The Copilot - July 27 2024
Sky Pilot Group, Squamish, BC
1881m
After finding a surprisingly decent amount of snow the previous weekend at the Train Glacier, I was hoping to get some July skiing in for my half-hearted attempt to achieve Turns All Year. My plans for the Sunday weren't super compatible with that goal, so when a friend asked if I'd do Copilot with him, I quickly did a satellite check, and figured "yeah you can get a couple dozen turns there", and agreed 🤣. I even managed to convince one of the group members to join in the skiing tomfoolery. The rough plan was that we'd all go up together, get Copilot done, then while the other 3 went for Sky Pilot (I'd already bagged it), I could get a couple laps in on the Stadium Glacier, then we'd all head out together. The plan was pretty solid, so Kelly (my main friend who was going to join in the pursuit of summer turns) and two people I was meeting IRL for the first time, Spenny and Rose Ann all met up in Squamish Saturday morning, and made the drive up to the gate behind the gondola at around 8am.
With the recent work from the Woodfibre project and some gondola upgrades, the FSR was in good shape. There was a worker stationed at the start of the Indian River Road, but she happily waved us through, with work inactive on the weekend (on this specific weekend at least, their schedules do change frequently, and sometimes access is denied, or for radio-equipped vehicles only). From there, it was a fairly nicely-maintained road all the way up to the gate at 770m, where there was a nicely-expanded parking area, which only had 3 cars in it at 8:30am. After getting ourselves geared up, we set out at 8:40.
If you want more details on the approach, check out my trip report for Sky Pilot from the year prior. I didn't have much time to take pictures in the first 1¾ hours, as we focused ourselves on just grinding out the tedious approach, comprised largely of 5.5km of road-walking (that ate up the first hour), then the rest getting through a creekbed section, a short rock-hop, then some switchbacks through the forest to gain up to around 1350m, where I insisted we stop to at least appreciate the good views in the clearing past the main forested section, where you get your first eyes on Copilot, along with a great view of Mount Habrich at your back.
After that brief break, we hopped along a few more rocks and made our way up to 1400m in the next 10 minutes, where we entered the open valley below the Stadium Glacier, where our first snow patches were finally visible (to the great relief of Kelly and myself), and we started our trudge up to the consistent snow, a good ways up ahead and out of view. Spenny stopped to refill some water here, and I kept him company as a free excuse to get some rest 😆 Kelly was determined to avoid any potential crowds, and pushed on ahead towards the snow.
The trail up towards the glacier is not explicitly defined, and there are a few paths beaten into the rocks by the scores of hikers who come up to this area every year. As long as you stay on one of the more popular ones, you'll find fairly easy travel on largely dirt and stable rocks, avoiding the loose debris that otherwise litters the slopes. We walked up one of these trails for about half an hour until we found ourselves at 1600m, and the start of the continuous snow. Here, my teammates all donned their microspikes, while I briefly debated tossing my skins on for the laughs, but figured just my trail runners would be easier, so I ended up not transitioning at all. I didn't bring spikes, figuring if things got too slippery, I would just don my ski boots, whose plastic nature would make kicking steps easy enough, even without metal on my feet.
Since Kelly was slightly ahead of the rest of the group, he was the first to get transitioned and get onto the snow, and as I didn't have any transitioning to do, I caught up with him, and we got onto the glacier before the other half of our party. We roughly followed the existing tracks to the base of the Stadium Glacier, then once it started curving uphill towards the Sky Pilot/Copilot col, we headed to climber's right, aiming for the rocky band separating that main slope and the slightly higher one on the right side, which topped out closer to Copilot, which we figured would make for better skiing, and be more useful for the first objective of the day. Before moving on up the final slope, though, we waited for the group to coalesce.
