Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

November 18, 2018

1870m

Coquihalla Pass, BC

Portia Peak is a relatively small summit in the Coquihalla Pass area that sees no more than a few parties each year. It does not boast much mountaineering interest, but attaining this summit is not an easy fair nonetheless. The approach involves a long, arduous but incredibly scenic ridge traverse from Zopkios Rest Area via Needle Peak’s approach, The Flatiron and then “Two Bears Ridge”. The recommended timing is “winter” but several stretches are steep enough to impose significant avalanche hazard. I’ve seen a mixed bag of reports and my decision was in November when there’s not enough snow to worry about avalanches, but snowy enough to warrant a proper snowshoe trip.

To put this trek down in a single day requires an early start. Vlad and I left Vancouver at around 6 am and were at the parking lot in just over two hours. Our first objective was The Flatiron as none of us had been up there before. To just do Portia Peak one does not need to go all the way to the summit of The Flatiron.

From the summit of The Flatiron we followed the broad connecting ridge due south. Two small, but steep-banked notches surprised us and we had to take the snowshoes off to down-climb into, and then out of them. We then strapped the snowshoes on our packs and booted the next section staying on the wind blown side of the ridge, all the way to the next major highpoint. By now we finally got some unobstructed views of the steep drop before Portia Peak and it’s looking depressingly far away. The strategy was to focus on one step at a time. Traversing south-westward across “Two Bears Ridge” was rougher than expected with some bluffs that required minor detouring, and once making sense we bailed off the ridge aiming directly at the low pass immediately north of Portia Peak.

The descent off this south-facing slope was even steeper and more complicated than expected and the steepest stretch goes at 35+ degrees even with route-finding. The snowpack was fairly shallow but I was too lazy to do another gear transition. Vlad took his snowshoes off and plunged down while I gingerly cut some switchback tracks to be used later. Boot-packing was far faster but adding the two gear transitions our pace was about the same. Up the NW slopes of Portia Peak we soon encountered completely different snow conditions with sections very icy. There weren’t enough snow coverage to smooth the bluffs and bush out neither adding to the route-finding game.

About halfway up the NW slope the terrain had become moderately exposed especially in the icy conditions. None of us brought an ice axe on this trip which turned out to be a mistake. Vlad decided to ditch snowshoes and don crampons while I continued stubbornly charging all the way up (35-40 degrees) in my Lightning Ascents snowshoes, and I have to say that at times I felt quite exposed with absolutely no way to arrest a fall in case the snowshoe crampons failed, but I had my trust on this pair of ‘shoes. The trade-off was no post-holing. After what seemed like a long haul the terrain sorta plateaued out and by this point we weren’t far from the summit. The views were excellent as expected.

On the descent I took the snowshoes off and donned Irvis Hybrid crampons to test them out on my brand new Trango Ice Cubes. They performed pretty well together. On the ascent Vlad had done a great job kicking multiple times to get in some deep purchases so to down-climb I just needed to use his tracks. That was very easy. In no time we were off the steepest part of NW slopes and then the crampons were switched back to snowshoes and the ‘shoes were worn all the way up the steep south-facing slope to the crest of “Two Bears Ridge”. The 200-m regain was surely a tiring, but incredibly scenic grunt.

Once back to the crest of “Two Bears Ridge” we took our time traversing to the highest bump south of The Flatiron. This stage has more ups than downs with quite some micro-terrain to be careful with, but the views were just beyond breathe-taking, especially in the late-afternoon lighting. We bailed down into the cirque east of The Flatiron via a short-cut avoiding that two steep notches on the ridge. This short-cut involved again a section of 35-40 degree slope but the snow condition was more homogeneous. My technique was down-climbing facing into the slope but keeping the snowshoes on. This worked perfectly well. Lower down Vlad and I rejoined our path and then grunted that last bit of elevation regain to Needle Peak’s west shoulder, before bailing down Needle Ridge trail while watching a classic Coquihalla sunset. Once the terrain became steeper I strapped the microspikes on just so to justify the purpose of hauling them up, and I have to say that with the spikes I felt more confident on the steep, ice-covered trail. About half an hour’s use of headlamps later we arrived back onto the highway and instead of taking a roundabout way through the tunnel we just ran across the main highway to the parking lot.

Our round trip time was over 9 hours on a steady pace and given the conditions I think we did pretty well. This is indeed a great trip to be done in late fall or early winter conditions when there’s enough snow to enhance the scenery but not enough to cause avalanche concerns. The terrain was mostly open meadows and low-angled granite slabs so one does not need to worry about having to travel across partially covered boulder fields.