Gin Peak - February 15 2022
Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Whistler, British Columbia
1803m
These days, I've been lucky enough to be able to flex my work schedule into the evenings on Wednesdays and sneak out for some morning "activities". More often than not, it's ended up being quick trips up to Whistler Blackcomb to get some skiing hours logged, but this week an opportunity arose. I managed to find myself a way into Whistler Olympic Park before their (ludicrously late) 9am gate opening time without having to park down at Alexander Falls. So, with SWBC's most sunrise-eager bagger Shayan, I set out from home at about 4:30am for a nice early start.
We took our time gearing up and getting started since we had originally planned for a larger, slower group, and departed from our tracking start point by the Day Lodge (850m elevation) at 5:33am. It was a short bootpack along the road to reach the start of the groomed cross-country terrain, where I slapped my skis on and started skinning, whereas Shayan was happy to bootpack until he actually started postholing since he was packing snowshoes for his floatation.
We more or less took the path along Callaghan Valley Road in an attempt to minimize our exposure to the "resort terrain" and get onto the backcountry access route for Hanging Lake, which starts from the end of the road. That kilometre from the car burned about 15 minutes, but given the <13km round-trip trail length, that was a meaningful percentage burned for 15 minutes' work.
Once we got onto the Hanging Lake Trail, things were still quite packed, as there had been many skinners, snowshoers, and even bootpackers on the trial, but it was no longer a maintained cross-country route, and instead a much more typical skin track in the forest. The beginning half a kilometre had a couple creek crossings which required some care to get across, but I never had to take the skis off.
The first hour of the day ended up netting us a bit under 350m elevation gain, but a bit over 3km, nearly half the distance to the peak. That was pretty encouraging. By this time (a bit after 6:30), the sun wasn't up yet, but things were getting brighter to the point that headlamps weren't really necessary, so we stowed them around this time. Shayan also decided to get his snowshoes out, as the trees were getting sparser, and there were more ski tracks about, resulting in the trail being a bit less packed from traffic and more postholing.
Another 20 minutes brought us to 1280m, about another 100m elevation down, and more signs of opening terrain. By this point, the snow beside the trail started feeling pretty nice, with no crust on top and a nice soft powder feel I couldn't wait to take advantage of going down.
Another 10 minutes brought us to the bottom of what is probably a boulder field which was quite open with the winter conditions, and fifteen more minutes after getting to the base of that, we arrived at Hanging Lake (about 1:50 in, or just after 7:20am).
Once we got to the lake, we got our first proper views of the alpine area. Well, at least, we were supposed to. Instead, we got mostly lake-elevation vistas and alpine fog/clouds. Oh well, I'm not really out for the views when I'm in the mountains, so I pushed onward, more concerned about visibility for the ski down and avoiding terrain traps than ruining my Instagram shots.
We didn't linger long at the lake, and continued the slog up past the lake and onto the ridge at about 1600m. There wasn't much to note here, other than Shayan being rather surprised about the efficiency of skis (usually he's much faster than me, but I was pushing us forward this time) and their ability to penetrate only a couple centimetres in the soft powder vs his snowshoes that were sinking much further when he got off-trail.
Once we gained the ridge, the visibility got worse, as we entered the clouds we could see when we got to Hanging Lake. It also got a bit windy, so I closed my zippers, and Shayan did some additional layering before we continued on up. If you look at a map, it is a bit hard to see this as a ridge, since the terrain doesn't dip enough on the far side (toward the peak) to show up on contours, but it is a small bump, and flat enough to be a notable landmark on the trail.
Getting up to the false summit took us to about 8:10am, or around half an hour. While this was definitely slower than our pace to this point, which I'd consider as "pretty good", it was for a noble cause: brunch. Shayan had a much-needed breakfast break, after which he was much more invigorated, and we pushed up quite efficiently after that. I, of course, hadn't opened my water bottle for my usual menagerie of bad reasons: not wanting to unpack it, heading off negative digestive consequences, and a touch of "well it's kinda just my thing now". It was also in this stretch where we hit an area steep enough he asked to borrow one of my poles (he didn't bring any), and that also seemed helpful in making for efficient travel, so we kept that arrangement for the rest of the ascent.
Once we got near the false summit, we got to some cool-looking frozen trees where I made a half-hearted attempt to capture with my "point and click" level of photography mastery.
The false summit is quite close to, but just one small dip away from the true summit, which took us a bit over 5 more minutes of effort to find ourselves on top of, at basically 8:30 on the money, just under 3 hours from when we set out. Not bad, given we budgeted an extra hour on top of that.
