The alarm chimes at 7:00 am, that unmistakable apple “radar” ring. Not that I’ve been sleeping well, head spinning with thoughts of the week ahead. I make my buttered coffee, blending grass fed unsalted butter into a fresh double shot of espresso and hot water. I add a little stevia, some coconut oil, and a splash of MCT oil. See these days I generally live a keto life; it dawned on me this would be my last “good” coffee for a while; it was savored.
I double check the weather reports, the avalanche ratings, problems, and details. Everything looks rather good and I power down the computer. I throw my bag into the car, along with my skis, boots, poles, some road snacks(cheese, sausage, peperoni) and driving water. I kiss my partner goodbye, give Bella (the cat) some snuggs and head out.
I’m listening to Tommy Caldwell’s ‘The Push’ as I drive up to Squamish, where my own adventure begins.
The drive up to Diamond Head Trail was uneventful. The lower and upper parking lots are almost empty. Traction good, roads well plowed.
I skin quick up to Red Heather hut. Wearing a thin polyester Under Armor base layer top with Smartwool 150 bottoms, and Gore-Tex pants with the legs fully open; optimal layering for speed. Passing 5 or so people on the way up, I had the hut briefly to myself. I decided to stay here for the night. The group of 5 I passed coming up arrived, 4 of them went up for a quick lap on a nearby ridge while the 5th cut up charcuterie tasties. I tended the fire, splitting a couple pieces of wood, making a small amount of kindling, and leaving the rest large for a long burn. I stoked the fire; the group had drinks and food and laughed. It was fun eavesdropping their conversation as we shared the space.
As soon as they left I started making bivy prep. Sorting myself out for the night and the morning. I waxed my skins and went to bed for an early night. Every hour or so until 10pm a few more stragglers would come down the mountain, stop briefly, and carry on down. I used these opportunities to read a few more pages of Dharma Bums while they made noise. Eventually, all was quiet, the night grew cold, and my mind started to play tricks on me with the ambient noises.
The fiery sunrises didn’t disappoint
An early rise, maybe 4:50am. Back in the hut I boil some water and make my butter (instant)coffee. The only calories I will consume until bivy tonight. Packing my things quickly I ski out. Sun rises when I am somewhere around Pauls Ridge. It’s fiery and beautiful. It’s one of the major reasons I’m here now, to take it all in. Mountains in all directions start to light up. A short time later I get to Elfin Lakes, make a quick bathroom stop and carry on once more. There is still a lot of ground to cover today and the last km was an easy one.
Stopping for coffee and selfies near the base of what would soon become a cliff band, and the junction point for the Ring Creek crossing
Somewhere down the hill from Elfin shelter I get into a small ravine. It’s obviously a creek/run off but it is covered now. I think I’m slightly off-route, because it’s a bit of a struggle to get out of this thing. A little too steep. I make it out and it seems like a good time for another black coffee, and to boil some water. I guess I am near the base of Ring Creek at this point. I mean it’s within sight, but not near as close as it looks. It’s not that anything is too far away, but with route finding, switchbacks, and trail-breaking, it feels further than it is. I send a message to my partner back home, check my stats and location, and its off again.
My next real stop is at the top of a cliff band above Ring Creek. It wasn’t quite sheer however I decide to rappel down instead of backtracking and trying to find an easier route. I guess as soon as I hit it, a traverse maintaining elevation would have worked well. If I wasn’t alone in the backcountry, and if my 45lb pack wasn’t a concern, I might have just dropped in and skied it down. Those concerns were real to me, so the time spent setting up and getting down seemed to be worth it. It was more of a struggle down the slope because of the deep snow, but safety was first here. I pull the rope at the bottom of the 35m rap, boot pack the rest of the way to the creek and pack up again.
