Zupjok Peak Coquihalla

Was it a day for exploring? Or a day to just go somewhere familiar and do laps? There were about 25 cars at Falls Lake so Steve and I chose the explore option. We continued down the road to the Needle Peak pull off, slapped on the skis, and headed west along a logging road towards Zupjok Peak.

The road loses quite a bit of elevation before beginning to climb upwards but this sad fact is more than made up for by the beautiful old growth forest it passes through. There were at least 2 to 3 metres of snow on the ground topped with several inches of nice light powder. We hoped for great things.

After a few map and GPS checks we got ourselves onto the thickly treed south ridge of Zupjok and began climbing in earnest. Our rough idea was to climb up the south ridge of Zupjok and then descend the east ridge to a col and then find our uptrack on the way down.

It started to snow heavily and as we got higher and the wind really picked up. By the time we neared the summit the snow was blowing horizontally; it stung our faces and reduced the visibility to just about zero.





Our mini traverse wasn't going to happen in these conditions. With regrets we turned around and headed back the way we had come. The snow was amazing but the trees were too tight for us to make the most of the great conditions.

At some point I broke a heel lift on one of my 7tm bindings. Freakin' tele bindings, there's always something. Half the reliability of an AT binding at twice the weight. Another step on the dark and inevitable descent to Dynafit.

Oh well. Some days you win and and some days you lose. Always nice to be out. As consolation on the drive home we saw one of these amazing double-width snow plows.