Blackcomb Peak & The Spearhead - January 29 2023

Blackcomb Peak

Spearhead Range, Whistler, British Columbia
2436m

With avalanche conditions once again being quite favourable, I knew this wasn't a weekend to be wasted. However, with advisory-strength winds and a polar vortex bringing double-digit negative temps, I didn't go anywhere huge, as my usual partners were all busy and/or hiding indoors. I was also a bit distracted by some new skis, so I spent Saturday playing with those inbounds. For Sunday, I convinced Nick, one of my ski buddies (though I met him bagging Robie Reid), to join me for a sidecountry tour up in the Blackcomb backcountry to do some easier bagging. Despite being exhausted from his recent ski trip, he caved to my peer pressure and the plans were born.

We started a bit late (relative to most peakbagging adventures), as I had some old skis to resell, and had to meet the buyer at Whistler Village, so after parking at the Blackcomb lots and getting some very strange looks skiing down with another pair of skis on my pack, selling my old skis, meeting up, and getting up Showcase T-Bar, we found ourselves setting out from the lip of Blackcomb Glacier just after 11:00.

We started off pretty slow, as we were skinning where most had bootpacked, and the "track" was quite rough. In addition, this was the first time for Nick using his touring skis (he'd previously used another setup when learning and doing his avalanche training), so gearing up and getting the binding mechanics sorted took a little time. Thankfully, we'd planned a short day with lots of bail-out opportunity, so it was a good day to get such kinks ironed out. I was actually also using some new bindings, as I picked up some full-tech bindings for my old touring skis (whose bindings I lifted to my new skis), and wanted to test them out. Though I'd tested them out at home, and overall have more experience with touring, so they weren't much of a problem (actually I'd say they were a bit easier to manage than my other ones).

Once we got past the initial bootpack cutting up above the ski tracks cutting across the glacier, and I started breaking us a trail across and below the "Blackcomb N1" sub-peak, things got a lot smoother. The face was steep, but still avy-controlled, and the worst thing we saw was the thinnest of breaking crusts on the surface in a small spot. Overall, we spent about 20 minutes getting up to the ridge. There, Nick proclaimed his intent to forego any peakbagging (for shame!) and instead save his energy for the actual skiing (fair), so he let me go ahead to tag the summit while he stayed on the ridge.

After doing some research, there ARE actually some ski runs off of this peak going down into Blackcomb Glacier, but they're pretty gnarly and looked pretty damn rocky to us, and with our new gear (plus my lack of skill and Nick's tiredness), neither of us wanted to try anything that intense. Instead, I did the quick 5-minute bootpack (quite simple, just walking) to the top, grabbed some pics, and headed down before Nick got too cold.

Once I got back to the ridge, we decided to rip skins since they were basically bone-dry in the super-cold snow, and there were a few turns to be had before we needed to traverse across the upper glacier to get to the backcountry gate. Plus, they'd make the long traverse a lot more difficult. So, we ripped the skins, got a few okay turns on the fairly hard snow, and traversed over to the gate where we donned the skins and started the "big climb" of the day.

In the glacier bowl, we slowly made our way up the skin track snaking up the glacier. After making it about 100m up, I noticed the peak to climber's right getting into relief, and looking quite climbable. That was Blackcomb Peak! I wasn't sure how easy it'd be given the relatively thin snow of 2023 and its reputation as a proper climb in the summer, but it seemed quite doable to me. After talking with Nick, he said he was happy continuing up toward Spearhead at a leisurely pace while I went for the second detour, so off I went.

I skinned up quickly to the top of a ridge before the final summit block, where I was greeted with a fairly steep, rocky face. I could've probably woven my way through on skis, but I didn't really feel a need to try given the snow quality and my intent to keep my skins on heading back towards Nick. So, instead, I stashed my skis and a pole under a rock-protected hole, and set off on a bootpack for the top.

From where I stashed my skis, it was only a 10 minute bootpack, but it felt pretty hard as I was running on pretty low calories due to some medical issues, and I had to break trail. The worst was a 10-metre section of knee-waist deep postholing, which was a bit frustrating, but thankfully short-lived. If you can keep your balance well enough to not fall down the face (helmet ain't a bad idea, even if you're not skiing), then you can get up without any sort of technical climbing. I was greeted with some excellent views once again, so I snapped some pictures and headed down, hoping not to keep Nick waiting too long, as this detour was a bit longer than the last.

The climb down to my skis was nothing notable, and I managed to traverse across the face fairly high, and rejoin the skin track at about 2320m, where I made my way to Nick, who was supposed to be waiting at the ridge you can see from the bowl en-route to The Spearhead.

The Spearhead

Spearhead Range, Whistler, British Columbia
24576m

The next 100m up to Nick took about 15 minutes, as I was pretty low on energy after 2 meals the day before and an empty lunchtime after a very early breakfast. He was a bit higher than planned, since where we planned turned out to be a very windy, very cold spot on the ridge, but the spot we ended up meeting was more sheltered on the SE side of the peak.

I gave 1 last halfhearted attempt to convince Nick to join the dark (peakbagging) side, but he was quite content to think about ski lines and rest while I bagged the final peak of the day, so up I went.

10 minutes of postholing, random rock wells, and sometimes decent footing got me to the top of The Spearhead. The views were again excellent, though the wind had picked up again (thankfully not quite as bad as the previous day, where in the alpine I could feel it moving me on my skis). I got my photos in, and got down in another couple minutes.

After I got down, we discussed our plans further, and while there was more snow and potentially nicer lines below in the glacier, coming off the Spearhead->Phalanx col, and off the far side of Blackcomb towards 7th Heaven, we didn't have significant detail on some, and more notably, all involved more uphill travel, which Nick wasn't keen on, and I wasn't about to do if someone was going to give me an out; 2.5 (one's provisional) peaks was enough to sate me, and the snow wasn't good enough to make it worth the effort to chase non-existent powder. So, instead, we got back over the one hump between Spearhead and Blackcomb, then ripped skins and headed down.

The skiing was better than inbounds, but also not stellar. The wind and cold had turned the snow into a pretty tough surface, so no floaty powder for us. I did, at least, get to push my new bindings to pretty good speeds in the open bowl, and was pleased to see them not pre-release. Once we got back into the typical inbounds-accessed glacier run, we skied to the sign, where I stopped my tracking, and we skied out. He had some friends to meet up with, and I had a dinner to make, so I just went straight home so to avoid traffic and have a shower before heading to West Van.

Overall, definitely a productive trip, and a pretty good place to get Nick ready for more touring with his new gear so when there is sick powder to shred, we're ready and rearing to get to it before it's claimed. He was a champ coming out despite skiing for the last, like, 6 days with only 1 day of rest before this. If you're chasing good skiing, probably don't go when it's below -10 and windy as hell, (or if you just like being warm), but if you want good uphill conditions and some easy peaks to bag, then it was a pretty great day.

GPX Track + Map