[TR] Brian Waddington Hut - Mount Gandalf, Aragorn, Shadowfax, and others 4/16/2008

[AlpineK]

Trip: Brian Waddington Hut - Mount Gandalf, Aragorn, Shadowfax, and others

 

Date: 4/16/2008

 

Trip Report:

 

 

[font:Arial Black]Introduction [/font]

 

[font:Times New Roman] After spending weeks thumbing through the book Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis back a few years ago I figured I was long overdue to go on some cool ski trips just north of Vancouver.

 

In this case, I figured the best policy to start small then go big. With that in mind, the classic Spearhead Traverse was a good start, so in March of 2002, I skied that with my friend Cman. I decided to link the Spearhead up with other traverses in the Coast Range. It may not be the true start to a Coast Range trip, but after spending a bunch of time rock climbing in Squamish it seemed like skiing from Whistler to Elfin Lake was the thing to do. Based on that I skied the McBride Traverse with jordop and his friend Jon.

 

Those two trips were great, but now I needed to head northwards; therefore, I skied from Blackcomb to Pemberton with JH. Hitchhiking to Blackcomb for the rig after making it to Pemberton sucked, but the trip was worth it. Next year JH and I took a short helicopter flight up and to the east of Pemberton. The pilot was funny he played Fleetwood Mack on the speakers for five minutes until he dropped us on the south shoulder of Mount Ronayne. He briefly asks us, “You guys know where you are?” then he was gone. In a six days we skied NW to the North Creek/Hurley divide. From there a ski down the Hurley River brought us back to the Railroad Pass road, and a snow cat ride delivered us at our truck.

 

Later that year I took one more ski trip to put me on the edge of the big Coast Range glaciers. With that in mind JH, jordop, my friend tanstaafl, and I took a plane ride to the Fasp Glacier skied up Icemaker Peak then with a stay at the Pebble Creek cabin we traveled back down the Hurley to the road.

 

Things were going great on my treck. JH named my series of trips my, “Magical Mystery Tour.” This last trip happened in May of 2006. Unfortunately, I suffered a very bad work related accident in June of 2006. It was bad enough that day-to-day living became extremely complicated for me and there was no thought of skiing the next ski season.

 

That all changed late in 2007. I decided I needed to go on another long trip. My original intension was to start this trip from Icemaker Mountain, but a prolonged winter caused JH and me to rethink our goal. JH dubbed my traverse as my Magical Mystery Tour, but since flying to Icemaker was not reasonable, I call this my, “One Piece at a Time Tour based on the song by Johnny Cash.

[/font]

 

One Piece at a Time

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black] April 16[/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman] My plan was to leave Seattle this day. Things managed to get a little complicated though since I had to make sure I had some important medical stuff (no this is not a code phrase). Because of the situation, we could not leave town as planned, but we did come up with an alternate destination for skiing. Our idea was to ski part of the Stein Traverse. I knew folks mentioned problems with the road in, but I figured we would find a way around it. In the end, we decided to depart the next morning.[/font]

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black]April 17 [/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]In the morning, we left Seattle and headed up I-5. Things went well, and we passed the immigration test at the border. There is not too much to say about the drive up other than the highway department had better hurry up since the Olympics are not too far away.

 

We got to Pemberton and then headed down Lillooet Lake. We found the Lizzie Lake Road and headed up the river. There was a problem early on with the road, but we figured that we could follow the road up a ways and find a way around the problem. After driving a ways, we reached a point where the snow started, so we left the car and skied up the road. After a little elevation gain, we could finally see where we wanted to be. At that point it became painfully obvious that we were going to have to do a long bushwhack traverse to get into Lizzie Lake. None of this looked fun, so we skied back to the car. We drove down to the lake and found a campsite. After some talk, we decided to try to change our objective to skiing up Phelix creek to a hut on Long Lake. I had tried that trip a few years back with jordop, but we bailed due to early season lack of snow.

[/font]

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black]April 18 [/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]In the morning we drove north to Pemberton had breakfast and bought a map. Then we drove to Birkenhead Lake and parked. I had been up the approach before, and it is straightforward. The road goes up past old logging cuts then up through tagged trees to Long Lake. At the east end of the lake, you can spot the cabin at the west end easily. We got to the cabin and moved in. The mountains looked fantastic. We were excited about skiing. [/font]

 

The view east towards Taillefer

 

 

[font:Arial Black]April 19 [/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman] The weather was a little snowy but not too bad. We skied west to the upper lake and then headed up what we thought was Mount Shadowfax. Later we learned that the map is mislabeled and we were actually skiing up Mount Gandalf. The peak names in this area are from characters in The Lord of the Ring. We skied up the west side to a high point where the summit was in easy reach, but the skiing above looked dumb.