Once we all got together in-between the two main ascent snowfields, we agreed that being closer to Copilot and getting the little bit of extra skiing, along with ditching gear slightly further from the hordes was a good idea, so we started to make our way up the 50m or so. I let Kelly, who had brought his "super microspikes" (one of those fancy in-between things with real points like crampons, but a flexible bar and easy straps for shoes) break trail so I could (hopefully) get away without needing to swap into my ski boots. The walking got pretty steep, so I got close to that point, but with a broken track, and some extra kicking on my part, I managed to avoid the transition 🙂
With just over 3 hours elapsed since we left the car, we ditched our unnecessary gear (namely the skis), and came up with a plan. The GPX tracks we had skirted below the bumps along the ridge for a while, plus the only reasonable way to go other than back down was to the north side of the bump in front of us, so we headed onto that side of the rock. As the designated scrambling enthusiast of the group, I was sent ahead to scout for and lay out the best routes 😄
Sky Pilot pulling out of the clouds
The first moves were class 3 to get onto the rock, but once those were dispatched with, it was simple ledge walking to get around to the north side of the first rocky outcropping. There, we did some easy scrambling to get onto a rocky fin coming down from the col, and got a good vantage point on where we could next head.
On that fin, we discussed where our beta was leading us, and our position. Both Kelly and I had beta leading across a steep sideslope towards a bench that would get around the next false summit and towards the rest of the standard ascent route. However, that did look rather unpleasant, and Spenny said he had beta that the ridge goes, so we decided to trust in that, and regain the ridge instead, which was simple slab scrambling instead of steep sidehilling. Five minutes later, we were back on the col, with one of a few bumps now dispatched.
From our place back on the col, we curved left around the next bump, following a decent ledge on climber's left (the south side). The rock was starting to deteriorate in quality here, but we only really needed hands for moral support here, so it wasn't a big deal.
After curving around on that ledge, we found some darker rock, and a nice gully to take it up towards the centre of the ridge. Kelly went up this gully first, and with a few struggles with the loose rock that had him take his pack off and get me to hand it to him, went up to the left, then higher up at another fork, went right, and waited there for me to go up. I initially tried to use the right side gully for fun, but it ended up being pretty challenging and very much unnecessary, so I swapped back to the left. Spenny followed closely behind, and after the first two steeper moves, quickly asked for me to bring his bag up past the narrower part of the gully as well.
This was a bit more challenging, as he was quite the overpacker 😅, and I actually had to get Kelly to help pull the load over the lip of the gully to safety 🙃 Once that was dealt with, I exited to the right side as well (despite the route overall needing to go left, so Spenny could get climbing up while I carefully crossed higher up without causing any rockfall), and the others followed up. This was some of the harder scrambling the others had done, but they all did pretty well, so things were looking promising, if not super-fast.
From on top of the gully system, we had a few sections of loose scrambling up and around (always to climber's left when going up wasn't an option) the ridge, until we hit another gully system that would bring us back on top of the ridge. The increasing looseness from the last ledge traverse or two plus this gully was getting to the others, though, and once we topped this one out, overall group sentiment was waning a bit, especially with the next descent needed to get to the next face not immediately obvious.
With some doubts in the group about the descent and ascent to the next bump (and the waning faith in the overall beta of the ridge traverse), the others were leaning towards a return, as this sort of exploratory scrambling wasn't really their passion like mine, and they also had the goal of Sky Pilot, which I didn't. I did scout a way down to the col with the next bump, but seeing the moves necessary, and the looseness of the rock, the others decided to return. When I got into the notch, I found a gully that would lead back down towards the steep slope we'd eschewed earlier, complete with some tat to rap off of, but the others were happy enough to return the way we came. We talked it out, and they were comfortable routing themselves back to our gear and over to Sky Pilot, so I decided to press on and see if I could make the summit, and we'd meet back where we'd geared up for the snow. Here, I should've been less lazy and scrambled back up to get the rope from Spenny, but I didn't, and that would play a factor later in the day...
From the bottom of the notch, I went up and to the left across the next face, then curled around from the south side of it and gained up to the top, putting me on the bushy top of this final bump. There, I could finally lay my eyes on the very steep-looking summit block. I was a bit worried about how difficult the ascent would be with that view, but I also knew that many times in the past, an ascent had looked very steep from afar, but got easier as I got closer, so I hoped that was the case, and continued on my way.
Descending from the top of that final bump, I made my way directly to the col, but found a sheer drop before I could join, so I skirted around to skier's right, where some gentler ledges looked like they connected with the col in a more friendly manner. This worked well, and 5 minutes later, I was at the base of the face (just after 1:30pm).
