Amaretto and Pineau Peaks - November 25 2023

Amaretto Peak

Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Whistler, British Columbia
2074m

After an eventful Friday where a short morning outing turned into a whole thing due to car trouble, I had to find myself an objective for Saturday which I could get to without abusing my car, and "would still be fun". The original plans I had fell through due to my partner getting sick, so I asked around, and Logan+Michal both seemed interested in my idea of trying to traverse from Metal Dome to Brandywine. I had already bagged both, but the peaks in-between were still eluding me, and I hadn't seen a trip report for that in winter conditions, so it seemed like a fun idea. I decided to trust Logan enough to let him drive to save my car the wear while it remains held together with zipties, and we decided to meet at a casual quarter to 8.

The drive was a bit painfully slow contrasting my usual lead foot to Logan's poor Jimny saddled with 3 people, gear, and the hills up to Whistler, but it made up for it by getting us to just over 1200m on the road up to the upper parking area for Brandywine. We geared up while chatting with another group who also parked at this spot, I lent them a hand with their gear (one of them needed to adjust their bindings, and I pack a posidriv screwdriver with me when skiing), and we started moving at 9:37am. Like the previous day, it was totally bluebird, and fairly warm, so we had to de-layer pretty fast, and even still had to rein in the pace to avoid sweating buckets.

After walking for about 10 minutes, we hit the fork off to the spur road up to Metal Dome, said goodbye to our friends, and started the climb up. Just like the last time, there was a creek that I had to take the skis off to cross, but after that point, it was smooth sailing up the skin track all the way to Metal Dome's summit, a welcome change to my other skiing attempts this season.

The spur continues for a while until it devolves into just "a path through some open trees", and by 1450m, you get into the forest. The steeper parts to this point, like last year, were a bit sketchy for skiing down, but there was always a line down, if not one you could rip at full tilt.

The forest is fairly short, though, and within 25 minutes we'd broken out into treeline, and set our eyes on the first stop of the day. Logan was happy to be feeling good at this point instead of dying from the pain of hauling ass up on frame bindings like the last time we were here, and I was happy to see it was less tracked out than the last time, even if I wasn't going to be skiing down this way.

We continued on to about 1750m, where Logan wanted to grab some water, so I took a couple pictures in the beautiful conditions while I had a chance. We didn't linger, though, as we were making good time on the efficient skin track, and wanted to keep that momentum up to the summit (plus we were chasing a couple parties, and trying to catch up is fun).

After this point, the skin track got a bit steeper, and we had to actually switch back a bit instead of just wandering up, but it was still overally fairly mellow and chill. Some of the narrower parts got a bit rocky, but there were still places to get down, as the whole south side of Metal Dome is pretty open and not very cliffy. Since we were going up, we just followed the track for ease-of-skinning (well skinning for me, the others were on snowshoes).

Once we got to the summit area, there was a final short bit of rocky skinning left, and we summited in just under 2 hours! I was starting to worry I was becoming slow on skis given my first few skis of the year, but it seems with a good skin track and no routefinding shenanigans, I can still move fast enough to "not suck", at least.

We stayed on the summit for about 20 minutes chatting with the group up there, exchanging beta, etc. It turns out apparently a bunch of em were from Ontario, and one of them had a friend who knows me, so they knew who I was! They even recognized my "home resorts" (Lakeridge and Dagmar), which is something that's only happened 1 other time to me whilst out skiing on the West Coast. Eventually, though, we had to get moving and figure out a way down the col to Amaretto. We had no beta or expectations about even being able to get past Metal Dome, but we had some pictures from my trips to either end of the traverse, and high hopes. I did, however, have to stash my skis on my pack at this point, though, so I was done with the benefits of skis, and now had to posthole behind Michal and Logan 😞.

The walk down only took about 10 minutes, then I had to unpack my skis and pop em on to start skinning again while Michal went ahead, straight up as snowshoers tend to do. We actually saw a single ski track down from the sub-peak, so we had some hopes of being able to get up and hopefully across, since that person "had to have come from somewhere".