 

We skied down. It was fun, but I discovered that my new skis and bindings had some problems that needed adjusting. The snow was one inch of nice new snow on top of spring snow that due to temperature drop became icy with lots of avalanche debris. Back at the hut, I found a screwdriver and did some adjusting to my set up. The fix I did worked well for the rest of the trip.

 

As we were messing with my skis, a group of 10 or 12 folks from a British Columbia Mountaineering Club (BCMC) group showed up and moved in for the weekend.

[/font]

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black] April 20[/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman] Jeff and I skied up to a high point on the north side of Shadowfax. The map made it look like you could summit on this side. You can, but its 4th class climbing and not skiing. We had an excellent descent back to the hut and ate lunch. Then we headed up a peak just south of the hut. The peak has no name on the map, but given other naming in the area it should be Mount Frodo. We reached the summit here. There is an excellent north-facing chute off the top and right back to the hut. The snow here had the most powder in the area, and it made for the best skiing.

 

Back at the hut, we spent the time talking to the BCMC folks and going through the available reading material. The Varsity Outdoor Club (VOC) owns the hut. They left a number of VOC journals. I have never had occasion to read any of the journals, so it was an interesting set of books to have available.

 

Thumbing through the books, I found a number of stories written by Fern and some guy named Drew. All their stories were entertaining, but I noticed a trend in some of the more recent VOC journals. This Drew guy seemed to express some bitterness towards the VOC. I am not sure what to make of that but it did provide the most entertainment.

 

The BCMC group was also interesting. One of them questioned why we had come north of the border and not stayed in the US to ski yet none of them was actually Canadian. They all hailed from Britain, Germany, and France. Anyhow, they were all having a good time, but they had to leave to head back to Vancouver that evening.

[/font]

 

"Mt Frodo," to the south of the cabin

 

[font:Arial Black] April 21[/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Jeff and I had spent some time eyeing ski lines. On the south face of Shadowfax we spotted a steep couloirs headed down from a sub summit. There were some large icy chunks from previous avalanches in the couloirs, but all and all the line looked good. We headed up the couloirs. The uptrack was good but icy as usual. At about half height, the snow got icy enough that kicking a boot track proved more efficient than skiing up.

 

We got to the top and had a super ski down. The couloir had about the same slope as the Slot Couloir on Mount Snoqualmie. The slope was a little technical given the ice, and avoiding the frozen avalanche debris was exciting, but it was an enjoyable run.

 

After lunch at the hut we headed back up Mount Frodo and found a slightly different line to descend.

[/font]

 

Mount Shadowfax with the, "White Rider," as the obvious couloir

 

A view down the, "White Rider."

 

[font:Arial Black] April 22[/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman] We decided that the one thing left to do in the area was ski down Mount Aragorn. The BCMC folks told us that there was a good but very easy ski route on the north side. Under other conditions, you can get to the north side by reaching the Gandalf-Aragorn col then skiing around to the north. This year there were some large cornices at this col, so the route did not look safe.

 

We spotted another line on the south face adjacent to a large rock wall on the east face at the mountain. We gained as much altitude as we could, but we had to stop before we gained too much exposure to the east face. The descent down was fun, and we had a great run back to the cabin.

 

Back at the cabin, we ate lunch and decided that we had done enough skiing in the area for now, so we packed up and headed down Phelix Creek. Getting back to the car was easy.

 

We drove back to Squamish and had dinner (not at the Howe Sound Brewery). From here, we decided to head back to the states and try to ski on part of Shuksan. We drove to the Hannegan Pass road and camped out.

[/font]

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black]April 23 [/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman] In the morning, it looked cloudy and snowy. We drove to the Baker ski are. The visibility was horrible. After sitting in the lot for a minute, we decided that we needed better visibility to ski the line we wanted to and we were not psyched enough to ski around Table Mountain. We headed back to Seattle and that concludes our trip.[/font]

 

 

 

 

[font:Arial Black]Conclusion [/font]

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]We did not get to do what I was hoping we would, but overall we had a good trip. In the future, I will be back to Icemaker. [/font]

 

 

Gear Notes:

Buy a map! Bring food!

 

Skis, boots, and poles are advised. Conditions change, but this year ski crampons were required.