Its still early season, so the creek is fully exposed below 6’ of snow. It’s actually really pretty the way it snakes through the white blanket. The problem is, since I took the cliff down, I had bypassed the summer footbridge and now needed to find a way across the shallow water. In the end I had to find 3 small snow bridges to ski over to cross in different places and get to the Opal Cone side of things. It’s a neat area like I was saying. You’re still in the tree line, but it’s thinning out pretty well by this point. Once you’re down there, you can see rabbit tracks in the snow all over the place and even one set of hoofed animal tracks.
Ring Creek. Inky black contrasting the pure white alpine snow. Gorgeous
Across Ring Creek, the terrain suddenly because a lot more concerning. On the way to this point you have to cross a couple of slide paths off The Gargoyles, but they’re in very specific spots, they looked like they recently slid, and the crossing was short. Not to mention the conditions and reports for today were still good. In essence, I felt safe and secure crossing them. Opal Cone, however, is out of the tree line, and much steeper. You’re stuck in a bit of a corridor between the mountain, and the creek. On a day with bad conditions, I would probably hesitate to take this route, or perhaps I would even have stayed on the other side of the creek for a lot longer. I pick my way through the avy debris, the terrain traps, and the wind slab (wind slab being one of the bigger concerns for avy this week) It all goes well. My legs burn, my heart races, I drink most of my water, but I’m through this set of obstacles. I find a nice hill to set up a bivy on. Its at the corner of Bishop, Lava, and Garibaldi Glaciers.
Right as I get to the bivy spot I break out my shovel and start digging a pit. Wind is howling at me pretty hard from the north, so I pick the south face of the hill crest to dig my pit. I make it about 6 feet wide, 12 feet long, and a couple of feet deep. The snow I remove I try to block up and stack around the rim of the pit. I compact it down with my shovel, adding more loose snow and build up the sides until its 3-4 feet deep. I dig a path out the south end for access. I brought a small Siltarp with me, so I string that above the pit with my pickets/axes/poles and a bunch of quickdraws. The literal minute I finish setting this up, the wind shifts and starts blowing up at me from the south. Groan.
The tarp whips and snaps in the wind. It’s a bit annoying right now, but at least inside my pit it’s nice and calm, rather pleasing. The sun is setting by now, and I am treated to another spectacular view of the mountains and sunset. I am between/below Diamond Head, Atwell, and Diamond Glacier. The
Tent/Garibaldi, and Bishop Glacier are behind me. Opal cone, Mamquam and a whole group of ranges are to the east, all magnificent. A truly magic place to spend the night. I unroll my bivy with the Thermarest already inside and blow it up, jamming my sleeping bag in afterward. Taking off my ski boots and replacing them with my hut booties. I fill up my pot, dump in my remaining few oz of water, and melt more snow on the reactor. The iso canister runs out, interesting. I’m using those small ones, so I replace it and continue heating. Adding moon cheese, protein booster, a “fat” table spoon of butter, and some boiled water to my bacon and eggs. I concoct my breakfast lunch and dinner in one meal. At about 950 calories or so, it’s not a lot for the day I put in. I have nut bar and some keto peanut butter cups, snap a bunch more photos, and go to bed on around 1200 calories. The wind is relentless, but the scenery breath taking. I actually hate to go to bed on a full stomach. My heart races, I get indigestion, generally, it doesn’t feel great and it’s extra hard to fall asleep. It doesn’t matter with this wind.
Eventually, I nod off for a few minutes and wake to the ripping slapping sound of the tarp again. Without getting out of the bivy I drag my backpack closer to me, dig around for a spare carabiner and clip the tarp to my bag. So much better, it almost feels still out now. Until I wake up again to similar sounds. Rinse and repeat I find another carabiner, drag my rope coil over, and clip another grommet of the tarp to the rope. It holds tighter down. Finally bliss. It makes the right angle and the wind no longer catches. It’s almost silent. I quickly fall asleep. The dreams are weird; my mind plays tricks on me with ambient sounds again. The mind is a really funny thing, I think. Always assigning meaning to whatever stimulus it receives.
