Hynes Peak - June 7 2025
Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Squamish, British Columbia
1897m
On this early June weekend, I had one of my good friends from back in Ontario visiting me, Kyle. He wanted me to take him for some hikes, so naturally I chose the very tourist-friendly option of a random summit with basically 0 beta, and definitely no trail 🤣. It was, at least, close to home, which was relevant as his flight got in pretty late, so I have some justification for the decision. Most of all, it looked like it might be skiable, which is, naturally, the most important factor 😄.
We made our way up the Squamish Valley to Branch 200, then 220, then 223, and drove as far as we could. There were some medium-sized water bars, but nothing horrible. What we did find, though, was a pretty large deadfall blocking the road at around 1170m elevation, about 400m from the large creek crossing with a washed-out bridge, so we didn't lose too much by parking there. Some of the water bars just before that were a bit rockier, so some with less-capable crossovers might park a tad earlier, but can probably still get close enough to make this an easy day.
In a couple minutes, we confirmed the road was indeed washed out at the site of the former bridge, definitely not crossable. Someone seemed to have started work on a bridge, we saw a log that was cut in half across its length, which would make for a good bridge, but it was not actually installed on top of the gap, so not quite useful yet 😅. So, we turned our attention to the cutblock on our right, and got walking up that side of the drainage towards Pykett Lake.
The cutblock was actually really nice hiking. Sometimes those can be full of dead bushes, sticks, and be generally terrible, but this one was pretty clean, and we breezed through it in a few short minutes. That put us in front of some shorter alder bushes that looked unpleasant, but we thankfully were able to largely skirt on around in some remaining forest, which was a relief.
This forested section was quite pleasant, with game trails so nice they almost felt like a real one at times (but were not). Another 5 minutes or so and we popped out of the forest into a clearing, where some rockfall had cleared out the trees, and we hoped to make a good chunk of elevation up to the lakes.
In that clearing, we took the easy snow for as long as it lasted, then started making our way up the boulders towards the gully on the climber's right side of the bowl, since "the peak was that way", and we were happy to take open terrain as long as we could see it. The boulders offered easy walking/scrambling, and were actually quite stable, so they went by pretty quickly as well.
After about 10 minutes, though, we ran out of boulders,and instead found ourselves with some quality alder to bash through to get to the next open section 😅. With only mild displeasure, Kyle accepted his fate and bashed through with me for the next 15 minutes to get to the small waterfall that was our next obstacle. At least he didn't have skis on his back, though, those really do make manoeuvring through trees more annoying 🙃
The face looked rather intimidating as we popped out, but we did have the option to descend a couple metres and wrap around what we were looking at, so we gave that a go, and found "difficult but not impossible" terrain ahead, so we started to scramble up. Sadly, I had recently loaned my "car shoes" to Logan, so I only had my loafers and ski boots, and swapped to ski boots for that loose descent, so I was now having to scramble in what I consider basically the least appropriate footwear. I could've swapped again, but loose loafers aren't amazing either, and that'd be tedious, so I just gave it my best effort and hoped that I'd be able to keep up with Kyle's comfort level in them.
We managed to get up decently far to climber's right of the water, but eventually, we ran into a cliff face. The way across the water looked almost doable, but there was one spot where we just needed a tree or something to grab and get across to useful terrain, but sadly that did not exist. We tried getting onto a high ledge and wrapping around more to climber's right, but Kyle said he wouldn't be able to make it that way, and given my footwear, there was no point in trying to push things myself, so we had to retreat and find another way.
The downclimb was a little spicy in my boots, but with some teamwork handing my pack down to Kyle in a couple spots (thereby getting the skis out of the way), we managed to both get down, and then had to consider our options. I apparently decided photos were overrated here, so forgive the coming wall of text 😅.
