Shovelnose Peak (Fee Base) - February 11 2023
Squamish-Cheakamus Divide, Squamish, British Columbia
1881m
After slacking last weekend and just hitting up the resort both days, I was determined to get something done this weekend. My ski buddies selected Sunday as the day for resort activities, so that left me with Saturday. The Sea-to-Sky area was 3-3-2 after some recent storming, and I was planning a bit too late for most of my friends, so it looked like a solo day. I got informed of a nice mellow area south of Mt Fee called Shovelnose Creek FSR (and the corresponding peak above it) by my neighbour some time ago, so I figured this was a good time to pull that out of the bag of peaks, and give it a whirl. It was supposedly very nice touring as well, so it would be a good chance to enjoy the new snow and try out the new skis I got for their touring chops as well.
Sadly, the night before, I got home quite late, so I didn't leave til nearly 8am, but at least the turnoff for Squamish Valley Road is before the Whistler traffic would've hit. Driving up the Valley Road and River FSR was pretty uneventful, they're all 2wd/low clearance accessible, the latter is just bumpy and flood-prone in higher rain/melt conditions. Once I got to the base of Shovelnose Creek FSR, though, things got interesting. There are patches of snow right from the turnoff. Although I should really say ice vs snow, it's been driven enough to consolidate whatever is left. The first 1.5km or so are pretty tame, just AWD+medium clearance should be enough. After that, though, the patches of ice became more consistent and longer, and I'd say "good winter tires" are pretty important (or chains). I, however, hate putting chains on, and also don't think mine fit very well, so I just carefully picked my way up to km 3, where about half a dozen trucks were sitting with sleds unloaded or being unloaded.
I asked if they knew something I didn't, but the consensus was the road wasn't notably worse beyond, just snowier. So I decided to give going past a shot. I got maybe 300-500m past them before I just ran out of traction. Airing down (not something I wanted to do given my lack of testing of my compressor and tight return timeline) or chaining up might've solved the problem, but the snow was very soft and wet, making getting up pretty difficult. So, I reversed down until I had enough space to turn around, then parked myself just ahead of the parking area the sledders used off to the side of the road, almost exactly 3km into the road, at about 411m elevation. I was hoping to not have to hike/skin most of the road, but oh well, I was prepared for this to be the case as well. After gearing up, I set out at 9:15.
I set out with my skis on my back, as I saw patchy coverage at best ahead of me. While it turned out I left both my earphones and my watch at home, I DID bring my touring-focused boots, so the bootpack wasn't too bad. I did not have enough faith in the snow coverage, and went quite a bit longer than necessary before switching to skis, but eventually at about 500m I took a 10-minute break to swap gear and move to skinning.
From this point, it was really just a long slog up the FSR for a couple hours. Of note, I had a 4+ hour podcast I downloaded before leaving home, so that kept me entertained during the tedious slog, which was nice. I also discovered a couple kilometres in that my left sock wasn't quite situated, but I didn't want to try and take my wet feet out of the boots to deal with it, so instead I just got a blister 🙃. I also discovered I WAY overdressed for the day, even just my baselayer+vented shell pants and baselayer shirt were too much, and I was sweating with my jacket off. It was warm enough, and I had extra layers in my pack, so I didn't slow down to avoid this, but it was quite surprising.
I made a couple stops for pictures on the FSR slog, but otherwise I just kept on pushing on uphill. The vis was variable, but occasionally I got glimpses across and down the valley. Didn't see a soul after leaving the cars, all the sledders arrived before me, and obviously went up much faster. I was the only guy under leg power from the bottom.
2 hours in I got above 1200m, and finally saw the first parked sleds! Losing only 2 hours to not having the space or cash for one felt "not that bad". Knowing I was still just over halfway done, though, I didn't linger, and pushed on up the FSR, still following sled tracks from others who went higher with their snowmobiles.
After a couple minutes, I could start seeing some actual decent skiing. Looks like there were a couple cut blocks up here (I still maintain instead of cut blocks in big chunks they should really just cut ski runs into the mountains instead, would be much more fun). Lots of pillow awaiting me on the downhill.
The next switchbacks between 1200m and 1400m were like this, which made me very happy, as while skiing down the FSR would be better than walking, skiing down a bunch of snowmobile tracks isn't exactly fun or knee-friendly. At about 1340m the road forked, and I started following a more direct route up to the peak instead of the FSR proper.
