Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

April 24, 2026

2913m

Lillooet Icefield, BC

Lillooet Icefield is the first major icefield that boasts several 3000+ m peaks when moving NW from Vancouver along the Coast Range and bagging some of those peaks had been on my mind for many years. This area had been almost exclusively explored by ski mountaineering parties, but I’m not a competent skier and I also do not enjoy skiing. Doing these peaks in summer would be feasible but the travel would be far less efficient on the broken glaciers, as I discovered in the nearby Manatee Range trip in 2021. There had been a few trip reports in which skiers would spend 7-12 days doing a loop traverse by parking at just above the Keyhole Hot Springs trail-head, but few managed to bag more than a handful peaks along the way. There are at least 10 peaks that I wouldn’t want to miss, and if the skiers such as Thomas M. couldn’t manage that then there’s no way I could do such on snowshoes. Taking so many days off in a roll in the exam season would also put too much stress on my work schedule, so a smash-and-grab fashion by flying in would be the only option left. However, this would require two very long (and expensive) helicopter rides, and aligning partners with the availability of the pilot and the weather/condition window would surely be a multi-year project, but eventually it happened in 2026 with some last minute planning. For me personally I’m already in the stage of life that having the time do trips like this is more of a problem than money but that’s not the case for everybody.

Alex R. and Francis B. are the two of my “go-to” when it comes to helicopter access as they are the rare ones who have time, money and energy/skills, and luckily I was able to convince Seb G. to join the team as well. All of the planning was done within 3 days of the departure as we only started throwing out the ideas after seeing a prime window forming. Usually the major high pressure systems in spring would be accompanied with some warming-up trends but not in this one. I actually thought this was basically the “window of the year” such that everybody should be going for their biggest project of the season. Another team was planning for Mt. Cayley and Pyroclastic Peak and that aligned with my thinking. The downside was that among the 4 of us we could only manage taking Friday and Monday off work, and 4 days was a bit too short for our likes. But then who knows how many more years it would take to get another team going, so we pulled the trigger. Alex knows the pilot from No Limit Helicopters so we got a fairly cheap deal at around 5300 dollars (taxes included). If not because of Alex I’m sure the price would be much higher. Having only 4 days meant we wouldn’t be able to tag all of the peaks in the “core zone” but in the end we did basically get everything except for Mt. Magaera and Mt. Daphnis. Obviously Mt. Tisiphone and Mt. Fulgora were the prime objectives as they are the only ones exceeding 3000 m elevation, and Mt. Tisiphone is also the one that boasts over 1000 m prominence.

The earliest time to fly from Whistler was 8 am so we got there around 7:30 am, and after a somewhat hasty paying process we were in the air. We had tried to push the departing time earlier but to no avail. The flight was a long but scenic one. We flew directly over the Pemby Icecap as well as the Meager Group so there’s a lot of memories brought back. I directed the pilot to drop us on the small plateau between Delta Peak and Mu Peak. The plan was to climb Mu Peak carrying nothing followed by plodding up and over Delta Peak, and the 3rd objective would be Mt. Dalgleish. It was very windy and cold up at 2700 m elevation and being flown straight to this altitude meant we also needed a few hours to adapt to the lower air pressure. Going up Mu Peak was mostly straightforward but the true summit was the rocky one on the left. I thought it could require some tricky moves so carried the ice axe and crampons, but we didn’t need them. The views were exceptional with Wahoo Tower stealing the show to the south.

After coming back down to Mu/Delta saddle we shouldered the heavy packs. My pack weighed 47 lb before boarding the flight but that’s with the 30′ snowshoes strapped on. The actual weight would be around 43 lb. There are several summits on Delta Peak and we weren’t sure which was the highest. The official name was labelled on the rocky pyramid (north peak) so that’s the one we were going to climb first. We carried the heavy packs to the col between the two summits and then climbed the south ridge of the north peak on two ice tools and crampons. This ridge turned out to be rather narrow and exposed with several gendarmes to work around. Traversing on the west side was quite icy and required some steep snow climbing techniques. However, it was quite clear that the dome-shaped south peak is most likely higher, so we reluctantly climbed that one as well. The south peak was nothing fancier than a walk-up.

Francis was the only one on skis so he then enjoyed a quick run down onto the immense plateau between Mt. Dalgleish, Delta Peak and Lillooet Mountain. We had some discussions as where exactly to drop the packs to go for Mt. Dalgleish as it’s about balancing the weight hauling versus the overall shortest distance. My vote was to aim for the shortest distance. Mt. Dalgleish was the first 2900+ m objective in this trip so we were quite excited about it. The ascent was however, just a long slog. I was able to wear snowshoes all the way to the very summit. There was some impressive views from traversing the summit ridge but I thought the views from Lillooet Mtn. and Mt. Tisiphone later in the trip was even better. We then casually descended to the gear cache and began the weight hauling towards the base of Lillooet Mountain.