Chilliwack Mountain - November 27 2022
Cheam Range, Chilliwack, BC
369m
Chilliwack mountain is a rather trashbaggy peak, just a few minute walk from the parking area of Hillkeep Park. As such, anyone reading this gets to be regaled with the failures of the weekend prior to us heading to this area to get "something" for our time spent. If you care only about the GPX and/or report for this peak, skip to the bottom.
Mount Brew - Squamish (Attempt)
This was our first outing of the weekend, starting out on a nice Squamish morning. Logan drove up and met me at my place, and we went from there to the beginning of Brew Creek FSR. I'd previously scoped this out when it was snowy, and once more with mostly dirt, at least up to about 570m elevation. This time, I wanted to get all the way. As I didn't have any road beta, I asked Logan to come along so one of us could rescue the other if necessary, plus he just wanted more driving experience offroad. Thankfully, despite things getting a bit pinstripey past that point, it wasn't a difficult drive, and my AWD easily handled the job. Of course, Logan's 4x4 laughed at it (once he figured out riding the clutch a bit when starting on an uphill helps a lot). We parked at the base of the deactivated bridge at about 700m. I don't recommend trying to go over it, there's a small barricade, and for a reason. It's pretty rotten.
From there, it was a short and easy FSR walk to the fork where the trail starts. However, at least in the snow (and no ground to see the "trail" from the road/bush), we didn't quite see it, and walked up a bit more of the FSR before checking our maps and seeing we missed the turnoff. It only wasted a few minutes, though, and we soon spotted a flag around a tree that escaped our vision previously.
After fighting through a couple awkward steps to get there, though, things turned into a much nicer trail, and we could make pretty easy progress. In about an hour from starting, we got to 840m elevation. This doesn't sound like much, nor was it much. Nor was the 2.5km distance travelled. That's because the easy progress in the first half of dirt trail was soon interrupted by icy ground (which posed a serious risk for my broken finger), thin snow cover, and many puddles and creeks making seconds-long sections turn into minutes-long sections.
After that hour mark, it didn't get easier. The trail became buried in a couple-centimetres deep snowpack. Just thin enough that spikes would just catch and rub on the terrain below, which could easily twist your ankles around, but thick enough to make surfaces slick and make navigation harder. The almost too-intensive flagging also calmed down, so we had to do more routefinding. This trail is probably obvious on the dirt, or irrelevant in the winter with a "real" snowpack, but in shoulder season it is the perfect amount of annoying to slow you down. At about hour #2, we broke 1000m and out of the forest, finally getting a "view" (as much as you could with a major storm starting to unfold).
Unfortunately, leaving the forest meant entering a large boulder field. This was problematic for a few reasons. The snowpack wasn't deep enough to cover them and make it "just a slope", but it was still there to make things slippery, and hide holes between rocks. There was also quite a bit of ice on the rocks. We had lots of daylight so we tried seeing how fast we could go across whilst feeling safe (namely me, with the "no fall rule" in place for my finger). Unfortunately, the answer to that question was "not very fast", so we had to make the call to turn back in less than half an hour.
The way down was uneventful, other than meeting another group coming up who I suspect didn't make it either given the hour and conditions. It did, notably, take very close to the same length of time, demonstrating how much the conditions were not on our side, as in normal/good conditions it is much faster coming down. In the end, it was just under 4 hours for the outing. On the plus side, we managed to avoid the heavy snowfall by ending early, and our tactics of getting our cars pointed around and slightly downhill, wipers up, traction pads pre-installed under our tires, etc. were not necessary to get out, as the road was basically the same as when we arrived.
Since we had time after grabbing some food up in Whistler, Logan wanted to get some more offroading experience, so I decided to bring him up to Tricouni (or at least the road to the parking). That was a good bit of fun, with lots of snow kilometres once we got past the first couple switchbacks. I managed to get through the big washout once again, but this time with snow on the ground, which made me feel pretty proud of my little crossover (though I did use enough gas to make me swear I got air coming out of it). We turned around shortly thereafter, though, as Logan wasn't too keen on the increasing steepness and ruggedness of the road at night with his level of experience. So around we went, no peak achieved but a fun day nonetheless, especially because that road is wide enough that I could do some drifting on the way down :)
GPX Track + Map
Mount Archibald - Chilliwack (attempt)
Since Logan had to head north the previous day, I figured it'd be fair for me to head east the next. Also the storm that hit the sea to sky wasn't really present out east so the snow conditions were a bit of a safer bet. We'd also hoped to get some friends more this direction on-board, though that didn't materialize. This peak specifically was chosed since it was supposed to be short and I had a dinner obligation in Burnaby with my family that evening.
We drove up in-tandem up the Bridal Falls FSR. This road is pretty continuously steep, with a lot of cross-ditches, though not as huge as on Cheam, just "regular sized". We got up the dry bits without much difficulty (though I had one section where I took a bad line and needed to give it a second attempt). Once we hit snow, it wasn't too bad, until the last switchback before the road straightened out until the parking. There, you'll find a decent cross-ditch right on the corner. Logan had some difficulty getting up, but he got through. However, that meant I had to stop and wait my turn (especially since momentum is my solution to my vehicle's limitations, and I don't fancy collisions). Starting on that uphill, in the snow, with enough power to get up the lip of the ditch was pretty close to my vehicle's limits, though I did make it. However, after doing so, Logan informed me he wasn't making much progress up the road past that point, and was happy to settle for the space on the side of the road along the turn that was flat and could fit 2 vehicles, so we decided that 990m was sufficient, and parked ourselves there. That brought us to 11am when we headed out.
