Pillchuck Peak - February 17 2025
Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Squamish, British Columbia
770m
After a failed attempt on a peak on the Saturday of this long weekend, I was very much wanting to get something before the weekend was up by Family Day. Unfortunately, due to my refusal to repeat peaks, and my rehab-level fitness not being up to larger peaks, that meant there were quite limited options left. I could have driven east for more options in that distance/elevation range, but the weather was worse than the Sea-to-Sky. Thankfully, late in the morning, Kelly messaged me noting that his family plans had fallen through, and he needed something to do. So, I took a local semi-trashbag out of my rainy-day list, which was short enough to accommodate our late start, and easy enough that I'd be able to keep up for my third day of exercise in 2 months. Enter Pillchuck Peak!
This peak is pretty under-the-radar. Despite being pretty close to Squamish, it is largely forested and low-elevation, doesn't have an established trail, and as such, had only seen a couple ascents in the summer coming from the south side, using the road to Hut Lakes. However, we didn't expect to drive very far past Levette Lake, even if we could drive that far (given the low elevation snow, that was no guarantee), and that would put the round-trip distance too high for my rehabbing self, so instead we decided on an experimental approach from the west. I found a road coming from Squamish Valley that curved around the north side of the peak, which I figured we could use to gain a bit of the elevation, then dip into the forest whenever it seemed about right. Kelly agreed, so we met up and carpooled to the trailhead, setting off just after 11:30am.
We were hoping to drive the road, as there was no information on it saying it was gated, and we couldn't see one from Street View, but sadly that was quickly dashed, as the gate is just around the first turn, so we parked on the road, and started walking from the base. We considered going straight up the west side of the peak from there, but decided that the contours were a bit closer together on that side vs the north, so we may as well cover some elevation on good terrain (the road), and hopefully have a slightly easier bushwhack going up that way, so we hiked around the gate, and started to churn through the approach.
We walked for about 45 minutes, occasionally stopping to look at our maps and contemplate the best time to start heading up the forest. The road gained steadily for a couple kilometres, so we didn't want to waste that opportunity. Once it started following the creek on the north side of the peak, though, the entrance to the forest was often quite cliffy and difficult to climb in winter (or even summer in places), so we kept going until we found an old spur at about the 3km mark. There, we decided it was time to start going up again, followed that spur for the few steps until it ended, and were faced with a steep, but manageable entrance to the forest.
After climbing up the open boulders, we got into a not-super-dense forest, and starting winding our way around the many bluffs that prevented a simple ascent. While there weren't a ton of trees, there were plenty of branches sticking into the way which made navigation annoying, but not difficult.
After just a few minutes, we reached what would turn out to be the crux of the day, a narrow gully with downsloping+slick snow covering it, and few holds. We had to remove our packs to squeeze under a branch that was lying across it (but provided a foothold, so we wanted it to stay there). It took some manoeuvring, but we got through without incident, and continued on into somewhat less bluffy terrain above it.
There were still some bluffs above this area, but the quality of travel definitely improved, and we continued winding our way up the forest for the following half-hour until we popped out of the forest at the base of a cutblock.
We were initially excited to enter the more open terrain, thinking it might enable simpler navigation and put fewer obstacles in our way, speeding things up. Unfortunately, that didn't quite work out 😅. The snow cover was not deep enough to warrant snowshoes in the forest, but it was on the edge out in the open. What made it worse was the amount of branches strewn about, which when covered in that much snow, made for surprise postholes that made travel very unpleasant and slow. We made it a few minutes before strapping snowshoes on between a couple hills before the "main section" of the cutblock, as it seemed like that terrain was not ending particularly soon.
The snowshoes helped, but did not totally eliminate the tediousness of the terrain, unfortunately. After 5–10 minutes, we popped out from the smaller hills at the base of the larger cutblock, and got our eyes on the meat of it. The amount of deadfall ahead, combined with our experience to that point, led us to abandon the idea of going straight up, and we instead started bearing hard to climber's right, hoping that we could get back into the forest, where travel had proven to be easier.
We spent around 10 minutes getting to the side and back under the cover of a "real forest". After a couple minutes heading up and making sure the suffering was "over", we took our snowshoes off, and continued back on foot. The first bit of this terrain was the same sort we had lower down in the forest, but as we got to around 650m elevation, the forest opened up, with far fewer branches all over the place, and the challenge changed from not scratching our eyes to not slipping on the moist snow covering the steep+soft soil below our feet.
This hastened our travel significantly, and we quickly climbed over 700m and could start seeing the slope rolling off at the top, and the sky filling more of the horizon. Once we got to the final 20m of elevation or so, we had to navigate through some rocky bluffs, though there was a path of low resistance that seemed to funnel us right to the highest point, which was convenient. There was one fallen tree to mantle over, and at just about 2:15pm, we were on top!
I could guess what's behind all these trees, but they'd be guesses...
We chilled on the summit for about 15 minutes. The weather was amazing, clear skies and zero wind, so it was very comfortable. After having some snacks/water (I even bothered to have some myself, given my recovering condition and all), we wandered to a viewpoint to get a nicer look at the Tantalus peaks, decided we didn't need to do the same to look north at Cloudburst since we could see it from lower down, then started heading out shortly thereafter.
We made good time on the way down the forest. With the route already figured out, navigation was trivial, so we just yeeted down as fast as we could without slipping or needing to put too much weight into my recovering knee. We got back to our brief snowshoe section, and decided to just deal with a few postholes to be able to avoid the gear transitions, which worked out pretty well. We got back to the base of the open terrain (just below 600m) in about 25 minutes. I snapped a quick picture of Cloudburst (sadly not the best I could've, I waited to avoid having trees in the way, and got too greedy 😅), and then we dipped into the forest to enjoy the branch-slapping one more time.
The next half hour was uneventful as we wound our way back down the forest, until we reached the crux. Kelly more or less went down the way he came up, but in reverse. I decided to be lazy and see if I could get down without taking my pack off. Technically I was successful, but the way I went about it ended up putting too much load on the branch that was going across it, and it snapped, so if anyone tries to repeat this route, they'll have to find another hold to get up that spot (not that this is an impossible task).
After that, the soil immediately below us was a quite soft and loose, so we kinda just slid+skidded down the next few steps, then navigated a few more steep sections where we veggie-belayed ourselves down. A few careful steps through the boulder field later, and we were back on the road!
Once we got down, we shed some layers, then followed the sled tracks (forgot to mention, someone with a gate key was sledding up past where we left the road, which helped avoid having to break any trail on the road, which was handy) for half an hour back to our car. As we neared the gate, we saw a truck coming up the road, though it stopped and actually reversed down before turning around and heading out before us. It definitely saw us, but they didn't bother us at all, which was good. Of course, your mileage may vary.
When it was all said and done, the day ended up being just over 4.5 hours. Not the biggest stats (a bit harder to measure precisely courtesy of me forgetting to bring my GPS watch, and my phone's tracking being a lot noisier, but it would overstate if anything), but the terrain definitely slowed things down. Still quite approachable for a half-day outing, and with a surprising >300m of prominence. I'll take it! I'm not sure if I'd recommend doing this in the summer or winter, not having experienced it in the summer, but I can at least say "non-peakbaggers need not apply". There are far better hikes to go on for the sake of hiking 😅