Tsee and Geodetic Peaks - June 17 2023
Tsee Peak
Mission Ridge, Shalalth, British Columbia
1978m
With a nasty weather system coming into the Lower Mainland for the weekend, I had to scrounge around pretty hard for somewhere to go without exposing myself to wet, slippery trails (still recovering from my injuries from Wedge back in March). By the forecast, at least, the Lillooet area was looking pretty clear, with only a slim chance of light precipitation. There's a lot of really cool, steep peaks up in the area around Seton Ridge and further into Lillooet, but I'd actually scoped out a couple that looked largely driveable from the beta I could find back when I was even less able than I am now, so I wanted to knock those out. I saw that one could basically drive up Tsee Peak, and get relatively close to Geodetic as well, and from there hike all the way along the ridge to Puck and Mission Peaks, if conditions worked out.
I convinced Logan to join for the offroading fun (I had very little information on the road conditions, so wanted to have another vehicle in case it got rough), and the usual attraction of "turning red dots green", of course. We planned for him to meet me at 9:00 in Squamish, since the hike wasn't going to be too long, and we both had somewhat late Friday nights. That ended up being closer to 9:30 or so, but it wasn't the biggest deal since the hike(s) were short, so we started cruising through the intermittently rainy roads. The first stop was in Pemberton, so Logan could fill up. I considered it, but had confidence I would be fine since I was full leaving home, so I just had the sandwich I made for breakfast to hopefully stave off hunger by the extra hour compared to eating at home.
From there, since Logan wasn't as familiar with the area, I figured we should meet next in D'Arcy/Nequatque, at the beginning of the Highline Road, which is unpaved. We got there just after 11:30, and turned our radios on so we could talk (no signal soon after you leave Pemberton). I'd hoped to have Logan lead to set the pace since I'm generally able to go faster than he is on these kinds of roads, but he apparently didn't have maps for the area downloaded on a driving-navigation-centric app, so I took it instead and just did my best to not get too far ahead (difficult since one has to keep some distance due to dust, and it's a fairly windy road with poor visibility to the rear).
The entire road is 2wd accessible without much clearance, but it is all dirt road with some small loose gravel/rocks on top, so care should be taken. It can also be fairly steep at times, so anemic vehicles, especially with CVTs and Dual-Clutch transmissions prone to overheating may need breaks to cool, so keep that in mind if you're planning to drive in this area. After the first big hill climb started to level off and there were some pullouts for rest/passing/viewpoint-enjoying, I pulled off and soon discovered that Logan was quite a ways behind. Apparently he tried to start in 2WD but wasn't having much fun trying to deal with his manual while climbing a steep hill on 1 axle, so he took some time coming to that realisation before getting into 4H and catching up. From that point, things went much smoother.
We cruised along until about halfway along the length of Anderson Lake, where I decided to pull off for some pictures, since I'm always finding myself with pictures of the trail conditions and summit views, but basically no pictures of the mountains from the bottom. I was hoping to get some of the peaks we were heading toward, and while I didn't have a ton of success there, we did still get some nice views, and a peek at the Mission Ridge area in the distance. This was just after noon.
Unfortunately, about 20 minutes later, we hit a fairly large snag: Logan had an accident and ended up upside-down on the side of the road. Thankfully, it was the uphill side, and fairly slow, so the vehicle stayed in one place, and he was unhurt, but that was definitely going to make "doing stuff" difficult. Seriously, I don't know how he rolls his vehicle twice and walks away unscathed, but I do a couple somersaults and break half my body. Seems very unfair.
We spent some time assessing the situation and decided that while I probably could get it back on the side and back on the wheels with my recovery rope that I was also fairly inexperienced and lack a good crawl gear to do it as delicately as would be ideal given the rockiness of the "hole" he was in, so bringing in help would be a good plan. Some passers-by let us know that the hotel in Shalalth (Lil'tem' Mountain Hotel) had a phone and possibly Wi-Fi, so we took some pictures, removed the key items from the vehicle, and I drove us there. The very helpful staff let us use the phone and Wi-Fi to try and coordinate a plan, and after some time, Logan came to the conclusion that it'd be best to get a towing company up, and they said they'd be coming by the hotel at around 4:00pm, and then we would be able to get him out.
After talking it out (about 1:45pm), I threw out the possibility of me going for the 2 easy peaks solo while we waited, since there wasn't much for us to do, and, well, it beat sitting around. I said I'd be happy to take Logan up too, but he (wisely) decided to wait for the towing company to arrive. While they're not often early, they could be on-time, at least, we could be late if anything happened. He was comfortable to let me go for a couple hours, though, so I set off to see what the roads would be like, and if I'd be able to get the peaks in question.
I thought things would be smooth sailing from this point, but on the road from the hotel to the base of Mission Mountain Road, as I was descending to the Hydro Plant, I saw a few people pulled off to the side of the road fumbling with a spare tire, and I stopped to see if they needed help. It turns out they did, so I spent 20ish minutes helping them get their vehicle jacked up properly and that tire changed (got a flat on Mission Mountain Road, it seems). They were fun enough to talk to, and I'm very sorry to the person who wanted me to add them on Facebook since I'm absolutely god-awful with remembering names, and I already forgot by the time I got signal again 🙃.