At the top, we spent about 15 minutes swapping gear (me more so than Shayan given I was skiing), eating/drinking (Shayan more so than me for the same reasons as before), trying not to let our hands freeze whilst doing the previous things in the biting wind, and trying to get some gaps in the clouds to get some pictures before descending. The former objectives were successful, but the latter two were... less so. It was COLD, and the clouds only slightly let up for a few seconds at a time. Below are my various attempts to get some semblance of summit views.
From the peak, Shayan took off first, figuring even if I had a bit of gear-fumbling left, the whole "being on skis" thing would let me catch up quickly. This proved correct, until the climb up to the false summit where I slightly regretted having stripped my skins already, so I tediously side-shuffled up the side of the face while Shayan strolled over and down. We decided given the visibility to not try and go down a more interesting line off the NW face, and instead just follow the mellow and more known terrain near the skin track back down.
After I struggled up to the false summit, I locked my boots in a bit tighter, finally swapped my watch into "downhill mode" for the tracking activity, and started enjoying the fruits of our labour. The snow was excellent. No crust, soft and fluffy, no fractures, no significant sluffing, and generally just "pretty great". I caught up with relative ease, and meandered my way down a few turns at a time. I couldn't go too fast in the flat light, as even going at a pretty chill pace I still managed to find myself yeeting into some snowdrifts I couldn't tell existed and got a bit snowy 😅
As we got closer to the lake, the light improved a bit, so in the latter couple hundred metres of vertical I opened things up a bit more and linked more turns together, which was quite nice. With there having been snowfall just a day prior, there weren't many tracks around (despite this being a very popular touring destination), so I more or less had my pick of fresh line to take.
Once we got close to the lake, I went off ahead on my own, knowing that while I would be able to ski across much faster, that the awkward sideways shuffle up the far lip of the lake would equalize things. This worked pretty well, and Shayan overtook me about halfway up the far side of the lake toward the boulder field we crossed on the way up.
Once I got up that one stretch, though, I caught up pretty quickly once again. From that point, I had maybe 5-10 minutes of skiing through the trees near the skin track, where the trees were open enough and the snow dry enough to be able to just pick a line down wherever looked good. After that, though, the snow got a bit wetter and heavier in the morning sun, and I mostly stuck to the skin track for my skiing down, which was much more "east coast" in feel.
The first couple hundred metres of vertical down from the lake were pretty slow and cautious, but at some point Shayan decided to ask me how the pace was, to which I replied it was perfectly fine, and I wasn't intending to go faster. Of course, his very natural response was to start jogging down, so we changed from a casual saunter down to a much more aggressive descent pattern. I have to thank him for it, though, because it got me out of my overly-cautious mindset from before and more into the zone, as I just started skiing down normally and linking my turns basically the rest of the way down without issue.
Near the end of the Hanging Lake Trail, we saw a couple parties heading up, so no "only party on mountain" checkbox for us on peakbagger.com. We did get to look like really ambitious folk for being on the way down so soon after the resort opened, though, so that felt kinda cool. Shortly after meeting the second party, we decided to exit the forest trail at 900m elevation instead of at the base where we entered on the way in, and come down on the "less creeky" resort trails, as this was the point where crossings no longer always had a snow bridge over them.
Here, we just had our phones out, and followed what we estimated to be the most direct route back to the car, which was fairly successful. I got to practice my cross-country skiing form on the uphills, which was not very graceful, but effective enough, and thankfully never sustained for more than 20 seconds or so. We spent 10-15 minutes meandering through these trails before we found ourselves at the road, where I unclipped from my skis, and we finished the last couple minutes down to the car, marking our descent time in at just about an hour and a half, and a C2C time of 4:40.
Overall, quite a productive trip. We made good time, got a peak bagged, had some excellent skiing, and all of that with plenty of time to spare before my first meeting of the day! After de-gearing and driving home to Squamish we stopped for some excellent donuts at Fox and Oak. It seems my friends are setting a dangerous trend of stopping for coffee there and suckering me into getting donuts while they get their caffeine to get them home, this cannot possibly end healthily for me. I do recommend them, though, they do make excellent donuts. I also recommend Gin Peak. It's not too difficult, can be linked up with Rainbow or Tonic/Sproatt for a bigger day, and largely can be done without exposing oneself to avalanche terrain if careful routefinding is done. A great beginner touring objective, especially.