Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

January 17, 2026

2309m

Duffey Lake Road, BC

All of the peaks in Steep Creek drainage are unnamed or unofficially named and these two aren’t exceptions. “Darkside Peak” had been documented in John Baldwin’s Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis whereas “Crabbe Mountain” is relatively unknown until the recent era. The name had been adopted from bivouac.com and there were only a few existing trip reports on the internet. Over the past 10 years I had already done “Steep Peak”, “Windfall Peak” and “Blowdown Peak” all in winter so it made sense to do the two remaining ones also in winter to finish off the business. However, there was no “beta” about the winter traverse but I figured it shouldn’t be too problematic given the bluebird weather and the “green brick” avalanche forecasts. The NE Ridge of “Darkside Peak” would offer the most amount of unknowns but it’s only reported as “class 3” in summer, so how bad could it be.

Vlad and Dave decided to join me on the exploratory mission. We could have done something more aggressive but I was lacking motivation and ideas. These two peaks require that “perfect conditions” anyway. Vlad and I decided to meet at “the church” at 6 am in the morning and we would grab Dave in Pemberton 2 hours later. There was still a ways to go from Pemberton to the trail-head by Duffey Lake but that’s fine. I was a bit concerned about the parking situation but I overestimated the popularity of this area. I guess the skiers had been staying home these days as the skiing quality was nowhere as great as the snowpack stability.

The start of the FSR is 200 m east of the parking lot and unlike the previous trips, snowshoes weren’t required for the plodding. After an hour of mundane walking we reached the point where we should leave the trail aiming for the valley between “Crabbe Mtn.” and “Darkside Peak”. There was some bushwhacking on the trail but nothing severe. The sledders had stopped and turned around before that short stretch of alders. The snowshoes were strapped on immediately after leaving the trail and the snow condition wasn’t as crusty/icy as I was expecting. In fact, there was fair amount of trail-breaking involved. We ascended a cut-block and then veered slightly climber’s left up through some steep forested terrain. This brought us onto the NW flanks of “Crabbe Mtn.”. A long, steep and open slope then brought us onto the NW Ridge. The ridge wasn’t as straightforward as suggested by the topographic maps. It was fairly narrow with lots of large cornices looming the north side. Negotiating the ridge crest wasn’t practical so I mostly led a rising traverse line on the SW side of the crest, dealing with fait amount of “technical snowshoeing”. I wouldn’t recommend this route for beginners. In fact, the easiest way of tagging this peak is to ascend the valley all the way to Crabbe/Darkside col and then ascend the south ridge, which was our descent route.

The NW Ridge had taken us longer than expected so we didn’t linger too long up there on the summit. The NE Ridge of “Darkside Peak” appeared rather intimidating with no obvious solution, but I was sure that we could make it work somehow. Descending the south ridge of “Crabbe Mtn.” was mostly straightforward but still involved a few steep rolls. And then we traversed the narrow connecting ridge across the saddle, then up the lower NE Ridge of “Darkside Peak”. I voted to keep the snowshoes on for as much as possible but eventually at the base of the couloir we had to make a gear transition. Vlad was the only one bringing only one ice axe so I volunteered to give my second axe to him. I then led the charge using only one axe. The terrain was steep (45 degrees) but the condition was thankfully not very icy. My original plan was to ascend through the couloir then up the “fan” all the way to underneath the cornice but then a section of sugary wallowing forced me traversing climber’s left. This brought me back onto the ridge crest. Thankfully the ridge itself went from there, with a few strenuous moves on mixed terrain. Vlad and Dave topped out minutes later.

It was obvious that we wouldn’t have enough time to traverse over “Steep Peak”, which was good for me as I had already done it many years ago. The new mission was then to find a viable way down the north side of “Darkside Peak”. There wasn’t much in terms of detailed beta but based on the earlier observation, the initial decision was made descending the broad NW Ridge. I opted to wear the snowshoes whereas the others opted for crampons. I think the others made the better decision but with my experience in snowshoeing, it was also doable on snowshoes. The initial roll was quite steep and compact and definitely put my technical snowshoeing in test. I had to down-climb facing inward for a short while. At around 2100 m we spotted a way to drop into the broad bowl on the north side of the ridge and then plunged all the way down from there. I removed the snowshoes but then dealt with a lot of post-holing. There was no “clear solution” was it sucked either way. This is huge avalanche terrain as we encountered massive amount of debris lower down. The avalanche had swept enough of the snow that we had to deal with a section of icy constraint near the bottom, which forced me to don crampons. Vlad and Dave already had their crampons so they did one less transition. The rest of the return was rather uneventful and our round trip time was 7.5 hours.