Claimstake Mountain - March 22 2025

South Hozameen Range, Manning Park, British Columbia
2045m

Despite being another busy week at work, I managed to slip away on Friday morning to enjoy a surprisingly calm powder day at Whistler, which went quite well (got, like, third chair up 7th heaven and overall got like 8 proper powder runs in, can't complain about that). I wanted to keep that kind of quality up for the coming Saturday, but with avalanche conditions improving, but still not really known and settled, it was not easy to put an objective together that fit that goal and got me a new peak. After a lot of back-and-forth, I eventually made a late-night decision to just pick one of my "boring but safe" objectives out of the bag, Silverdaisy. You'll notice (probably) that this TR isn't for that, though. More on that later. What matters to this point was that I had an objective for the weather window before a large storm was to roll in Saturday night, so I set my alarm nice and early to give myself time to make the long drive out.

Sadly, my body had other plans, and I instead spent far too long in the morning dealing with colitis symptoms, and got out of Squamish closer to 8am than my 5:45 alarm would make you expect 🙃 After stopping for gas partway through, and yet another bathroom break, I finally rolled in to the parking area off of Highway 3 (Cayuse Flats) at a very-alpine quarter to 11. To my surprise, there were a few other cars there too, which was honestly a relief. This would be my biggest day since my December knee injury, so having a broken trail for the day would certainly help, especially with my later-than-desired start. So, I strapped the skins on, and got moving at a casual 10:52am 😅

The start of the hike/tour is a forest road, which is seemingly kept in good shape. Sadly, it is also gated just off the highway 😠. I'm never a fan of gates, but "it is what it is", so be prepared for that. In the winter, skis will help a lot, and in the summer, a bike is advisable. I do wish, at least, that they just built a hiking trail from the terminus of Smitheram Creek by the highway, that way you can avoid pretty much all the flat/uphill spots on the way down, and save probably 3km. After walking to the gate (which seems to be very well-placed to avoid people being able to manoeuvre sleds or ATVs around it) and hopping over, I put the skis on, and started skinning up.

From there, the tediousness began in earnest 😅. There's not much to the next 6km, so I started up the latest episode of the WAN Show and just got walking. In just under an hour, I managed to cover about 3.5km, and about 250m of elevation (pretty flat). This got me around the corner, where the trail stops parallelling the highway/Skagit River, and curves southwest up Smitheram Creek. That, at least, got me a couple views to look at instead of just my podcast and the mental game of "guess which side of the road will get me tree-bombed less" to keep things interesting.

A little while after that, I found the one downhill part of the road past that curve, which I figured would be annoying on the way out. However, due to the warm, wet, springy nature of the snowpack until somewhere between 4 and 5km, it wouldn't be as big of an annoyance as I was expecting based on what it looked like on the way in.

As I got closer to 5km and over 1100m in elevation, the snow got a bit drier and softer, which was reassuring for skiing quality on the real part of the mountain. I took a few more photos en-route, but there really wasn't much going on until 6km (~1270m), which took me just about 100 minutes to crank out.

At that point, the skin track forked a bit. An older set of tracks went up the road, but the freshest ones continued straight and into the forest. I recalled reading on some old TRs (trip reports) for Silverdaisy that some cutblocks could be shortcut by going through them instead of winding up the road, so after checking my map and confirming "that could be the case here", I decided to follow the fresher track, hoping it would be a bit more efficient, as the road was pretty long and mellow.

After a few metres just following the creek, the skin track dipped into the forest and I was relieved to see that the gamble was likely to pay off, as the tree spacing was quite nice, and the grade was a lot steeper than the road, allowing for much more rapid progress. This went along nicely for a few minutes until I encountered an unexpected crux: a steep, shallow spot where some unfortunately-placed deadfall had caused the track-setters to slip and scrape off most of the snow! I tried to find a decent place to put my skis to get up this, but I couldn't manage, and actually had to boot up those couple steps to get back to easier skinning 😞. That felt a bit like admitting defeat, and even getting footing with boots wasn't trivial, but I got through it, and soon enough was back on my way, now nearly out of the forest.

Shortly thereafter I emerged out of the tall trees into an old cutblock, which was filled in quite well, and the stoke levels started to rise. In a few more minutes, I was back on the road, this time having covered about 150m of elevation in just 600m of distance, a much better ratio for getting up hastily (more relevant given I basically started at 11am 😅).

Now past 2 hours into the day, with the snow feeling downright good, I was finally getting into properly enjoyable-looking terrain. When I first saw the bowl on Eastpoint, I was pretty freaking stoked. I wasn't planning on that peak for the day, which is good, because I now want few things more than to ski that bowl, and that's not something to be done solo 😅. But I'll settle for discovering a new (to me), sick-looking ski line I can hit after bagging a peak. That's always a win. That was complimented a few minutes later by finding the heavily-logged slope just on the climber's right side of the road, which looked basically like a resort piste, just a wide open blanket of snow. Things were definitely looking up.

