Trapeze Peak

July 20, 2019

2386m

Pemberton / Upper Lillooet FSR, BC

“Trapeze Peak” is the name unofficially assigned by members on bivouac.com to the peak immediately south of Mt. Samposon because of its shape. It’s not a glamorous objective in its own, but does look interesting in some ways. For those happen to be in Mt. Sampson area with extra hours to kill then “Trapeze Peak” might not be a bad choice. Alex, Paul and I decided to tag the minor summits of “Zorah Peak” and “Trapeze Peak” while approaching Mt. Sampson from the south. Our approach route traverses right by the base of this peak.

Sampson Group peak-bagging. GPX DL

The easiest route is the north ridge from Trapeze/Sampson col which looked like mostly just class 2 but the most efficient way for us was the west ridge. The ridge looked steep but we decided to explore it nonetheless. The packs were ditched and up we went. A few steps had to be bypassed on climber’s right side and with careful route-finding we managed to keep the scramble within “Class 3” with maybe one harder move about 3/4 of the way up. The rocks were loose by BC standard so we had to be extra careful not knocking shits down on each other. The true summit required a bit of traverse to get to across the flat summit plateau.

Me heading for Trapeze Peak. Photo by Alex R.

Me starting the scrambling. Photo by Alex R.

Alex and Paul at the start of hands-on section

Alex and Paul high up on the west ridge of “Trapeze Peak”

Summit Panorama from Trapeze Peak. Click to view large size.

Face Mountain looks impressive from this angle

These are some minor unnamed summits north of Railroad Group

Faceless Mountain in Railroad Group

Handcar Peak in Railroad Group

The massive South Face of Mt. Sampson where we were heading next

The glacier we’d traverse across with Luxuria Peak and Mt. Delilah behind

Me on the summit of Trapeze Peak

After lingering for a short while we carefully retraced our route back down the west ridge. There’s still plenty of daylight time and our plan was to set up camp at the base of Mt. Sampson and bag the main objective on the evening.

Paul descending the typical 3rd class terrain

Alex down-climbing a tricky step near the end.