Finally, 2.5 hours in, I reached the forest just over 1400m. There was a small sign indicating possibly a summer path, but there was a skin track going further along the cut-block I decided to follow instead, as it also was the same as the GPX I was following. This turned out to be a good choice, as it soon cut into the forest and uphill. Before entering, I finally gave up and had some water, then started picking my way through the trees.
It only took about half an hour to get through the denser part of the forest (which itself was actually relatively sparse for BC forests, enough so that I'd call most of it enjoyable skiing and not just survival skiing, as long as you knew where you might be going). I poked my head into the treeline about 3 hours in, at 1580m or so.
Another 10–15 minutes brought me to the end of the skin track. The tracks I was following turned off to my left, skier's right down the hill to the North. While it looked like fun enough skiing, I had other goals in mind, and after a short water break, braced myself for some proper trail-breaking, which I'd managed to avoid thus far.
Interestingly, after about 10 minutes of breaking trail, I managed to find more tracks a bit later going up again! I suspect people might've skied down like the tracks I split off from, and continued up from another point. Since I was just going right up then back down, though, I had to take an alternate route to avoid elevation loss.
At this point, I was definitely feeling a bit more tired, but since I had the time and knew I'd be okay, just tired, I didn't bother testing my still-healing digestive system with a mid-tour lunch break, and just plodded along. Not long after I started, I actually saw a group of 3 tourers catching up with me, coming from below where the track I was on originated. They caught up with me at about 1800m, where the tracks once again ended, and I took another water+rest break.
To that point, there was really no avalanche terrain at all, but coming up was a single, short traverse across a slope steep enough to be a start zone, so I was happy to let the others catch up and see if they were going to keep ascending. They were, and were happy to have me tag-along, so we cross 1-at-a-time, and encountered no issues. All day, I never noticed any cracking, whumpfing, deep ski penetration, or signs of slides, and at the alpine elevation the wind seemed to have created a very supportive upper layer, so I wasn't very concerned, but hey, I'll take the extra protection of having people around.
After that, it was a short traverse up the ridge to the top. The summit area is quite bumpy, so I wandered around a bit to see if anything was higher than where we came up, but nothing I saw looked higher than me, so I called the summit attained just over 4 hours in, and we then spent about 40 minutes chilling at the top waiting for clouds to clear😂
Unfortunately, the clouds never did clear, really, so we chatted and they decided once we got out of the summit area that they were gonna head back down in the area they came from, which involves a skin back up to the FSR of about 40 minutes. I considered joining them for what they claimed was better skiing and just "having company", but decided against it since it'd add a meaningful amount of time, and I had a dinner to make in West Van for the evening. So, after that long break, I locked my heels in, and started heading down about 4:45 into the day, or about 2pm.
The skiing was pretty good, although being solo I was quite conservative; I didn't push much, hitting a max speed of 46.5km/h according to my GPX (which wasn't quite as accurate as usual given the lack of watch, so "hopefully correct"). Snow at the top was nice and fluffy, if a tad heavy, but that's nothing unusual for the coastal snowpack. I floated my way down through the short alpine and treeline, and in about 20 minutes found myself back at the forest.
I'm sure there's a better way than "following the skin track back out", but that was the way I knew and knew was safe, so that's the way I went. There were a few turns that got pretty tight, but I managed to get through alright and even enjoy about half of the way through the denser forest. About 10 minutes later, I popped out back at the top of the cut-blocks.
I managed to get about 250m of vertical worth of pillow skiing through cut-blocks between switchbacks before I hit the road again at 1170m. From there, it was half an hour of skiing down a very bumpy FSR carved through by snowmobiles, which my knees weren't thrilled about, but at least my ankle had healed enough from being hurt the previous weekend that it wasn't screaming at me for touching the outside of my boot like it was Wednesday. I ALMOST managed to ski to the car, but I had to stop and bootpack the final couple hundred metres pictured at the beginning where the snowpack broke for a bit.
Overall, a pretty successful day. It was a good workout, as the grade was perfect for just mindlessly charging uphill. The skiing was about as good as I could ask for skiing solo on a considerable avy-risk day, and I got myself back on the peakbagging train, so can't ask for too much more. I definitely recommend getting yourself a more capable driving setup if you want to attempt this peak, as it cuts out a ton of tedious FSR-slogging. Plus, in better conditions, you could gain the full ridge between Fee and Cypress, and bag a couple more peaks along that ridge with the time+energy you saved.