 

Approach Notes:

Drive to Pemberton then Birkenhead Lake. Park at Phelix Creek and head up. Follow an old logging road then a marked trail to Long lake.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2008 by Feck

[G-spotter]

[AlpineK]

 

JH sent this add on version for the TR last night.

 

splat

 

Call me hater. Coming down from the Phelix creek, I started to wonder what the hell we were doing, getting farther away from god and closer to work. I say to Kurt "it's spring here", and he says, " Yup". But I hate it, we made a terrible mistake, let's turn back we totally fucked up, we left too early, I'm not ready to go back at all. There's some peaks over there, let's go. I'm not very comfortable with this at all Now I finally know what freedom of the hills is about. Sometimes it was freedom with the chills, but still. I felt like those unlucky fucks that jump off of the Aurora bridge."Did I think this through all the way?" Or Anna Kerenina when she threw herself under that train."What have I done?" Too late SPLAT. Now she knows . She also knows if there is a heaven, hell, pergatory, or if there is such a thing as a soul. It got worse on the way south, almost getting run off of the road by fuckers on cell phones, uuh nice Lex-ass, does that fuck-head really need a truck that big","check out that toilet, it should have been flushed long ago". Jackasses, all of them. God I hate, maybe drinking will help. We stop in a bar a Squamish [not the Howse sound, I fucking hate that shithole]. We sit down and our hot waitress has kind of a low cut shirt. Look at her eyes, look at her eyes. "What nice light blue eyes you have. Do you wear contacts? I haven't really seen that color in nature before. Don't be lamer than you already are, just order beer I thought to myself. "Can I help you". Beer, Bud , pint, please thank you, much abliged, appreciate it, you make me so very happy. "Uh ok". Oh god kill me now before someone else does. Well I guess I'm not an atheist after all. Kurt does his order a lot smoother. I started to think about music lesson incident. My kind of older, let's say portly teacher was sitting at the piano,I was standing , she was talking music theoty shit. I've been taking lessons for over a year and I just suddenly noticed some features on her face. I was thinking, look at her tiny nose, like a babie's, yeah a ficken baby nose. And those ears; infantile, and they're floating in big plains of lard." What the hell are you staring at?" Broke the spell. "What the hell are you staring at?", as she sipped her shirt tighter. Oh shit, she thought I was looking at her chest. Ah jeeze, whats less creepy: saying I was painting a portrait in this mush I call a mind, or wondering if here tits sagged down past her navel? I did the right thing: I ran. I hope I never see her again. I look over at Kurt, and it seems lke he's thinking happy thoughts. Lucky bastard.

[TrogdortheBurninator]

looks sweet Mr. Feck. I was wondering how your trip went. Must be nice getting back to the big fun trips again!!!

[jmace]

Awesome!! Good to see you are back at it and going strong!

[AlpineK]

I forgot to add this picture

 

 

Mt Aragorn. You can see the edge of the east face which has an impressive chunk of granite.

[G-spotter]

the edge of the east face which an impressive chunk of granite.

 

5.11 A2 to highpoint...

[G-spotter]

Ps Your "Mount Frodo" is Peregrine Peak.

[AlpineK]

I had a feeling there might be another name, but I couldn't find it.

[mattp]

He briefly asks us, “You guys know where you are?” then he was gone ...

 

That must be his standard line. A few years ago he dropped a few of us off on a rock knob that was protruding from an intermittent fog bank and he asked "Are you sure you know where you are?" And then "Are you sure you can get down from here?" And that was it. He took off. We immediately triggered an avalanche by ski-cutting the slope adjacent to our perch, and the descent was thereby rendered good to go.

 

Thanks for the report. It reminds me I gotta go back up there.

 

 

[snoboy]

Nice work. I have only been into that cabin once, and it sure is a pretty spot. Lots of potential ski lines.

[olyclimber]

nice Kurt! SPPPPPLLLAAATTTT

[jordop]

You guys forgot to pay your Foreigner Powder Resource Fees. Backcountry's full of weenies and foreigners these days. Damn

 

That gully looks tres cool. Way to kill it

[AlpineK]

Hmmmm. Resource Fees. I think I could get a waver on that one since my family has been here since before Washington was a State. If it makes any difference I'm willing to apologise for the Pig War.

[gertlush]

We drove back to Squamish and had dinner (not at the Howe Sound Brewery).

 

Nice

 

You have good taste in your skiing and your dinners.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2008 by gertlush

[JanD]

sweet trip, I was up at Lizzie with a couple friends the week before you went there.

 

Cheers, Jan

[tanstaafl]

Spectacular Hansel commentary.