Gott Peak - October 2 2023
Lillooet Range, Duffey Lake Area, BC
2511m
This TR picks up from that of Gotcha Peak, which me and Michal (my partner for the day) had bagged first.
Now on the road once again, we made the short walk up to the park boundary for Stein Valley, where we found (once we dusted the snow off of the sign) an amusing warning about trail closure due to wildfire hazard. We were pretty sure that wasn't going to be a problem, so we checked our maps, and saw that the "trail" was mostly just "go up the ridge", so we just start walking up whatever looked the easiest, a luxury allowed by the snow cover.
After winding around a couple of bushes, we quickly found ourselves just trudging up a seemingly never-ending ridge. This continued for about 40 minutes until we got up to 2400m, where we hit what we hoped might be the summit, but upon checking our maps, we realised was actually the first of a lengthy series of false summits. While we did so, Michal was gracious enough to give me a small snack in a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which was a nice snack, as I was not hungry enough to justify digging out and eating the more cumbersome food I had packed.
It took us another 35-40 minutes to get the last 100m of elevation to the summit, as the terrain was just a lot less friendly. To climber's right was a steep drop-off into the bowl below, with the beginnings of cornices already forming to that side. To the right, the slope was somewhat steep but "not deadly", though the downslope still made navigation require care, especially since the snow wasn't nearly as deep as on Gotcha, and there was a higher chance of the rocks below moving or being slick. We rambled along, getting our hopes up with each false summit, then having them dashed as we moved along and saw another in the distance. To add insult to injury, when we got brief views down between clouds, the skiing to either side looked like it would have been awesome, leaving me with a little bit of regret for not waiting until winter for these peaks. Oh well, I could always come for some of the other stuff that's both NW and NE of Gott, I'm sure the terrain would be similar.
Eventually, once we got down about 130m bel0w the top, we became confident we were actually going to hit the summit soon, and about 15 minutes later, or about 3:35pm, we summited! Again, we only hung around for about 5 minutes, just enough to get some pictures, before heading down. We weren't tired enough to justify sitting down and having a meal or anything, and Michal had a bus to catch back in Whistler, so we just started heading down.
Once we decided to head down, we had to figure out how. The obvious answer would be "how you came up", but that was a long ridge due east when our car was due west. Our track also showed that there was a doable way down, as it just connected with the upper road shortly after the road forked, and cut off a ton of distance. It was, of course, a bit steeper, but looking at the slope with our eyes and our maps, it looked still doable without crampons or axes, so down we went, after I re-donned my microspikes I'd taken off partway on the way up, as the lower snow levels had resulted in a lot of dirt+snowballs clogging them up.
The descent to the road was pretty simple, with the beginning having more boulders, and the latter 3/4 being more in dirt and plants with occasional rocks. It was all walking terrain, with us just cutting small diagonal lines through the easiest terrain and trying to stay roughly in-line with our GPX to avoid the low chance of cliffing out or anything else untoward. After that first rocky section, however, due to the lower snow cover on this south face, I really started having issues with clumping in my spikes, so after far-too-long spent suffering with having to kick balls of snow out of them after each step, I did remove them, which was much more pleasant.
As we picked our way down, the rocks basically went away, and we got to a spot where there was a moderate-length slope with a small uphill at the end, so we decided to go for a glissade since we had natural protection from sliding all the way down, which was fun, if wet. Shortly thereafter, around 2150-2100m, the snow disappeared entirely, and we found ourselves on regular dirt slopes with minimal trees or large bushes.
We were a bit to skier's right of our track, so we decided to just cut left at the sharpest angle that "wasn't annoying to walk on", figuring the terrain was all pretty same-y, and that would be a good compromise between walking efficiency, getting to the road the fastest, and avoiding the risk of more trees or cliffs in the way of our return to the road proper. This worked well, and by 4:55, we could finally see the road! At this point, we just headed straight down for the closest clearing we could find in the trees, as getting onto the road would be our ticket to faster travel.
In less than 5 minutes, we found ourselves on the road! We de-geared a bit, as it was much warmer and drier, and started the walk back to the car. Being just road-walking, that was pretty uneventful, with just a few stops for taking pictures when the clouds cleared a little bit.
Once we got to the car, I breathed a sigh of relief seeing the Gladiator from the morning had got by our car fine, so much so they didn't even need to fold my mirror in. I turned myself around with a many-point turn, and we started the drive out. It was around 5:45pm when we finally hit the road, and Michal's bus left Whistler Creekside at 7pm, so it was gonna be pretty iffy to get back in time. The road did not help, being rather rough and tight until we hit the maintained road, and even then, the constant small waterbars ensured we couldn't pick up consistent speed (nor did the wetness, as the mud was soft enough to impact traction). We hit the highway at about 6:10, and my confidence got pretty low.
We did make it to the Upper Village in time, but definitely not to Creekside. Thankfully, most buses also stop in Squamish, so all we had to do was drive faster than a bus to Squamish, which was a pretty feasible goal. We were lucky in that there wasn't a ton of traffic on the road now that night comes quickly, and I managed to pull in to the Adventure Centre at 7:57pm, just in time for the 8:00 departure, which was quite the relief 😃. We said a curt goodbye as Michal ran onto the bus, and with that, the day was over.
Overall quite a fun trip. I got to meet yet another peakbagger, I got some fun offroading in AND got to get further than I had expected, we got 2 peaks done, and even made it in time for his bus, saving me a couple extra of hours of driving to the North Shore and back. I'd say that these peaks are really year-round peaks, going in summer, shoulder season, and probably being great skis in winter as well, so pick your poison, prepare your car for some pinstriping (if you want to cut off more of the road like we did), and go for it!