I followed this main road until it split again just above 1500m. There, I decided to eschew the old skin tracks that went up towards the roads that went towards Silverdaisy, and instead followed the skin track heading a bit further south, figuring that it would go uphill soon, and that would still allow me to connect to the Silverdaisy road system without meaningful elevation loss, and potentially shortcutting more switchbacks on the road, with a broken trail. Sure enough, after a few metres, the track dipped into the forest on climber's right, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

The forest here was pretty great. The coverage was better than the previous shortcut, with no concerns about sneaky deadfall breaking your legs, and the spacing was good enough that you could actually ski if reversing course through it. I made good progress for the next few minutes until I happened upon the kind souls who set the track, who were getting ready for a second lap up the mountain! We chatted for a while, and as we did, more people showed up, and it turns out they had a party of, like, 8 people, all getting together to ski one last good weekend before spring started to take over. They gave me some good beta that they broke the trail to Claimstake rather than Silverdaisy, but that they went to the top, the terrain was chill, the snow was excellent, and I wouldn't have to break a ton of trail. I quickly verified that Claimstake was still a p100 (can't be turning this into a trashbagging trip, now), checked that it would have safe terrain for a solo skier, and decided to take their advice and pivot plans. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow, and this felt like one of those times.

After our chat, I tried to continue my way up, but quickly realised that I am, in fact, still recovering, and needed to rest/recharge a little, so I took a 10-minute break to have a few sips of water and a couple packs of Welch's gummies. After I did that, I made my way through the rest of the forest, and popped out at ~1665m, now a bit over 3 hours into the day. Of course, this put me back on a road (there are a lot of logging roads in this little zone), and so I continued plodding along further south towards the Claimpost-Eastpoint col.

I walked along the road for another 10 minutes until I finally reached the point where the skin track started to wind up the switchbacks on the eastern flank of Claimpost. Along the way, I ogled at Eastpoint a bit more, and noted some ski tracks coming down from Claimpost, indicating a general area where one might be able to return to the road.

I took a couple switchbacks before deciding it was a good time for another rest break, so I sat down, had some water, and slapped a midlayer on and enjoyed the fairly calm weather for a little while, doing my best to recharge without actually eating, given my particularly sensitive digestion in the morning. This allowed the big party behind to catch up, as they were planning to do a couple more laps still. I got moving before they caught up, but not long after I was moving again, they started rolling in behind me. That was also around the point where the skin track started just wandering up the open trees on the east face, as the road ended there (if it instead went further north, the roads go higher, but this allowed for a more direct route to the summit, interfered with ski lines less, and was in easy-to-navigate terrain, so it was the right call).

For the next half hour, I did my best to keep chatting with the clearly-more-fit party I now found myself inserted into 😄. Of course, this was entirely self-inflicted, but it was good motivation to push myself to do some proper exercise, and it is more fun to hang out with people than trudge uphill by yourself, generally speaking. I kept up for like 90% of the way to the summit, but I eventually tapped out to catch my breath under the guise of taking pictures 🤣

At the 4.5 hour mark, I made it to what I thought would be the summit, but once I arrived, I kinda realised that what was kinda advertised as the top wasn't quite the true summit, which instead lied along a ridge curving west past a false summit, then north to the top. The ridge was well-corniced, but didn't look stupidly steep to the point that I'd regret not having my crampons or axe with me, so after an inner sigh of disappointment, I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and left the friendly skiers to enjoy their laps while I finally earned my summit a bit, and broke about 400m of trail to the true summit 😄

The first half of the way over was pretty simple, I just traversed across the SE side of the ridge, keeping back from the cornices, and making sure to balance myself between giving them a berth and getting too far down the slope to the point that I might be exposing myself to any avalanche risk. I did a couple hasty tests, which were encouraging, but given the general lack of certainty in the snowpack, I didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. Visibility was in-and-out along the ridge, but never so bad that you couldn't figure out your next 10 steps. I managed to walk over and around the false summit in the middle without much difficulty, though the true summit's ascent path would prove to be the far more involved half of the traverse.

The downhill parts of the ridge were a bit annoying on skis, as free-heeling with skins on is never very graceful (at least not when I do it), but I managed alright, since the angles were never very steep, so you could just slide forwards into an uphill bump, or just side-step. The long powder skis (Line Vision 108s) I'd brought for the way down did make tighter manoeuvres a bit trickier than I've grown used to with my more mountaineering-focused Salomon MTN 96 Carbons, as they are a solid 10cm longer, with a fairly centred mount point, so the tails can get in the way for steeper kick-turns.

The north-south part of the ridge was definitely trickier, with more elevation changes, more snow variability, and a lot more wind-effect, making for a lot of lips and drops to navigate around (or through, or over). In the next 10 minutes, I managed to get about halfway through this next section, getting down and around a small rocky section by descending further onto the west slopes, and hitting the low-point of the col, with about 50m to gain ahead of me.

With the descending parts out of the way, it was a mostly-simple skin up to the true summit. A few times, I had to descend further onto the western slopes to stay away from the cornices, or work around some boulders or wind lips, but for the most part it was just regular skinning. As I neared the top, I avoided the steeper, more direct line on top of the cornice, and wrapped around the west side of the summit. I managed to find the seemingly only patch of hard-packed, icy snow, right where I needed to make a kick-turn on my slightly-awkward skis, which was lovely.

