Headed over to the mainland for the May long weekend for a ski with Chris. We thought it would be nice to check out the Squamish-Chekamus Divide. En route up the Sea to Sky Highway we chatted about seeing if we could approach via the new Olympic X-Country Ski area up Callaghan Creek rather than the standard approach up Brandywine. Overall, this worked well for getting up onto the Powdercap Icefield. We came back along a valley further to the south was a little trickier for getting back to the car (lots of canyons and the rivers were running pretty full...had a hard time finding crossings).
Leaving camp on the second day. Note Chris's sporting harness. Given the low snowpack year and concerns over thin snow bridges over crevasses, we put the harnesses on "just in case"
Mount Cayley
The north ridge on Cayley. We had hoped to climb up this side, but it seemed a little sketchy given the warm day and really soft snow. The route has a pretty bad runout on the right.
Lots of fresh avalanche activity with the warming. Note the black dots of the snowmobiles in the bottom. This is a pretty busy snowmobile area. They are officially not supposed to be up the Callaghan in the winter, but the Brandywine area and access back to the Pemberton Icecap is fair game. Also this was outside of the "winter" season. Apparently they didn't mind the sketchy avi conditions so much (note high-marking).
As a consolation we skied up Brandywine Mountain.
Looking over to Mount Fee
On top of Brandywine looking back to Mount Cayley. The rocky stuff on the left is Pyroclastic Peak, adn the sharp spire on the ridge is known as the Vulcan's Thumb. It is unclimbed. The Mount Cayley complex and Mount Fee are extinct volcanoes (make up some of the northern range of the volcanic range including Mount Ranier, Mount Baker, and Mount Garibaldi)
Leaving camp on the second day. Note Chris's sporting harness. Given the low snowpack year and concerns over thin snow bridges over crevasses, we put the harnesses on "just in case"
Mount Cayley
The north ridge on Cayley. We had hoped to climb up this side, but it seemed a little sketchy given the warm day and really soft snow. The route has a pretty bad runout on the right.
Lots of fresh avalanche activity with the warming. Note the black dots of the snowmobiles in the bottom. This is a pretty busy snowmobile area. They are officially not supposed to be up the Callaghan in the winter, but the Brandywine area and access back to the Pemberton Icecap is fair game. Also this was outside of the "winter" season. Apparently they didn't mind the sketchy avi conditions so much (note high-marking).
As a consolation we skied up Brandywine Mountain.
Looking over to Mount Fee
On top of Brandywine looking back to Mount Cayley. The rocky stuff on the left is Pyroclastic Peak, adn the sharp spire on the ridge is known as the Vulcan's Thumb. It is unclimbed. The Mount Cayley complex and Mount Fee are extinct volcanoes (make up some of the northern range of the volcanic range including Mount Ranier, Mount Baker, and Mount Garibaldi)
