Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

November 8, 2020

2133m

Garibaldi Provincial Park, BC

Not to be confused with the Kane’s scramble Panorama Ridge near Moraine Lake, Alberta, this one locates right next to Garibaldi Lake of British Columbia. I had been aware of this scenic spot since 2009 when I just started hiking in Grade 10, but never actually ended up doing it. Now in 2020 I have already bagged over 1000 peaks but still hadn’t done Panorama Ridge and none of my friends would actually believe that. This ridge had also become one of the hottest spots on social media among the local areas in the recent few years. One reason why I waited for so long was because I’d already known what exactly the views would be, based on the hundreds of Instagram feeds I’ve seen. I also knew that I likely would come up here for one time only thank to the long ass approach, so I needed bluebird weather and the lake being not frozen. My original plan was to come up here with some Instagram girls so that I could get some sexy photos out of it, but I really didn’t care. When Winnie mentioned she didn’t mind to repeat Panorama Ridge with me I was instantly game. For the two of us it made more sense to also hike the nearby Gentian Peak.

We chose the Helm Creek approach from Cheakamus Lake parking lot because that side was marginally shorter especially when Gentian Peak’s also on the agenda. The term “short” was relative as the round trip distance still ended up clocking at 33 km… We decided to ascend Gentian Peak first as that’s the primary objective, and also because the view from Panorama Ridge would be better in afternoon/evening than morning.

From the lowest point between Gentian Peak and Panorama Ridge we hopped across a frozen tarn’s outflow then traversed around a minor bump with some minor bushwhacking. We could have just plodded up and over the bump but I felt particularly lazy on this day and wanted to do the least amount of work. The ascent of Panorama Ridge via the broad NE Ridge was almost a no-brainer. The snowshoes weren’t needed and stayed in our packs for the entire ascent, while crampons were quite useful to gain traction on the icy slopes. By the time we reached the summit we realized that the views were nowhere as impressive as what I remembered from the Instagram feeds, so we soon realized that most hikers who claimed this hike did not actually reach the true summit.

Knowing a minor bump down the ridge likely offered better views we didn’t even bother to take a break on the true summit. The traverse to that viewpoint took about 10 minutes. We had seen probably close to 20 hikers descending, ascending or hanging out on the “summit” but we were the only pair who actually went further to tag the true summit. The view was indeed very good but not as impressive as I was hoping for, probably because I’d already known this view before even coming up here.

Once having enough photos we joined the hordes descending. None of us did much research about the route so we just followed the most obvious boot path. About 200 vertical meters down we took off the crampons and just played the balancing game. The trail was no longer steep but slippery as fuck including several long stretches of pure ice, but I did mange to not take a single fall. The trail did an unnecessarily long detour towards Helm Pass and Black Tusk Lake. I wished I checked the maps earlier so that we could just take as short-cut shaving at least a kilometer off the plod. While plodding across Cinder Flats we faced a weird detour to bypass a creek crossing. I decided to bid my fate and went for a short-cut to directly cross the creek on ice that was clearly not thick enough… With careful probing I did manage to not wet my feet but I also discovered quite a few holes and broke several large pieces of the ice, so not recommended.. The reward was that I got to the opposite side of this creek a few minutes faster than Winnie… The rest of the descent was a pure ass slog and I do not see a point to document that in depth. We also had to use head-lamps in the final hour and our round trip time was about 10.5 hours.

We had brought some luxurious gears for car-camping including my old -18 degrees MEC bag and a -32 degrees Western Mountaineering Puma GWS, but this trip ended up being at least two or three hours shorter than anticipated. We were hoping to do some rock climbing on Monday morning but the forecast had downgraded. I was also not very tired so we just drove home…