From that point, with probably 10m or less to go, I had to make a bunch of tight kick-turns to stay within the confines of some small wind-lip features in the snow, but eventually I made it up, and arrived on the summit just before 4pm. While it wasn't exactly bluebird, the views were still pretty good, and the winds were calm, so I was able to sit down and relax for a few minutes, which was nice after a 5-hour ascent.

I hung out on the summit for quite a while, apparently, almost half an hour. It didn't feel that long, but that's what the GPX track says 🤷‍♂️. From there, I had to do some careful retracing of my steps to get past the icy step I contended with on the way up, then it was largely much easier traversing on the way back. With the benefit of hindsight, I avoided more of the wind lips and was able to walk more comfortably on the return, making it back to the "skier's summit" at 5:45 into the day, or a bit after 4:30pm.

I took my time transitioning, knowing that I didn't have the time to do laps if I was to make it back to the car without needing to bust the headlamp out. After a casual 15 minutes packing my skins up, putting layers on, etc. it was finally time to ski! I traversed about 50m to the north along the ridge until it seemed to drop off, and so that's where I dropped into the fall line.

The snow was soft and not too heavy, and the trees were spaced excellently to have a great time. With the added bonus of having paid the price in lugging my new "powder touring skis" up, it was an absolute pleasure of a ski run, way better than I was expecting coming into the day. I was expecting to largely just be slogging up a road and straightlining it down, but this was probably my best run of 2025, inbounds included! I enjoyed terrain just like that until below 1800m, where I decided to just follow what looked good to skier's left instead of going towards the more known areas to skier's right. My theory was that the more left (north) I went, the less road traversing I'd have to do, and I could instead enjoy more skiing on good terrain.

This was mostly true, as at about 1770m, I popped out of some denser trees into a really nice zone, with perfect tree density and decently steep terrain. Sorry to Nick and Kelly, you'd both have loved this terrain. Thankfully, there are a couple more peaks we can return to and get similar skiing on another day 🤞

I just sent it straight down the run in front of me there, so I had a bit of a tight exit to the road, but nothing gnarly, just a few metres of careful skiing vs the full send the previous terrain allowed for.

From there, I shuffled along the road for a few metres, then dipped into the forest I'd skinned up to shortcut the switchbacks near the Silverdaisy fork, and enjoyed some denser but still very fun tree skiing down to 1520m, where I rejoined the road once more.

From there, the terrain is nice and downhill, if not particularly steep (I just straightlined down the skin track). I actually ran into a couple heading up the road for a random evening tour, which was surprising since they didn't have camping gear, and it was already past 5pm. I guess if you know the terrain, though, you could ski this area by headlamp, so fair enough. I've done that closer to home myself.

I descended for around 100m on the road, until I passed the point where I'd come up from my lower shortcut. I didn't want to ski the way I came up there, since the mature forest had some deadfall lurking just below the surface, and I already broke my knee once this season 😅. So, I waited until I was able to ski the cutblock all the way back to the lower road, and dropped in there.

Sadly, the snow at this elevation (below 1400m) was a bit crusty and grabby, so it was more survival skiing (especially as the tree density increased) than fun. Perhaps I should've taken the road, but I wasn't sure if it would have any undulation, and without being slicked up by people having skinned it on the day of, it wouldn't be as fast as the previous sections anyways. It worked out until it didn't in the last 10-15m of elevation, where the trees just became "typical forest dense", and I had to give up and take the skis off for a short bushwhack. If you actually bother to look at satellite and pick your line, you can avoid this, but I didn't feel like bothering, and so I had to get a little closer to nature as a result 😃

Once I was on the road, I was pleasantly surprised with how downhill it actually was, and I managed to ski down 1.5km in just a couple minutes! That's where I hit the hill I thought would be really annoying on the way up, but to my surprise, it was actually mellow enough, especially with the spring-like snow at this elevation, to just shuffle up without needing to put skins on, so I only spent a few minutes dealing with that.

From there, it was about 3.5km to the car, just the section heading back west from where the road turns away from Smitheram Creek (another reason for BC parks to put a trail in from the highway right there 😉). This section is a lot flatter, though, so while there were a few spots where you could carry momentum, there was also a lot more pole-pushing and skinless shuffling to get back to the bridge and the car, so this section took me about 25 minutes to complete. There was just enough snow left, and with the forecast bringing heavy rain and warm temperatures the next week, I'm glad I made it before that.

All in all, that brought the car-to-car trip to just over 7.5 hours, 20km, and 1300m of elevation gain. Definitely my biggest day since coming back from my tibial plateau fracture, so I'm pretty happy with that. Plus, I got some really nice skiing in, a summit, and made some trail friends. Hard to be mad with a day like that. If the trail started from Smitheram Creek instead of 3.5km further at some random gate, that would make it almost perfect. Still, 10/10 would recommend, and especially if you have skis, as there's a ton of tedious walking that would be made much easier if you can just slide the whole way down 🙂

GPX Track + Map