Wedge Mountain

A weekend of elevation and chocolate cake.

Like most of my posts, this one is overdue and a draft has been available for months now, not sure why I haven’t posted it yet. So, this is what I wrote a couple of months ago in March…
..It was a nice and successful weekend. At least partially successful, because we originally wanted to ski down the NW couloir from the summit, but the snow was not inviting enough to do so (ok for me..). It was also Caitlin’s birthday, so we ate cake.
Maybe that is all that needs to be said.

Or maybe I am just a little bit negative because I am annoyed by the strangers walking through my living room. I am sitting on the couch and feel like a well-behaved monkey in a zoo. I try to be nice and smile at the spectators, maybe they give me a treat. But they don’t, they seem utterly unimpressed and ignorant, probably because I am not picking my nose or peeling a banana. The zoo is called Open House at Highbury Steet. If it was up to me, business hours are over right now.

Anyway, on March 9, 2019, the monkey, Caitlin, Julien, Shane and Todd went to ski to Wedgmount Lake to climb Wedge Mountain and eat chocolate cake. We had brilliant weather and mediocre snow.

The ski in is fairly uneventful if you chose a logging road  instead of the summer trail and only join the summer trail at around 1300 m. And the views were spectacular just before dropping into the bowl of Wedgemount lake.

We all did some extensive napping, because it was only 1 pm and we did not have any particular plans for the day. Hours later, we decided to go check out the area a bit and while it was incredibly beautiful, we were not impressed by the quality of snow. Julien was not impressed by the obvious recession of the Wedgemount Glacier..

I checked on this and it seems the glacier terminus has a small lake for maybe 10 years now and is more than 300 m away from Wedgemount Lake, where it was happily bathing in 1973.

After we skied back to the hut another group had arrived so Caitlin and Julien decided to make space and pitched their tent, so nice of them! Shane had gotten a fancy chocolate cake from a bakery for Caitlin, it was quite dense and pretty much unhurt by the travel in..

We had a good night of sleep and woke up slightly confused what time it actually was and then left 1 hour too late due to the switch to summer time. We headed towards the glacier we had checked out the afternoon before, and went up and over to reach the West ridge of Wedge Mountain.

The summit of Wedge Mountain is at 2903 m according to my map and it is the highest peak in Garibaldi Park. The ascent of the West Ridge was easy and the most boot packing I ever did (900 m of elevation). Usually I try to keep the amount of ski-less travel at a minimum in the winter..

The views were amazing though and I am glad we went all the way up!

Walking along the long ridge on the way back was pretty fast. Todd was especially eager to get back to his skis, so he went ahead  (he is the black dot on the picture). I took some time to take some nice photos..

We also skied out that day, so the total elevation profile for the day was something like 1100 m up and 2200 m down, although down also means skiing through steep trees and a bit of flat logging road, but overall quite enjoyable really. Not beginner-friendly though.