Whistler Mountain - July 2 2023
Fitzsimmons Range, Whistler, British Columbia
2181m
As this weekend was an on-call weekend, I once again had the goal of getting to enjoy the mountains whilst remaining a good employee and staying within the bounds of cell service. In the morning, I actually did my first climbing in quite a few months. I met up with my climbing+skiing buddy Nick, and we went to Area 44. Amusingly, given the scale of the hikes of this weekend, getting from the parking some way up on the road above the Tantalus Viewpoint on Highway 99 to The Pillary (the wall of choice) was itself a good few minutes of hiking. I tried a 5.8 but failed at the crux because a failure on that move would mean a large swing on the rope, and I didn't want to find out what might happen if I wasn't able to perfectly control that swing and smacked my leg into the rock, so I stopped there. I did, at least, manage to send SOMETHING, and climbed a pretty easy 5.7 (Bienvenue, I believe). Thanks to my partners for the day for leading+belaying for my currently very risk-averse self. It was fun hanging out, and to be told in no uncertain terms that I "climb like a scrambler" 😀. Given that's exactly how I started climbing, guess that shouldn't be a surprise.
After a fun morning of climbing, though, I had to make my way to Whistler to make sure I made the chairs up/down, so I left a bit after noon, and got to Whistler at about 1:30. The parking was quite busy, as was the section of highway within traffic lights at Whistler, so it seems Canada Day Weekend and good weather were enough of a draw to crowd the town like it was winter still. I made my way to the gondola, only to find out that apparently despite having Peak Chair open for sightseeing, you couldn't go up the gondola without a bike, but instead had to go to Blackcomb Base, take that gondola, then Peak-2-Peak, THEN Peak chair. Efficiency/10.
And so, I made my way through that journey, eventually, I got to the top of the chairlifts on the Whistler side just before 3pm. That would've been a problem under my previous assumption that the lift closed at 4pm, but thankfully they seemed to have holiday hours or something, and actually closed at quarter to 6, so there was enough time (in theory) to get the day's bagging done.
The first crux of the day would be getting to the top of Whistler itself. The ski patrol hut is in between you and the top in winter, with some pretty fierce closure signs and lots of people around to enforce them, so I've never tried that before. I figured in summer they might just "care less". Unfortunately, that was rather naive, and the area was still closed off. However, I had some beta that there is an out-of-sight way near the bathrooms that one can use to get up, and that seemed to be my ticket up. I stashed my poles behind the washroom and surreptitiously made my way up a little gully, careful to avoid the cable/tube in the middle, and to avoid making noise in case that alerted anyone nearby.
After the gully, there were a few rocks to scramble up to get to the top. I was going to take a summit picture, but I heard some voices from the building just ahead of the "highest rock" I found, and instead scurried away like a rodent (this is also in-view of the crowds at the chairlift area, so lingering wasn't a good plan). Kinda annoying that one has to go through this just to tag the top, but oh well, at least it was more possible than in winter with ski patrol everywhere. Once that was done, I got on my way down Matthew's Traverse (while uninteresting as a ski run, it's even more so in the summer as it's just a dirt road), and headed toward the Harmony Chair.
After about 9 minutes I descended to the fork for Burnt Stew (another green run which is just a road in summer), which goes to the Symphony Chair, but instead forked left to go over to Harmony, as I was heading for Little Whistler next.
Little Whistler
Fitzsimmons Range, Whistler, British Columbia
2115m
Getting to the Harmony Chair itself is pretty simple, it's just "follow the road to the chair". Once you get there, it's a few minutes of hiking on alpine terrain with a rough trail put in by foot traffic. Thankfully, unlike the former peak, this one is not closed off in any way, and you can go right up. You can do so in winter as well, but one must watch for cornices, and more notably, one must take time out of their skiing day, the main reason I hadn't yet bagged it! It doesn't look higher when you're looking from the top of the lift, but once you get going on the trail, you'll see the true summit was out-of-sight, and is definitely higher than the surrounding outcroppings.
After that, I made my way down to the chair again, and started my journey to peak #3 of the day, Piccolo Summit.