So, after all the preamble... we're finally talking about Tsee Peak! The road from the hotel to the start of Mission Mountain Road is, well, just a normal paved road, nothing special. Mission Mountain Road, on the other hand, is a moderately steep, unpaved road. It is 2-wide in almost all sections (a couple deadfall and crumbling cliffs notwithstanding), and while being twisty, I'd say it has the same "requirements" as the Highline Road we used to get to it, you can do it with a 2WD and some caution around the tight corners. It climbs all the way from about 250m to nearly 1200m, so I'm definitely happy it exists 😃. Once you top out, there's a fork out to the right which goes up to the peak. This is a steeper road, but the dirt isn't as loose, and it's fairly well-maintained, so I would say it's still 2WD accessible, though a couple small "features" in the road (feels wrong to say obstacles) would require "medium clearance" or at least a lot of balls in a sedan/hatch to make it up unscathed.
You take that road all the way to 1900m or so, and then there's a fork to your left that goes backwards (like a 300 degree turn, quite severe) towards the summit, where there's a large radio tower. I parked there, and walked the rest, partly because I didn't feel like poking around a worksite and provoking any ire to find a way around, partly to be able to say "at least I hiked something for this", and partly just out of sheer laziness to find the road, even though I was fairly sure it went all the way.
The hike to the top was a whole 2.5 minutes each way, and that's with my injured self without poles and in my driving shoes. So while it turns out there was a way to get around the tower (take my descent route) in a vehicle, I probably didn't lose much time walking it. There's a small tower here as well (the usual "dildo" seen on many peaks in SWBC). I snapped some pics and turned back quickly, as the weather, while pleasant in the valley below, was windy as heck and quite cold up at the top.
The descent path, as mentioned, was the right way to go if you wanted to drive the entire thing. Once I got back, I hopped into the car pretty quickly and moved on to Geodetic Peak.
Geodetic Peak
Mission Ridge, Shalalth, British Columbia
2181m
The drive over from Tsee was pretty easy (not harder than anything to that point), although I took a couple detours (trimmed my GPX to keep only the helpful bits) exploring some different spurs to see what might be best way to get up. Since the beta I had didn't indicate a road all the way up (though I'd heard ATVers might have a way up), I originally marked the "highest point on the road" on my maps, but upon arriving there, it looked like a rather steep and loose dirt slope. One could certainly get up/down it, but with my injuries, that seemed like a really bad time. So, I continued driving north to see if I could find the rumoured ATV road, and sure enough I did.
It was pretty easy to follow for a couple metres, but once it turned back south to the peak, it was apparent I'd not be making it up. It is quite steep, had some decently-sized mud ruts, a couple snow patches, and at least one ledge of about 20-25cm. None of these factors alone would prevent me from making up, but the combination of them along with not having a second vehicle to rescue my sorry butt meant I was parking at the bottom. The only chance I'd have of getting up is going full send, and it was steep enough I was concerned I'd end up upside-down like Logan, but with much more tumbling, so walking the rest was the choice that had to be made.
I set out at 3:08 from about 1935m elevation, and started hiking my way up. The first bit seemed to go by faster in my head, but looking at the graphs later, it seems my pace was actually fairly consistent, as was the slope gradient, at least with turns/switchbacks taken into account. In a few minutes, I encountered my first sign of meaningful snow, though I did not have to traverse it at all on this trip.
Not long after that, the ATV-able trail disappeared, and it narrowed to hiking width. It's possible you could get up by finding different lines around the trees, but it's still pretty steep and there are a lot of rocks that combined with the slope angle would make for precarious driving. For hikers, though, it's quite pleasant. While there are a lot of rocks, there's enough flat areas to make confident steps even with a bad ankle, on the ascent and descent.
After hitting the hiking trail portion, I quickly ran out of gas, needing to take a water break. It seems that waking up at 7am then not eating since breakfast, and not having my usual "drink lots of water beforehand" preparation tired me out quickly, and I needed a few such breaks to make it up (though I only bothered taking the water out on this one). Not long after I broke the 2000m mark, the trail got a lot less treed, and I started experiencing the elements. It was freaking cold, and the winds were so harsh I was unwilling to let go of my hiking poles lest they fly away. I suffered up for just over 20 minutes, most of it in these conditions to the top.
There, I encountered some random demolished shack or something, a car battery, and other various detritus too large to pack out myself. I took a few pictures once I hit the summit cairn and turned back quickly. It was cold+windy, and I wanted to get back to Logan since I was already going to be back past the 4:00 estimate the towing company gave him, so I had plenty of reasons not to linger. I did get my first burst of signal up there, though, so I sent a quick check-in message before heading down.
The descent did at least take me a bit less time than the ascent for the first time in a while, although not by more than a few minutes. It was pretty uneventful. Once I got to the car, it was an easy drive down, though I did come to the (obvious in hindsight) realisation that driving down Mission Mountain Road was actually going to be much slower than going up, since I had to constantly deal with my stupid gearing which was too slow in 1st but too fast in 2nd, and generally had less traction than when going uphill. I ended up getting back to the hotel at 4:30, but (thankfully?) the towing company hadn't arrived yet, so we had time to get lunch across the street, talk with some locals, and play a round of pool (free!) at the pub before we set out to rescue Logan's car. It was a success, and as of the day of this writing it runs! So not quite the adventure we had planned, but definitely still an adventure, and I still managed to salvage a couple summits out of it.
As for "should you do these peaks", well of course, they're peaks. Specifically, I'd recommend doing them when the road is driveable, since it cuts off so much tedious walking. I would also recommend not wrecking a car so you have time to traverse to Mission Mountain and back, so you can knock all 4 off in one go instead of just the 2 I did.