Levette Peak - March 16 2024

Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Squamish, BC
609m

With over 2 weeks since I last summited a mountain, on this weekend, I was getting pretty desperate. After coming back from Utah at the start of the month, I spent the following weekend skiing inbounds, which was not very productive from a peakbagging perspective. In my defense, it was absolutely nuts, 4 days straight of powder days, so I consider that a weekend well spent.

I wanted to make up for that this following weekend, but sadly after all that snow, we got a massive heat wave up to 20 degrees at sea level, so all that new snow turned into a massive avalanche hazard. So, I formed a plan to travel a ways away on Sunday to get something bigger while remaining safe, but before leaving at around 2pm for that trip (stay tuned for that one next), I had a morning to kill! I messaged Logan to see if he was gonna come climbing given the weather, and he was easily convinced. I lobbied him to join me for a small peak beforehand, and so Levette Peak was born as my objective for the day.

This is actually an area I'd been to multiple times before, just as a local exploring around and hanging out with people. Therefore, I knew that Levette Lake is reachable in a confident 2wd sedan, even (it's actually been improved since I first went up in such a rig), and that from there to the gatekeeper before Hut Lakes (but after the peak we were interested in) is doable in AWD w/ good clearance, as I've been up before in my ol' trusty Jeep Compass. Since my car was already packed up for my trip in the afternoon, though, I figured I'd experience riding in Logan's little Jimny for the first time in a while, and we piled in there to head up from Downtown Squamish.

We had no issues getting to the start of the FSR, and only encountered tracked, thin, and well-packed snow up to Levette Lake starting a bit below 400m. Beyond, the snow never got more than 10-15cm deep, and we followed tracks (with patches of bare road in between snowy spots) up to about 560m elevation. Logan is still figuring out his mechanics for offroading his manual, so it took a bit on the last hill climb, and that combined with losing the broken tracks in the snow prompted us to call it and turn around so we didn't get stuck or waste 100 years trying to drive a couple hundred metres we could just walk easily enough. So, we parked and embarked at 1:10pm, sadly on a slightly tight schedule since my aim was to be back home at 2pm, but still doable if things went fast.

5 minutes of road walking got us to the closest point on the road to the summit, so we started making our way up. We did rock+paper+scissors to see who would suffer through the short postholing in the weak snow on the side of the road to get into the forest, as we were both just wearing casual around-town shoes, and sadly, I lost. After a few annoying steps punching through the thin snow into the ditch beside the road, I got us to a steep and loose dirt slope we scrambled up to enter the forest. That was about 5 minutes itself. After that, it was simpler terrain, just weaving through a not-too-dense forest with some small bluffs til we got near the top, where there were a few rock bluffs that stick out pretty obviously from the forest. We scrambled onto the first one, walked a ridge, then hit the last one, which was thankfully "very clearly the high point", which you never know if you'll be able to easily discern on these kinds of summits 😅. That also took about 5 minutes.

Retracing our steps down was a fairly simple exercise, and we got back to the car with just about half an hour spent outside. In theory, that could've left us just the right amount of time to barely make it back to town, but we had the bad timing of encountering something we didn't expect: a convoy of 3 Jeeps trying to get to Hut Lakes!

Given how the intensity of the gatekeeper, the obstacle that appears shortly after the high point of the road as it drops down towards to Hut Lakes, I was surprised to see anyone trying to come up after us, since there isn't much else to do except go there, unless you're a trashbagging peak-hunter, of which there aren't many. They were well-equipped and a good group of 3, so they should have been able to give it a good ol' college try, at least. That did mean we had to wait a while for them to air down a bit more and get past us on the narrow road, so I was sadly back a bit after my 2pm plan, but it was a fairly fast trip overall, and thankfully my partner waiting back in town was understanding 🙂.

I'd say this peak is a pretty boring one only the most ardent peakbaggers need bother with, but the area is nice. Levette Lake is accessible and fairly popular (though buggy in the summer), and Hut Lakes is super fun for those with built offroad rigs looking for a challenge. I'd tack this on to a "touristy" trip to the area with friends, if possible.

GPX Track + Map