Cougar Ridge - December 7 2022
Sky Pilot Group, Squamish, BC
242m
Since I'm going away shortly on a family vacation where peaks may be inaccessible to me, I had to get a last fix before leaving. Conveniently, I had a day with no morning meetings, so I decided "even if I don't have time for a big peak, I can still get something". That being so, I pulled out a local bump from the backup bag, and pointed myself toward Cougar Ridge in Valleycliffe. I had lofty goals of getting other peaks northeast of it, but those quickly fell apart, as you'll discover later.
I left home at about 10:30am, having slept in and dealt with some work stuff before leaving. This wasn't supposed to be a long or hard day, after all. However, to make it a bit more interesting and useful from a staying-in-shape perspective, I decided to go from home in downtown Squamish instead of driving. So, I set off from Cleveland and Main (Fox and Oak for those interested in coffee or donuts).
The first 17 minutes (also about 1.7km, so a very convenient pace to measure) of the walk were pretty flat and boring; I just walked until I got close to Smoke Bluffs parking near the Adventure Centre, and turned off when I saw the trail. Due to the recent cold snap, there was snow immediately. I'd just bought some new "hiking loafers" to replace my very old daily shoes, and was hoping they'd live up to their name, so I was wearing those to test them out. Unfortunately, even the walk before had led me to realize despite sizing down half a size, they were still rather loose. I brought extra shoes as backup, but was hoping they'd still do alright. The snow was the first test of that.
Due to this being the Smoke Bluffs, it didn't take long for me to find bouldering and climbing spots. The shallower pitches were pretty icy, but within 5 minutes I found sendable pitches and even a rope (though it didn't seem to be set up for climbing purposes).
I walked along the lower trail until I hit the last fork to go uphill, and decided that was probably a good time to start gaining elevation. The snow was fairly grippy, as snow goes, and the trail had lots of flat spots to plant your feet, so the going wasn't too difficult. I soon hit a road-like trail and a rock wall in front of it. It appeared that the trail probably had forks around it, but there seemed to be a scrambleable way up, so I decided to do that.
While it was fun, it also seemed to dump me basically in someone's backyard. I wanted to keep going until I would actually be in there, but of course that isn't a very smart plan, so instead I had to do an awkward sidehilling traverse of the smooth, half-snow covered rocky backside of the hill. That wasn't super fun, and the looseness of my shoes didn't help. I managed to get through it, though, and a couple minutes later I was in the Little Smoke Bluffs Park.
From there, things slowed down a good amount as I started feeling the pain of not planning my route beforehand. There are dozens of trails in this park, and the snow does not help one make sense of them. I had to do a lot of map-checking and stopping at junctions which weren't on one map, or either because someone just decided to walk there and leave tracks... But I knew that'd happen going in so I can't really complain. I figure these peaks will always be here for easy, quick outings, and I get to learn the area more doing things this way. I decided to try and follow the "Loop Trail", at least until about 200m or so where it, well, looped back down. While slow, this worked. Of note, there was a rather icy set of stairs I'd advise caution on.
Once I forked off, I went to top out the bump housing some kind of comms tower, and started descending the "Doggy Style" trail toward Cougar Ridge. As I started descending, I decided the shoes were a liability, and that I probably should also take my poles out given my need to protect me healing finger still. So, I stopped at the fork of Doggy Style and "Mountain of Phlegm" to swap my shoes for the hiking shoes I had in my pack as backups, and took my poles out. I also put my spikes on given the slippery conditions I'd been in thus far. That brought me to an hour in, but only 4.2km or so. At this point, I knew my multi-peak ambitions were dashed, but that's a price I realized I might have to accept by not allowing myself to use any routing functionality.
As I descended and started the traverse alone the Pipe Trail (seemed more direct that Doggy Style), I unfortunately realized the universe hates me, and once I put my spikes on the ice went away, and instead I just had the balliest snow ever. Like, every couple steps my foot felt 3x heavier as I brought massive chunks of snow and sometimes dirt along with me, and had to kick them off my spikes. I wonder if any spikes come with anti-bott plates like crampons... that would be handy for these conditions.
About 5km in, just before I was supposed to turn off the Pipe Trail and head up to the top, I somehow found myself forking left onto some tracks I should've not just followed, which then quickly died on me, and I got myself into some random forest. I wandered around for about 10 minutes in no-man's-land, finding one minor cliff I had to hop down before I regained the trail. Somehow, I did regain it basically right at the fork I needed to take, so that was fortunate. It was here I lost tracks (other than off-trail just before, of course) for the first time. Apparently nobody else wanted to hike the steep, half-covered rocks. I can't imagine why.
Past there, it was a quick jaunt up to the summit, less than 10 minutes. I took some underwhelming photos before I saw the gap that led to probably a viewpoint. Thankfully I was right, otherwise I'd have nothing good for the cover photo of this TR. So I snapped a couple more photos there before heading down. I decided to traverse the peak and take the "long way" on the Valleycliffe roads to save time, since I had to get back to work soon.
The way down in the forest was a bit gnarly at times, though at least straightforward with less forks in the trail. There was one notably icy spot to hop down, but the rest was fairly easy to navigate. I popped out at the road about 1;45 into the hike, and took the spikes off, stashing my poles as well. I figured I could jog the way back to get my heart moving a bit more, and save some time.
Well, at least I planned to jog. I did for a while, but missed a turn on the road just being "in the zone", and found myself on a snowy trail. It still headed down, though, so I just took it. Bet you could teach your kids to ski here if you go before it gets too rough and footprinty, it's pretty wide.
That slowed me down a bit, but I soon got dumped on Plateau Drive. Of course, I went the wrong way, and descended to Westway Ave (my brain was clearly in "descent mode"). This could've got me out, but I didn't want to go along the highway, so after going the wrong way up Westway for a minute too, I oriented myself properly, and jogged to a trail that headed up to Plateau again, just further west. This trail was a bit too slippery to jog, so I walked it, and resumed again on the road. I took that until I got to Northridge, where I rejoined the Smoke Bluffs trail network. I quickly ordered some takeout in a particularly snowy spot, and resumed my half-jogging in the snow.
This time, I stuck to major trails and didn't do any scrambling, so I got down much faster than I got up through this section, and exited at the Smoke Bluffs parking. From there, it was an easy jog back home, with a stop for some takeout (thankfully I timed it quite well, it was just ready for me as I jogged by), and a prescription I had to pick up on the way home. Quite the efficient trip, if I can pat my own back a bit. Except for the whole 11+km and 400+m elevation gain for a peak below 250m (although my GPS tagged it at 272m at the highest point).