Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

December 28, 2020

2306m

Steep Creek / Duffey Lake Road, BC

My last and the only previous time checking out Steep Creek drainage was in December 2016 when I soloed “Steep Peak” on skis and ever since then, posts about this area had gone viral on Social Media. These days it’s difficult to even find a parking spot on a sunny weekend. “Blowdown Peak” is another unofficially-named peak accessed via the logging roads in Steep Creek drainage. It’s a little bit shorter than “Steep Peak” but offers equally good skiing potential. Unlike 4 years ago I’m no longer interested in skiing anymore but I’ve found more friends interested in snowshoeing in the South Coast. The plan to take advantage of the last sunny day of 2020 among Al, Mel, Jenn and myself was then easily made. We had to be honest that “Blowdown Peak” was not the most exciting objective out there but none of us was particularly motivated about a huge day of sufferfest, so we settled on this relatively Type 1 fun kind of outing.

I decided to drive out separately because I had more free time and wanted to make some use of the following day as well. The weather forecast indicated a clearing trend throughout the day so we opted to start relatively late. The cost for that decision was about an hour’s delay on Sea to Sky Highway thank to a fairly major accident that closed both directions of traffic. While driving up the Duffey Lake Road I noticed every single parking lot (Cayoosh, Cerise Creek, etc) reaching full capacity despite that this was rather a Monday. I worried about the parking situation for us. The main plowed lot was indeed full, but we did manage to park the two vehicles there without blocking the highway.

The hike started by passing a large group of skiers and splitborders. A few long and boring switchbacks later we came to the junction where the majority of the hordes would pick the skinner right hand fork (towards Darkside Lake and Steep Peak). I thought the trail-breaking game would begin for us but it seemed like the snowmobilers had gone the left side branch and we greatly appreciated that. Another while of boring plodding later we were at the road’s end in a massive cutblock, happy to see three parked snowmobiles and a well-defined set of skin tracks leading towards the direction we wanted. Apparently Blowdown Peak is more popular than what the internet and Social Media suggests. After a quick break we plodded onwards following the skin tracks exiting the cut-block then into the mature forest. This forested stretch soon came to an end as we came to the broad bowl under Blowdown Peak’s west slopes.

We were able to see ski tracks on the massive avalanche chutes of Blowdown Peak’s west faces and tentatively made some plans to descend one of those chutes depends on conditions and our on-field observations. The ascent would still be done via the standard route aiming for the col south of the summit. The skiers were apparently having the same strategy so we had a nice set of skin tracks to plod on, all the way to the col on the low point of Blowdown Peak’s south ridge. The ascent to the col involved one steep slope for about 50 vertical meters. We took a longer break reaching the col because we were finally in the sunshine.

The skin tracks continued up the south ridge of Blowdown Peak towards the summit and we were happy about that. For once in a while we would appreciate a trip without trail-breaking effort. The terrain was mellow but scenic on the south ridge but became a bit bony towards the top. The skiers didn’t make the summit so we still had to break some trail for about 100 vertical meters. The views were pretty neat on the summit so we did a long stay on the top.

On the descent we went down the south ridge to where the previous skiers stopped and then took the southern of the two avalanche chutes plunging down. I anticipated some fun plunging and maybe even glissading but the snow conditions were a bit on the heavy side. My quads were tired out after trying to glide on snowshoes. Mel tried to glissade on butts but were barely able to move. Eventually we just opted to plunge-step. In short time the fun parts were over. We picked up a set of skin tracks at the bottom of the run but soon realized that track was going uphill, so we bailed down on our own through some tight forest to rejoin the main track. The rest of the descent back to the truck was uneventful but boring.

We lingered at the trail-head for over an hour socializing before departing each’s own way. The other guys drove back home while I drove down the icy and windy road towards Lillooet for my next trip.