lion’s bay.  I reached the base with Brittany at around 4:40 (some jogging involved), and the last of us was down at the cars by 5:30.  In all, an excellent autumn workout for all with lots of varied terrain and eminently suitable for days with questionable forecasts.

Verdict: 3/3.  An excellent late season hike/scramble.  You will find me repeating this route in many autumn’s to come.

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Great Bear Peak (Iago)

Trip Date: December 15, 2011

Participants: Brittany Zenger, Geoff Zenger, Nancy Zenger

Difficulty: 2

Elevation Gain: ~600m

Report: Back in Vancouver for a few weeks, and having taken an AST-1 course last winter, my sister Nancy was eager to try out a real ski tour for the first time, and so our objective for the day was to find a reasonably short day objective without any significant difficulties and that Brittany and I hadn’t already visited (thus ruling out the usual suspects for this situation, such as Zoa, Zupjok, Kelly, and Paul Ridge).  It took us the entire ride to Hope to all agree on a destination, but in the end decided on the minor peak referred to in Baldwin’s book as “Great Bear Peak” (note: Baldwin refers to the northern summit as “Iago” and the southern as “Great Bear”)

We arrived at the Zopkios Ridge rest area on the Coquihalla highway at around 9:30, where we bumped into the Baldwin clan, who were just starting out towards Zupjok peak, and geared up for our trip.  The first part of the route to Great Bear Peak is the same as that for Zupjok Peak, up into the basin between Zupjok and Ottomite peaks.  From the basin, the second portion of the route involves making a slightly ascending contour around Zupjok peak, eventually reaching the col between Zupjok and Iago peaks.  Here we stopped for a snack break, and after a short while, proceeded up the lightly treed ridge to Iago peak.  There are a couple of short steep sections on the ridge, but there isn’t any serious exposure, and so everyone managed to make it right to the summit without ever having to remove their skis.

We reached the “Iago” summit around 1:30, and from the summit of Iago, it looks like the “Great Bear” summit is either the same height or perhaps a couple of metres lower.  Regardless, as we were planning on returning via the ridge that we came from, it made no sense for us to drop down the 30m into the col between Great Bear and Iago, ascend the other summit, and then make our way back to the Iago summit.  The views would be the same from either summit.

Leaving the summit a bit past two, it was a quick ski down the ridge back down to the Zupjok-Iago col through surprisingly nice powder, and from there it was a simple matter of following our tracks back to the Ottomite-Zupjok basin and gliding down the road from there.  In all, a reasonable first ski tour for a beginner, but for anyone else, the peak is only suitable for completionists.  The views from Zupjok are better, the run down from Zupjok is better, and ascending/descending Zupjok does not necessitate contouring around Zupjok.  I’m glad I went out this way once to see what was there, but in the future, I’ll be sticking to Zupjok for a short winter ski day in the area.

Verdict: 1/3.  Nice enough, but there are a few superior ski tours starting from the same parking lot.

 

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Mt. Chief Pascall

Trip Date: December 11, 2011

Participants: Alexis Guigue, Steve Bell-Irving, David Haslam, Rob Kay, Travis McClinchey, Andrzej Jarzabek, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger (organizer)

Difficulty: 3.  Easy rock scrambling, slopes to 30-35 degrees, dense forest low down

Elevation Gain: 920m

Report: My first ski trip on the BCMC schedule to actually run this season!  The trip began by meeting up at the Mt. Currie Coffee Company in Pemberton just before 8am, making all of the necessary introductions, and setting off to the weather station pullout right at Cayoosh Pass.  We set off from the cars at about 9:30, with 7 of us on skis, and 1 on snowshoes.

The first 10 minutes or so of the trip were easy going, and then we hit the logging road.  When I went up towards Mt. Chief Pascall in February 2011, the logging road was completely covered, and we took it to the clearcut a couple hundred metres to the east, which was then easily descended.  This time, however, with no appreciable snowfall in 2 weeks, the logging road was a brutal alder bash, which we had to take all the way to the east side of the clearcut as from below the clearcut did not appear to be skiable.