Being that I am solo and need to trek around 4 glaciers to get to my destination tomorrow, I have decided to sleep in. No sense of an alpine start if it leads me into a crevasse. 7am will do nicely. This decision might have saved my life, who knows, which is the ultimate goal for sure, but it would bite me later. Anyway, the bivy is cozy AF and it feels like I should just stay in it forever. I’m not exactly upset about sleeping in, or seeing a sunrise from this spot.
It’s actually calm now as I wake. I remove the tarp and stuff it in its sack, drink some water, melt more snow, make more butter coffee, and sort out my pack. Today I remove every item I might not need to summit. The top of my bag, my sleeping kit, extra clothes, food, kitchen kit, everything stays. The only things that come with me are climbing/skiing related, trauma kit, gps/inreach, Gore-Tex, puff, gloves, glasses, and a liter of water. I pack all of the things staying into my bivy sack, and roll it over on itself, placing my shovel on top of the hood closure to keep it secure. A tidy camp to come back to later. I ski over to the next little hill for a better look at what I am getting into, snap a couple more pics of the area, Atwell is impressive. Lets gooo!
At this point, I can see what looks like some short ways across the tributary glaciers connecting high points and medial moraine. This seems safe, so I skirt around, navigating between where I expect randkluft to be, and crevasse. Since everything is essentially hidden, I’m going on gut and reading into small changes in the glacial surface to make judgments. I take the baskets off my poles once it’s clear I am about to start getting into real glacial terrain and start to probe the snow. Advancing solely enough that I can probe the full length of my poles every 1-2 steps, this is how I proceed across each tributary until I finally reach the moraine I intend to ascend. I never had any hints of sketchy crossing in my probing. In fact, it was re-assuring because the density of the snow seemed rather high, and progressively stronger as I traveled.
The skin up was straight forward. The moraine offered a lot of peace of mind knowing I wasn’t going to fall through anything. The next challenge became the increasing steepness of the climb, and the increasing density and texture of the snow. Once at the top of the moraine I had again to cross glacier snow, some large gappers were uncovered, a cave, a 50’ snow bowl you could hide a low-rise in, pretty cool stuff. Probe, probe, probe. As I come around The Tent, crossing one last flake of ice between two crevasse just before the Garibaldi Neve, the wind and chill turn on like a heavy metal power chord. Dang its cool. Big pockets all around form the wind-driven snow, eroding away.
To the north, Black Tusk pokes out in striking clarity. Garibaldi lake, not frozen, looks so crisp. Mt Garibaldi to my south looks impressive. I see a pretty clear, though not hazard free, path to the summit, but look at the time, and back to the mountain and make a realization. My heart breaks. I mean up the slope it looks like a good path, there is some terrain I’m not super comfortable crossing solo, mainly because it looks like chunks of stagnant ice or snow are left from bergschrund/randkluft developing. All scattered about above; not a lot of thick consolidating snow binding it all together. But still, it could go. My real problems? Right now the weather is good. But tomorrow night it is going to suddenly drop to -20/-30, and the snow is going to pick up with the wet heavy stuff. I need to be back home tomorrow afternoon, Sunday early morning at the latest. My second problem, while I’m generally not against night travel, given the circumstance I am not all for it.
I have a few hours of daylight left, and I would like to be on top of that cliff band from yesterday before it goes. If not for the weather and the deadline, I probably would have been comfortable getting back late Sunday and giving it one more push today to bag a couple of peaks. I take a deep breath, snap more pics, rip off my skins, and begin descent. I will be coming back another day, another way. It’s all a bunch of excuses I guess, and I’m feeling pretty sad about it. But that’s how it goes. I’ve never been afraid to pull out. At least I have a good understanding of what this kind of adventure takes now, for the next one. It became a logistics and planning exercise.