We debated snowshoes or spikes for the first section, as it was a bit crusty but not supportive this late in the day, but decided on spikes since it wasn't deep, and snowshoes make your feet heavy. So we trudged along, breaking trail the whole way (well, Logan broke trail) until we got to the actual parking, thankfully only 15 minutes ahead by foot, which wasn't a huge loss. Despite maps showing the "road" as continuing from this point, only maybe a dirtbike could try it, it's too narrow for cars or even ATVs.
Once we got on the trail, it was about half an hour of walking along the west flank of the mountain, gaining up to 1200m where the trail intersects with the "other half" of Bridal Falls FSR. There's some decent views along the way, at least. We strapped snowshoes on partway through, as it got deeper and softer as we walked further.
At the intersection, we found a slightly grown over trail, but it looked usable enough and like a straightforward snowshoe. We'd also been progressing a lot faster than the previous day on Brew, so we were pretty optimistic. Unfortunately, that optimism died rather quickly, as the slightly overgrown trail turned into a thick, tedious bushwhack through what Logan coined "livefall", trees that weren't exactly dead but had falled over either from snow or wind, and were totally covering the trail.
The next kilometre took us forty minutes to complete, as we encountered sections like the above every dozen metres or so, and had to fight through the trees, getting snow dumped on us in the process. I took over trail breaking for a lot of it as well, as the snow simultaneously got a lot deeper and quite soft, our snowshoes sinking quite a few inches into the snow with each step. When we got to the next big switchback, our optimism was totally gone, and we just resigned ourselves to "hopefully the ridge will have less trees and it'll be easy going again".
Through this next section, we swapped lead again a couple times, as the snow was consistently deep and soft, though at least the trees weren't as bad. We got through the next ~400m in about 15 minutes, which was sadly a lot faster. This brought us to the next switchback at about 1370m. Somehow, right around there, for a couple minutes, the snow got even worse (right as I took lead again!), being just supportive enough to not fall when you moved your foot, but immediately collapsing once weighted. We were having all kinds of "fun".
Once we made that turn, we were hopeful that we'd be on the ridge and having less trees, and smoother sailing. Unfortunately, that didn't quite pan out. Instead, we got back into more "livefalls", slowing progress down, and we fought our way to 1400m where we hit a small viewpoint, and we took a short break.
After that break, we resumed the grind for another 20 minutes, this time substituting the tree-fighting for annoyingly steep side-hilling with snowshoes, which is never fun. The last little section was a very rocky spot with basically no snow cover, which was quite the pain to get across. I almost wish it was longer so I could've justified taking the snowshoes off for it. When we got to the end, it was 2.5 hours into the day, or about 1:30pm. Once again, we were facing a boulder field, although this one looked smaller than Brew, at least. However, with our slow progress, we were worried about making it back home in time for my hard deadline, as we expected the poor trail to make heading down not much faster than heading up. So, we played it safe and turned tail once again, which was quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, we were very wrong and it took just over an hour to descend. So when we got to the cars at 2:45, with a couple hours of time we could've used to finish the ascent, we were kinda kicking ourselves. Oh well, lesson learned, I guess. Don't underestimate how much slower deep, soft snow makes you. With that extra time, we went back to town and got some lunch, and also picked up some walkies on sale at Best Buy for easier offroad and on-mountain comms (the latter mainly useful for ski objectives where I might want to get a bit further apart).
GPX Track + Map
Chilliwack Mountain - Finally
After getting all the above things done, I was sitting in the parking lot with Logan looking at places we might be able to drive and test our new walkies at while having some offroad fun, if nothing else. However, in the process, I happened upon some interesting contours near the city, so I fired up Peakbagger, and sure enough, Chilliwack mountain was close, short enough to sneak in before I had to leave for dinner, and we decided to head there instead.
We got to the trailhead in the dark, so I busted my headlamp out while waiting for Logan (who made a wrong turn en-route). We set out at 5:15, following a blocked gravel road for the first 200m before turning onto the trail. The trail went for about 150m more before the viewpoint. It is easy enough that I did it in my day-shoes which are literally flat rubber on the bottom, so this is a very accessible place for basically anyone with legs.
From the viewpoint, the summit is a light bushwhack via a "kinda trail" blazed by other peakbagging enthusiasts who wouldn't settle for the viewpoint. It was a bit slippery with wet leaves, but nothing even my terrible footwear couldn't handle. We topped out in a grueling 8 whole minutes, snapped a quick photo, and dashed down, for some reason Logan decided to jog the road at the end so the round-trip time was just under 14 minutes. A bit "cheaty", almost, but hey, at least we got a peak done that weekend for all the effort we put in.
Since I did make dinner, I guess I can call the weekend a success, although I do regret turning back on Archibald, we almost assuredly could've made it. Oh well, I guess it'll still be there for maybe a spring summit when the road is easily driveable, and the snow hopefully will be a bit more solid. And we can bring a small saw or something to clean it up.