Sadly, since I was on skis, I had to make my own skin track up despite Michal already having gone up (an unfortunate trend for much of the day), and once it got steeper, I had to give up on that and bootpack, which was even less fun! But, it wasn't too long, and at 12:40pm (about 3 hours in) we were... on a random sub-summit, about to start the most difficult part of the traverse. Logan and Michal both hadn't yet bagged Metal Dome, so they already "got something out of the day", but I was still waiting for something to turn into a green circle 😃.

After a 15-20 minute break on top where I had a small snack (I didn't have a chance to do groceries beforehand, so no peanut butter sandwich for me this time, just some yogurt and a baby food pouch for later), we started following the bootprints of the person who'd come from the north down and across the ridge (with skis and snowshoes on our backs).

The first bit coming down from the sub-summit was pretty simple, but we soon got to some spicier terrain. There was a good amount of booting just "on a steep and exposed slope", though with the well-consolidated snow, it felt pretty safe, and the biggest danger was just stepping into a rock or tree well. After not too long, though, it got into some actual scrambling, which was a bit spicy with ski boots and skis on my back.

After the above sections, there was a fully dry/rock bit of scrambling for maybe a dozen moves, which was extra difficult for me, as I was really starting to understand how the total lack of a grippy toe on ski boots impacts one's ability to scramble. Thankfully it wasn't so bad I needed to bust out the crampons, but it definitely provided me with a good supply of spice for the day.

This kind of technical travel was pretty slow, especially with the kind of exposure we were dealing with, so it took about an hour to get from the sub-summit to the actual top of Amaretto Peak, where we got a better view of the remaining parts of the traverse, and started to suss out a plan for the rest of the day. We were at least helped by a couple people traversing the opposite direction, who came up below the Brandywine Glacier, giving us beta on "a way out that didn't require going all the way up and over Brandywine, or retreating back to Metal Dome", which was a very nice thing to have.

After talking it out, we figured 3:30 was a good time to start heading down, and it was 1:55 when we started moving off the summit, so we had about 1.5 hours to get down the col, up Pineau, and if that went well, continue along, and if not, we had tracks to follow below it and out to the meadows, so I think we all felt some relief of not having to turn back and go back out the way we came. On my end, I was just happy to have finally summited something new!

Pineau Peak

Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Whistler, British Columbia
2130m

From the top of Amaretto, we booted down for a few minutes before getting onto some broader, glaciated terrain. I excitedly ripped my skins for the short but oh-so-sweet descent down to the base of the ascent for either Pineau or Grand Marnier (we couldn't tell which we'd go for yet, since the ridge between Amaretto and Pineau was a no-go, and we just "didn't know" if the western approach for Pineau would go until we got eyes on it, so the answer was just going to the base of the Pineau-Marnier col and taking a look).

The skiing was pretty bad, to be honest, as it was very firm, crusty, and icy in spots. It was definitely more fun that walking, though! After that brief bit of fun, I had to put the skins back on and start up the col. Once again, while Michal broke a trail, it only helped Logan, and I had to set another skin track. I was much more okay with that before I knew how bad the snow was, but with the crusty crap I'd just experienced lingering on my mind, the bitterness started to slowly grow 😃.

Getting up the col took about 20 minutes for me, with some steep and narrow spots to try and skin through, and thin coverage over rocks not helping me get purchase. I really wish I had ski crampons for these new bindings, but my cheapness hoping for a sale was biting me 2 days in a row now 😅. Still, it wasn't so bad I had to bootpack, so hey, all's well that ends well. Once on the col, Michal had already continued on up, so I stashed my pack and skis, and started to follow his snowshoe tracks up, while Logan tried to cut a line below on a snowier band, hoping to avoid gaining the false summit unnecessarily.

Getting up to the false summit was fairly easy, though getting down it and across the col towards the true summit was a bit spicier. There was some pretty serious exposure in places, and the rocks were a bit loose in a few others, but we made do sticking to the snow as much as possible. The traverse of this short section took nearly half an hour, but we made it to Pineau safely, so overall a win.

We finally got on top at 3:15pm, so our window of time to get peaks before heading out was basically out. We enjoyed some views at the top of Pineau, but didn't stick around long due to the dwindling window of daylight.