I figured the next best thing would be to cross the alder and descend to the point where we could enter the forest beside the main creek drainage, since we were a bit to climber's right of that. Kyle did not enjoy downclimbing in the alder, since the branches facing downhill made things slippery, and his shoes (despite being decent Salomon hikers) seemingly did not get a lot of purchase. After a good amount of time getting through that, we made our way into the forest, had one or two scramble moves to get past a steep section of roots, and then had some steep forest to walk up. This whole escapade took over 2 hours, but armed with knowledge, you can probably do this in under half an hour, as this barely brought us above 1300m 😅
From there, we went up the forest until we got to around 1400m, where we finally got on top of the creek, and were able to walk up the snow covering it more or less all the way to the lake (there were a few spots where we got back onto the dirt, but the bushwhacking was minimal, and the travel steep, but not difficult). With that, we finally popped out at Pykett Lake 2:50 into the day 😅
We contoured around to the north side of the lake, then had a break there. Since the snow looked more or less continuous, and we had some hills to climb, I advised Kyle to put his snowshoes on there. While I had skins, I actually also brought my crampons+ascent plates, and was eager to see how well they performed as makeshift snowshoes, so I donned them, hoping both to figure that out, and if it was a success, be able to make terrain choices that made the most sense for a snowshoer, which I hoped would make things easier for Kyle. We chilled for a solid half hour before continuing on (I may have dragged him out to a very peakbagger-y kind of mountain, but he was still here for enjoyment, not to suffer up mountains as fast as possible. It was a relaxing change-of-pace).
We made our way up just southeast of Middle Seagram Lake, then started picking our way up what looked like the probably-most-continuous line of snow we could find, hoping both to keep things simple for uphill travel, and scout a good route down for me on skis.
We had a pretty straightforward route up, so we just walked straight up the ramp. I have to say, the ascent plates did a pretty great job simulating snowshoes! They frontpointed well, of course, as their original purpose is for couloir climbing, and keeping those ready+usable is key in that terrain. The lateral traction was definitely not as good as real snowshoes, as is expected, they don't have rails of teeth, just ~a dozen small spikes sticking out in the middle, but if you pay attention to your feet, they're certainly usable! I was most impressed with how much they didn't fall apart sidehilling. I expected them to flex a ton and relegate me to just going straight up, but they did pretty well, within reason. I will definitely include them in trips where snowshoes make sense for some of the terrain, but I still want skis. Or perhaps even trips where I don't think snow will be deep, and I'll already want crampons, and I can save pack weight/space by just using them instead of proper snowshoes.
We had a couple narrower choke points, but Kyle was able to use the toes of the snowshoes to make his way up, and they were still wide enough to be skiable, which made me happy to see 🙂. Once we got to 1550m or so, things opened up well again, and we had wide slopes on which to choose our desired route.
We had a shorter break once we got out of that section (maybe 5 minutes), then continued making our way up, with the routefinding a lot simpler (just go up whatever looks nicest). We also got some nicer views here, as some of the larger lakes had melted out, and their deeper blue colour was quite pretty. There were also 0 clouds to be found, which made for great views of the surrounding ranges.
From that point, we mostly just followed natural drainages, trying to keep ourselves on more even terrain, as sidehilling with snowshoes (or ascent plates) isn't as simple as on skis (I don't exactly have an assortment of boots for visiting friends to be able to borrow skis, gotta work on that 🤣). This was still fairly easy to accomplish, though. We trended to climber's left, overall, as that was less steep and looked like it would offer us the easiest route up, and that seemed to be a fairly good decision, as things worked out nicely doing so.
Sadly, around this time, Kyle started to get some leg cramps, so we had to slow down a bit to avoid agitating those too much, and to get some stretching in. On the upside, though, in the heat wave that we were experiencing, the alpine temps were quite pleasant for just chilling, so it was perfectly comfortable to do so (and there were no bugs above the forest 🙂).
We continued making slow but steady progress from that point. We hit a nice natural drainage valley that provided easy travel for a while, though we eventually cut up the climber's left side, which turned out not to be necessary, as that connected with the summit area higher up, but we couldn't see that, so we went with what worked. Most things in this area lead to the top without cliffing out, though, so you can more or less do whatever and it'll be alright (at least when the snowpack is this deep).