Once I was at the base, I didn't see a great route up, so I checked some trip reports to try and find some reference pictures, and determined that I was probably not on the same route as normal, but at the same time, the face looked pretty similar, so I couldn't be 100% sure. Regardless, I was where I was, and I knew I'd deviated from the beta I'd downloaded from the start, so I resolved to simply continue on routefinding and making decisions as I had to that point. The steep crack/gully just off to climber's right looked possible but imposing, so I first tried skirting around to climber's left to see if I could go around and find gentler-sloping rock. I did find a fairly exposed slabby ledge with a crack I could use on the left side for handholds, but it was still rather steep, and I was only "pretty sure" I could get up, and could "probably get down", which wasn't a confidence-inspiring margin for scrambling, so I retreated from there. Even just the ledge traversing necessary to get to that point wasn't the easiest, so I was happy to be out of there. I also confirmed going even further around wasn't an option.
After getting back from that investigation, I tried skirting to my right around the north side instead, but ran out of room to traverse fairly quickly, and instead found myself staring back at the first steep gully I saw when I arrived at the face. Without any better options, I figured I should at least try it out and see how it felt before throwing in the towel, and started making my moves.
The first couple moves were steep, but I felt confident in being able to reverse them. After that, though, holds got smaller, and the gully steepened even more. Things were too intense to stop and take photos, sadly, but there were a couple near-vertical moves that required me to trust my hands completely while my weight released from my lower body to get to the next holds. After getting past the first couple cruxes, things went from definitely-fifth-class to just fourth class, and I clambered my way up to a ledge with a small, dead tree, where I could finally breathe again and let my heart rate calm down. This section was some of the hardest scrambling I'd done to date, and I was starting to psych myself out with respect to my ability to downclimb what I'd just come up. Not a great feeling, or place to be without a rope. I had a harness and some cord+slings, but lowering myself down with just those would be a very tedious endeavour if I indeed wasn't able to come down under my own power. In hindsight, I probably should've just called it there and descended either to my skis, or to find the route I had beta on instead. At that moment, however, I was still on the mountain, and my situation wasn't going to get better sitting around in a tree, so upward I pushed.
On the plus side, the rock quality was better on this final face, which was good given the difficulty of the moves. After that initial very-steep section, the scrambling eased into just fourth class, and I continued up, skirting to the south side of the mountain (climber's left) when going up didn't make sense, until 2:20pm, when I got myself onto the ridge fairly close to the summit, and found a glorious sight in front of me: rap rings! I'd found the standard route! It was indeed well across the north side of the summit, up basically the final gully before the summit itself, so it was definitely not something I'd have got to without descending back into the bowl below the face and traversing there.
I was just happy to find the route there so I could take it back down, knowing that others had rated it as just a hard scramble, and that I should be able to make it down sans-rope with my abilities.
After a quick ledge traverse past a small bush towards the rap rings, I found myself looking over the standard gully route, which looked like a total joke compared to what I came up, and I finally calmed down a bit, and took some well-earned breaths of relief. Then, I made the final class 3 scramble to the top.
Four minutes later I found myself on the flat summit area, taking in some great views, and I let my friends know I'd summited and intended to take the standard route back down. While the horizon was a bit cloudy, the local views were still pretty sweet.
After about 10 minutes on the summit, I slapped my harness and gear on, just in case I needed to hang from a rap station or descend a tricky ledge or two, and made my way down towards the standard gully. I got started with that descent just after 2:30pm.
Given reports of multiple raps in the gully, and the clear evidence of anchors for doing so, I was still a bit concerned in my head about the conditions I was about to encounter, but it seems those were fairly overblown. The gully was basically just a series of somewhat downsloping, scree-covered ledges. However, the angle of the ledges was flat enough to get good purchase, so descending was a simple exercise in having the patience to descend in a controlled manner without getting enough momentum to slip and fall down. I got down past a good few anchors, and in 10 minutes, I found myself out of the gully and the ground beside a snow patch, with nothing I would describe as over class 3 having been done to get there!
I sent my party a text once I was out of the gully saying I was out of the sketchy stuff, only to be hoisted by my own petard, when I had to cross the steep dirt slope whose ugliness had started my whole adventure 🤣
There was no route beaten into the slope, and since I was skiing, I had my full-length ski poles rather than collapsing ones, and as a result had left them at the col with my skis. That meant I had to cross this slope with just my hands and feet to prevent me from sliding down 100m and having to regain most of the steep snow to the col. The resulting traverse ended up being the second-sketchiest part of the day, with some close calls trying to use "slightly more stable dirt" and embedded rocks for purchase as I scurried across the slope on all fours.