The snow isn’t great for skiing, but it’s actually a lot of fun putting down almost a km of elevation drop in S turns over varying terrain. I’m not the strongest skier, my legs burn. Anyway, back to camp where I again make some water, repack my bag, and head out. I am aiming to put in about another 10km today. The good news is that I can ski out for a pretty good ways now. At least until I hit Ring Creek, again and need to cross. The skins go back on for the uphill /traverse to the cliff band. I am really not sure how to get out of here easily. I know at the base of the cliffs there’s a bridge I could have used to get across the creek.
I actually considered staying on the Opal side of the creek to do just that but didn’t feel like the terrain was going to be easy to get through without skins. And my trail had already been broken the other way for a distance. I follow it out to where I rappelled and then continue on breaking trail towards the bridge. About 50 feet from the bridge the slope gets a lot steeper quite rapidly. At one point as I’m traversing slowly a foot blows out and I fall, ending upside down with my skis levered into the snow and my arms and poles pinned under me. I am looking down the slope right into Ring Creek. Lol. It’s actually not a big deal, the creek is shallow, and the fall short and soft. But it takes time, energy, and frustration to work through. My partner notices I’m not moving for a while here and sends me a message asking if I’m ok. Technology eh. This is one of the few times I swear on the trip.
I switch back up the steep but short slope to the top of the ridge, cut through some sparse sub-alpine timber, and rejoin my original track. Huzzah! At this point, the sun is starting to set. I drink half my water, eat a nut bar quickly, and start skinning out toward Elfin Lakes like a madman. The sunset casts these sublime pastel pinks and oranges across the sky and mountain ranges as the sun sets. I didn’t want to get into that little ravine again, so I chose a different route back. I tried to maintain elevation as much as I could traversing the hillsides. It worked, except it made my ravine. crossing extra shitty lol. So much effort for such a short distance to get. Sinking in the snow to my chest, forgetting to zip my pant vents up, filling with snow, and struggling. Throwing my skis up top ahead and military crawling up. Anyway, rook mistakes. My feet kill, the air bites, the time flies. The propane house outline at Elfin hut materializes out of the darkness. Finally, I can rest. 50 meters more, 25, 5. Sigh. I kick the skis off and breathe deep.
Elfin Shelter is actually closed right now for “major repairs” Locked up tight. But there’s a luxurious vestibule on the back of it that looked rather inviting to my weary eyes. It was about 6’x12’ again, but level, dry, covered, and quiet! So perfect. I pile in, lean my skis in the corner and set up for the night. There is no door, and people have been inside, so I take out my shovel and clean up inside. Set up bivy in the corner, remove my boots and Gore-Tex, put on my layers. I patch up my blisters, put on my booties and get to making water. The stove sounds weird.
I lift the pot and notice the flame is pretty weak. I shake the bottle, the flame grows slightly. I realize right away I’m not going to have enough water to get home comfortably tomorrow and think about what to do. Since I can’t waste the fuel to actually boil and sanitize the water I start collecting from the roof of the hut. I pack the snow into the pot and dump my remaining water into it to help melt it. I get this batch as hot as I can and pour half into my Nalgene. I make my dinner with ¼ of what’s left and set it aside for rehydrate. I fill the pot back up with snow packing it in tight. I put the pot back onto the stove and use every bit of fuel I can get out of the canister until the stove burns out. I switch to the canister from yesterday and melt the rest of the snow in the pot.
It never gets warm. It’s full of dirt and lichen and whatever else. But it’s liquid, barely. I fill the rest of my Nalgene up with snow and keep adding it until it’s right full. The snow in the Nalgene doesn’t melt. Instead, it turns into an opaque iceberg in the bottle. I put the Nalgene under my jacket and start to warm it with my body heat. Tonight, I will cuddle the iceberg Nalgene as I sleep. I drink the remaining water in the pot. Charge my headlamp and phone and go to sleep. Once more, even in the stillness, my mind plays tricks on me with ambient sounds. I hear skiers outside, tearing off skins, unclasping ski boots. Rustling around. Except they aren’t there. It’s a rodent in the walls or floorboards of the shelter. I chuckle to myself. I cuddle my bottle of snow water. Ponder on the last few days, and have a great sleep. The alarm is set for 5am, for an early skin out.