As we neared the top, we had to make a small sidehilly traverse that could've been avoided if we just kept to that drainage we were in before, but it wasn't too bad. From that point, we had a few steep steps, but that soon gave way to the summit! Or so we thought, turns out what you stare at for the majority of the ascent is a false summit, it's actually a small ridge, and you have to deal with one minor undulation to get to the real high point 😅
Getting between the false and true summits was pretty easy, though the mini-cornice on the true summit was pretty steep. If you come up from the drainage instead, it's just a walk up, but I was happy to have my frontpoints available for those couple steps (though Kyle was fine even in his snowshoes, it was only a couple steps, after all).
With that out of the way, we finally topped out just after 4pm, 5 and a quarter hours after leaving the car. I imagine a party used to peakbagging, equipped with the beta from this TR, could cut that down to 2-3 without much of a problem. If you're into skiing, you can probably start lower on the road and ensure better snow for the entire run down the creek and still have it be a digestible day.
With the bonus peak written off (it would be a late day given our pace, and also since Kyle was getting some soreness, that didn't make sense), we weren't in a rush, so we enjoyed the perfect summit weather for an hour and a half! Definitely one of, if not my longest summit stays, but we were enjoying hanging out, the weather was very comfortable, and the views were great, so why not. The snow was sun-cupped and soft already, it wasn't going to change.
We did eventually have to leave, though, so at quarter-to-six, we finally got off our butts and started moving down. We hadn't quite figured out that you could just go down the skier's left side of the face and smoothly enter the gully/drainage that provided easy travel, so we moved back to the col between the true and false summits, and headed down that way. After the first run (just a few turns at a time), Kyle went ahead far enough so I could make a few more turns, and then we repeated that general pattern for the rest of the descent.
The snow was actually pretty good, with the heat-wave boosted sun making the sun cups soft enough to be more creamy than bumpy. We largely stuck to our uptrack, not wanting to get bluffed out to skier's left, and not wanting to do the same, or end up at one of the higher lakes on skier's right. That was fine by me, since I was careful to scope out the skiability of our chosen route, and skiability was a factor in my routefinding, so that was all good.
Just above Middle Seagram Lake, I did let Kyle bait me into following him down an alternative descent route, which did not go, so I did have to interrupt the skiing for a short walk back to the continuous snow, but that aside, the descent was quite nice. If you go a bit earlier, when the snowpack goes down to the road, this could be quite a nice ski day! Even if you have to walk a bit of road, given the stats from the end of the road, that's perfectly justifiable IMO.
I managed to ski all the way down to Pykett Lake (~1450m), so that makes for more than half the elevation, my arbitrary benchmark for when hauling skis becomes "worth it" 🙂. Once there, we both transitioned (though I kept my ski boots on, since my loafers aren't good for more than easy hiking, and ski boots work well on the way down anyways), and set off for the road after a short delay.
From there, we started out retracing our steps from the way up, but as we realised that there was supportive snow in the creek for a while longer than where we originally met up with it, we decided to keep following that, hoping for an efficient descent relative to our rather random uptrack.
That got us down to about 1350m or so, where the creek was running strong, and the snow disappearing, so we cut to skier's left back into the forest, and descended the steep dirt down to our uptrack. We managed to largely skirt on the side of the alder once we got out of the forest, which was nice, and from there, it was easy, open terrain, a short forest-walk above the cutblock, and a breezy cutblock. Soon enough, we were back on the road!
From there, we had a 5-minute walk back to the car, and the day was over! We definitely took longer than necessary for this peak, between the route exploration, long breaks (esp on the summit), and Kyle having no particular interest in setting FKTs or otherwise sweating buckets for no reason 🤣. I imagine one could summit in 2-3 hours, and return much faster armed with the beta from this report, and a desire to move efficiently more so than to relax and hang out. 10/10 day though, hard to beat a summit, great weather, and hanging out with a friend you don't see very often for a day.