From the east end of the clearcut, we had little difficulty ascending the forest, slowly traversing around to the east side of the ridge to avoid the bluffs high up, and soon entered the gentle basin at treeline to the north west of the summit.  From here, it was an easy skin up to the west ridge of Chief Pascall.  After a quick snack break (and to give our valiant snowshoer a chance to catch his breath!) we skinned up the narrowing ridge (with some difficulty in places due to the low snow level) up to the top of the large gully descending from the summit (~100m below the summit) and left our skis behind to scramble the remainder of the ridge.

The final ridge was an easy scramble, although the going was slow with many of the rocks covered with only a few inches of snow and ice.  We all reached the summit around 1:30 and took our time to eat, drink, and gaze at the north/east faces of Joffre.

Leaving the summit, we made quick time down to our skis (despite one of my legs post-holing into a gap between two boulders approximately 3m deep!), and began our descent by skiing the top couple hundred metres of the wide snowslope labelled “Equinox” on Baldwin’s Duffey Lake map.  With a bit of foresight, we could have left a vehicle at the Marriot basin trailhead and had a fall line descent most of the way down, but alas, that hadn’t crossed any of our minds and we quickly had to begin our traverse to the west in order to reach our vehicles.  Around treeline we found some fantastic powder, but the traversing was not steep enough for our snowboarder to properly ride and I think he found much of the descent quite tedious.

Back down at the clearcut, we started to bash through the alder on the logging road, but Alexis smartly decided to take a peek through the bushes to see if he could scout a clear line through the clearcut, and as it turned out, he could!  Although not phenomenal by any means, we had a nice run through the clearcut back down to the logging road, and from there it was a quick ski down through the trees to the vehicles, where we arrived around 4:30pm.  The route taken is definitely much more suitable for skiing than snowboarding, and so I learned something for next time.  Nonetheless, everyone made it down before dark, and fun was had by all.

Verdict: 2/3.

Note: I forgot my camera at home for this trip, and so all photos were taken by my dad on his camera

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Mt. Seymour

Trip Date: Dec. 4, 2011

Participants: James Clarke, Stetson (James’ dog), Geoff Zenger

Difficulty: 2 (usually)

Report: By the morning of James’ early season BCMC trip to Mt. Seymour, we were down to just James, his dog Stetson, and myself.  Leaving the Mt. Seymour parking lot at 8am on a sunny Sunday, we were able to quickly ascend to the regular winter trail to the 2nd peak of Seymour before the snowshoeing crowds hit the mountain.  From the second peak we could see that there was a lot of exposed rock on the 3rd peak and that it wouldn’t be possible to ski all the way up, and so we ditched our skis in some bushes on the 2nd peak and began the traverse over to the 3rd peak.  Unfortunately for us, I had neglected to bring an ice axe and the traverse over to the col between the 2nd and 3rd peaks was covered with a thin layer of ice that, given that this was my 5th or 6th trip to Mt. Seymour in 2011, rendered the traverse too sketchy to be bothered with.

We reascended the second peak and ate our lunch as the first of the snowshoeing hordes caught up to us.  A brisk wind picked up, and we headed back down the trail, skiing down the southwest face of pump peak, and due to the presence of a dog, had to ski the trail down from Brockton Point.  Stetson at one point got distracted by the adoring crowds and disappeared for a good 10 minutes, but was eventually found mooching food from a group of friendly admirers.  Just below Brockton Point, Stetson was nearly fined by the park rangers for being off leash (a technicality, truly, as he was attached to a leash… just no human holding on to the other end), but managed to charm his way out of a ticket.  We reached the parking lot around 1 o’clock, by which point the trail was populated by the steady stream of hikers normally reserved for the grouse grind.

In the end, it was a failed attempt on Seymour, but we had fantastic weather, good views, and was a good trip for a day when I had to be back in town by early afternoon to visit with some visiting family.

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