After a few harrowing minutes, I managed to get across without sliding down. I then walked down and across a little rib feature to get closer to my desired snowpatch. I then had one mini-snowpatch to cross, requiring some solid step-kicking, then I was on the small rock rib I'd scrambled up at the beginning of the scramble. From there, it was easy going back up to the col, and I was reunited with my skis at 3:15pm 😌
As I transitioned into my ski gear, I noticed that Kelly had put some ski tracks into the slope (as had another party I saw ascending as I was on the scramble), so I searched for where the tracks led, and found his gear stashed a few turns down the slope, in the rocks between this slope and the way up to Sky Pilot. So, I clicked in, and enjoyed some nice July turns down to his gear stash.
Once I got to his gear stash, I checked our group chat for updates, and decided to give the chat a ring to see what the status was. It turns out just a few minutes before I arrived, Spenny and Rose Ann had turned back to the gondola, and Kelly was just about at the summit by himself. Kelly said he was just about to head down, so I figured I'd just stick around by the gear and make sure I wasn't causing a delay by goofing off and skiing laps.
It turns out I actually had about 80 minutes to burn, so in retrospect, I should've gone and done some laps, because I definitely had the time 😅. Seems the crowds Kelly was eager to avoid did indeed manifest, as he reported some bottlenecks at the harder parts of the scramble. Oh well, at least I got to burn through most of the podcast I'd downloaded for the day. Plus I got to cheer on lots of people glissading down the Stadium Glacier, which was pretty funny.
Watching various parties descend from Sky Pilot
Once Kelly got back from his summit of Sky Pilot, we skied down the rest of the steeper slope towards skier's left, to check out the alternative descent path for the way out. After determining it didn't look too hot (and taking a short bathroom break), we curved back around to retrace our way up. The skiing was just steep enough not to need to take the skis off, and we got to enjoy a few more turns down to where we initially started the morning's snow travel and had to take our skis off, adding up to around 200m of vertical skied for the day 😅
After taking our skis off and slapping 'em on our packs, we booted down from 1600m to about 1450m. Along the way, we had a nice conversation with a couple older gentlemen, one from Vancouver, and the other from Burlington, ON, who had made the haul out west for some mountaineering fun in the summer. They provided some levity and nice conversation for the 20-minute walk to the final run of the day, which tacked on another 50-60m of vert to bring the total skied to over 250m! What a day!
With the last run of the day complete, we put our shoes back on, strapped our skis to our packs, and started the long slog back to the Gondola where Rose Ann and Spenny were waiting. That walk back took us about 90 minutes, and after we all grouped up, another 15 to get back to the car. A pretty long day with all the shenanigans involved, but a success nonetheless, and we even had time to grab some dinner before we all headed our separate ways.
For myself, I'm happy to have got some July skiing in and bagged one of the harder summits nearby to Squamish. I do think I finally found the line of "what I can go up, but probably don't want to risk having to climb down", and am happy to have got away with finding that line without having to aid-climb my way out, or get someone to come up with a rope to bail me out. I try to do harder scrambles like that with rope just in case, but letting laziness get the better of me and not taking it before splitting up was definitely not the right call, and I'm glad it didn't end up costing me. Well, all we can do is learn from our experiences, and do better the next time, so here's to that, and more summits to come!
For anyone looking at Copilot and using this trip as a reference, I have a couple notes for you:
- All GPXes I've seen, including mine, get useless at the summit block. The route is fairly visually obvious, but you'll need to rely on your own skills up there. Be ready for that
- My route did technically work, and was pretty fun, but was definitely in 5th class territory. I'd recommend trying it only with rope, and probably a half-rack to be able to protect anything you might be sketched out by
- I often mock people in the southwest BC area for complaining too much about poor rock quality, but this is the mountain in the region that's most reminded me of Rockies-quality rock, especially on the traverse to the base of the summit block from the Sky Pilot col. Be ready for that, and test your holds!
- If you don't mind the weight, rapping down the gully is definitely nicer than having to tediously make sure you don't slip on every scree-filled ledge, but you can get away without one if you're a confident scrambler
- Don't forget to have fun, and stay safe!