April 4-5, 2015
Alex and I decided to tgo south, to Texas Creek, that is. Nestled south of Lillooet and tucked away behind a totally reasonable drive via the Duffy, it seemed like the perfect place to stretch our legs, test our patience, and lose the trail within the first 20 minutes.
We left Friday night and car camped like kings at the Texas Creek FSR. The road is in surprisingly good shape for 2WD, but watch out for logging operations and heavy equipment. This is one of those places where if you block the road, a very large truck will remind you why that was a bad idea.
Day 1: Devilish Decisions
The plan was to do a beautiful traverse from Devil Peak to Intlpam Peak via Skimath Creek. Instead, we missed the junction and took the East Fork of Texas Creek because, hey, who doesn’t love a little “choose your own adventure” in the dark?
We drove up to the 21 km mark, dodged the logging machinery, then began our bushwhack. The forest was surprisingly pleasant, except for the slippery, frozen ground that tried to eat us every other step.
Skis went on at 2000 m, and we boot-packed the North Ridge of Devil Peak to the summit. Views? Great. Wind? Yep. Feet? Questionable.
Then came the Death March'er, I mean the traverse to Intlpam. The East Ridge of Devil turned out to be a rollercoaster of ups, downs, sidehilling, sketchy micro-terrain, and mild soul loss. We tried to outsmart a massive bump by contouring its West face, only to crawl back up to Intlpam’s South Ridge like two grumpy goats with bad boots.
From the col, we ditched the skis and started the 2km walk to the summit, which felt like 20km, especially with my left foot doing its best impression of a medieval torture device.
We tagged the top, said “yep, that’s enough of that,” and hustled back to our skis to avoid skiing in the dark... which we totally failed at. The descent down to Skimath Creek was... steep. We then had to reclimb Devil Peak’s North Ridge in the dark, powered solely by stubbornness, trail mix crumbs, and moonlight magic.
Back to the car at almost midnight, we skipped dinner and just collapsed into our sleeping bags like true heroes of low-energy mountaineering.
Day 2: The Revolution That Wasn’t
We woke up to a bluebird Sunday, recharged and slightly delusional. Revolution Peak? Sure, why not! Except we bailed 350m shy of Rigby Peak’s summit because apparently our bodies were still in “horizontal mode.”
The ski out was chef’s kiss, a lovely 400m slide path... followed by a Grade A Bushfest, complete with blowdowns and confusion. It was a beautiful ending to a very type-2-fun weekend.
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