Its colder this morning when I rise. -17 or so on my thermometer and there’s mist in the air, thick. My
Nalgene of water is now fully liquid, but still quite cold. I dump my last instant coffee into my cup. Put
200ml of water on the stove and pray it gets at least warm. It does, the tepid coffee I receive is actually
amazing. I force my feet into my now sweat-frozen ski boots with all the effort I can. Thankfully they
begrudgingly slip in, instead of the boot components breaking. I pull on my ice-stiffened Gore-Tex pants, and layer up in my puff. Go to the washroom in an outhouse, another luxury. Pack everything up, wax the middle of my skins once more, they have a stubborn spot that got sap on them, and ice over now. I find it easier to give them a quick wax ahead of time rather than scrape ice and wax as the problem pops up.
I switch my puff for a gore top and I’m out. Charging home. The environment is surreal. With the mist, the headlamp glow. The sky slowly lightening up as I get closer to Red Heather. Atwell looks like the Himalayan mountains for all I can tell through the fog. Breathtaking. My hair freezes from my breath, the mist coats everything in a fine silvery layer of dew ice. Once more I rip off my skins and can begin my final descent. I haven’t seen anyone yet until I’m about 1km down past Red Heather hut, a sole hiker. But quickly I pass more people, skiers. Groups of 5, 2, 3, and another 5. By the time I make the parking lot I’ve passed 28 day trippers and 3 campers. About another 10 plus in the parking lot gearing up to go. It will be a busy weekend.
I’m suddenly so glad I had the whole area to myself for so long. What an experience. I throw my bag in the car and the rest of my gear. Brush off the snow. Speaking briefly with parks ate the chain-up lot, I head out, towards society again.
It’s snowing in Squamish. Lots of big fluffy flakes coming down, very festive. I have a calm over me that seeps deep within. A combination of being exercised thoroughly, physically tired, low on calories, low on sleep, high on the experience, and slightly euphoric. I find it hard to make the car hit the speed limit, slightly under feels good. Sounds are crisp and clear. Everything feels just right. A quick stop at Fox & Oak for a Mango Passionfruit Brioche doughnut and a cortado. I reflect on the last few days for the next hour as I pilot home. Perfect.
The Gear
Sunglasses
MSR 1L Reactor 2x Fuel
Cup / Spoon / Fork / Nalgene
Trauma/First Aid Kit & Meds
Garmin InReach GPS
Bivy Sac
ThermaRest
Sleeping Bag
Sil Tarp 1
4k Calories Food
Coffee
Gore-Tex Jacket/Pants
Puff Jacket
Guide/Mid/Base Gloves
Hut Booties / Beanie
Base/150/250 Layers
Extra Socks
Toiletries
Extra Batteries & Cables
Lip Balm
Cellphone
And a good book.
All packed into an Arc’Teryx Alpha 55
It looks like I took a lot of gear. Well I did. Doing this solo, having a lot of unknowns, and wanting to be prepared made me really think about what I would want in a lot of different circumstances. There were a lot of inclusions because of it. If I were to do a similar trip again I would likely have:
1. Taken the 1.5L Reactor with bigger fuel
2. Left the 250 Merino Layer out
3. Pre mixed the dry ingredients for meals
4. Made a point to eat more calories
5. Brought a 0.6L BeFree bottle
If I were to do a similar trip with a more known/better glacial coverage and fewer logistical concerns, with more of a focus on the summit, I would have removed:
1. Pitons
2. Snow fluke
3. 1 picket
4. 4 alpine draws
5. GoPro / Batteries
6. Charger
7. Extra Socks
8. Tarp