Spearhead Range - TR

[jimmyleg66]

April 26th to the 28th, attempted the Spearhead Traverse with my friend Trevor. Didn't complete it but had a fun weekend.

 

Day 1 - Took the lifts to the top of Whistler and skied out of the area boundary. Partly cloudy skies but beautiful. Skied over the summits of the "musical bumps", Flute, Piccalo and Oboe. Made it to the Fissle/Whirlwind

col in about 5 hours and dropped our packs and skied ot the top of Whirlwind. Made mandatory cell phone call to Lisa from summit to gloat. Skied down to the Overlord Glacier to set up camp. 5 minutes later it started snowing and by 7pm we were in a whiteout.

Day 2 - Got up at 5:30am to a whiteout, back to sleep until 7:30am. 8:30am a "sucker hole" of blue sky temps us and we decide to give it a try.

10:30am we are back in a whiteout, in the middle of some crevasses on the Overlord Glacier. Cut loose a 20cm slab at the top of a steep roll so we decided to sit put until the fog cleared. 4hours of waiting for the weather to clear with no luck. We make it back to our previous nights campsite and decide instead to ski down to Russet Lake and stay in the hut. The clouds lift long enough so we can ski back down around Fissle but close back in again before we reach the hut. Trevors new GPS saves us an untold amount of time and frustration finding the hut.

Day 3 -BLUEBIRD! Trying to salvage the weekend, we take daypacks back up to the Fissle/Whirlwind col intending to bag Mt. Overlord. 80-100km windgusts

at the col change our minds(and make us happy we moved camp) and we elect to make a 600m ski run down Overlord Glacier and back to the hut, making a

circumnavigation of Fissle. Back at the hut we eat lunch, pack up and beat it back to Whistler.

 

Even though we didn't make it still a fun trip. Suprisingly didn't see anyone else all three days. Definitely going back for another try.

 

Photos at http://community.webshots.com/album/73214537QRYoqA?841

Edited May 15, 2003 by jimmyleg66

[gapertimmy]

looks like a good time thanks for posting those picts. looks like there was some sluffage in a few of the shotz, how was the stability of the snowpack?

[jimmyleg66]

Yeah, it doesn't look like it but the top roll in the first picture is about 35 degrees. The first turn down it a slab (only 3cm thick) ran as far as you can see in the picture. There was several melt/freeze crusts that varied with aspect. Overall the avy hazard was low in the mornings and high in the afternoons as things heated up. We took the gondola up with a Whistler patroller and he said they had some 50cm windslabs ripping out on North and NorthEast aspects (with explosives). Except for the 20cm slab we triggered on Overlord, the only other thing we saw was sluffing.

[jimmyleg66]

... and oh yeah, lift access to the Alpine

 

[cman]

nice pictures. me and alpinek got into a whiteout on the overlord glacier last year, except we started from blackcomb and where trying to find our way down to the hut. we went down the glacier skiers right of the overlord, realized we were in the wrong place and were just about to dig in for the night when we got a brief clearing and got on the right track, we were pretty pysched to get to the hut that night.

 

did you guys ski fissile? looks like a fun descent.