We got back to the col just after 3:30pm, so I was a bit disappointed to have to turn back with Grand Marnier so close, but a turnaround time is only good if you listen to it, especially when your way out is on unknown terrain (I've only looked at the terrain here from afar or on maps, and I knew it was not free of cliffs, so I wanted to be in the meadows before headlamps came on). So, Logan and I decided to start heading down, but Michal went to tag Grand Marnier, since he was confident he could catch up. Gearing up ended up taking longer than anticipated (Logan apparently wasn't in a rush, for some reason), so I slightly regret not going up with Michal in hindsight, since I could've caught up on skis as well, but oh well, I was gonna have to come back for Cognac anyways, so I'll just do it with that.

This is normally where I'd say "finally, my suffering up and down this stupid ridge with skis was finally worth it, and I got to ski down awesome pow while the others suffered in their snowshoes". However, this was no ordinary day, and instead, I got to skid and survival-ski my way down the crappiest snow I have ever skied, somehow both crusty and sticky at the same time, making initiating a turn and bringing your tails with you a monumental task, and sucking all the joy out of what should've been a very enjoyable descent.

The only saving grace of the skiing was "at least it is less effort than snowshoeing, if not even much faster". I skied down to about 1890m, with Michal catching up in this stretch, where I had to re-apply my skins for a quick gain up to the top of a gully after the terminus of Brandywine Glacier, where we could follow the skin track down into the meadows.

Once we got to the top of the gully, I ripped my skins once more, hoping the decent snow we found in the flats would be present in the gully too, but no such luck. In fact, it got even worse, with the crust becoming more breakable, and the snow even sticker. There were also more rocks here, making it a bigger deal if it took a while to bring your skis around, which was not exactly what I was hoping for 😅. Michal got a nice clip of my gorgeous survival skiing, which I only managed to tolerate for 150m before giving up and just putting the skis on my back in frustration at 1700m, as I wasn't having any fun, and booting was safer and probably faster too.

The bootpack was fairly effective, although we ended up walking over a creek for a lot of this descent, so there were some postholes which made it slightly annoying. In 20 minutes we descended about 150m into the meadows, where I decided to try and ski again. This was... at best slightly effective, as the snow continued to get worse, and on anything other than the straight road, I could barely turn, or just not at all, and I ended up eating shit enough times (once having a ski run away from me on the crusty snow that Logan thankfully managed to retrieve) that I just packed em up even though it was an "overall-downhill" skin/sled track out at that point.

From the ~1500m mark where we rejoined the trail, it was an hour-and-a-half slog out over 4.5km, with a metric ton of creek crossings (literally many dozens), many of which required me to take the skis off. Once we got back into the trees a little below the meadows (~1375m), I got confidence to rip my skins for the last time, and at least got to ski the icy, crappy road back to the car. Michal was the MVP on a few short uphills and gave me a tow to prevent me from having to walk or put skins back on, and once we got onto the actual road, I was able to ski at least somewhat effectively (it was pretty frozen and torn up from cars, sleds, and people, but tracked wide enough that I could turn, since the sticky snow was replaced with icy snow, something my Ontario-raised self is much more familiar with).

Once we got to the car, we almost convinced ourselves the day was over, but Logan actually got a bit stuck turning the car around, so we were about to have to shovel ourselves out, but some nice folks we saw driving up as we were descending came around and offered to tug us out to save us the hassle, which was super nice of them. With that extra layer of shenanigans, we ended up getting home fairly late, so I took the Sunday off to catch up on anime and sleep, which as I'm writing this I can confirm I definitely needed.

As for "should anyone else try a trip like this": absolutely! You'll want to be comfortable scrambling with your winter gear, and if you're a peakbagger more than a skier, I'd bring snowshoes, it's just more efficient for ridge rambling. Skiers can definitely do it, though, and if you start early and have good snow, you can definitely do the whole traverse in one go. I might suggest going up Brandywine and down Metal Dome, though, since there's fewer creeks on Metal Dome, it's safer terrain to exit if you end up in the dark, and you can ski down the whole way, instead of dealing with the flat meadows and road of the Brandywine side.

GPX Track + Map