Date: July 22-24, 2024
Participants: Julian Larsen, Alex Barth, Erik Reimers
Most returning VOC members already know of the Tantalus traverse, but in case you don’t or you’re new to the club, it is a beautiful mountain ridge traverse near Squamish. It typically starts at the Sigurd creek trailhead, climbing up to the alpine and traversing nearly the entire Tantalus range (though only summiting Tantalus itself for most people including us) and then plunging back down past Lake Lovely Water to the Squamish River. It has all the things one might expect on an alpine adventure: difficult access, glacier travel, steep snow, scrambling, route finding, and rappelling.
The Tantalus Range, with Mount Tantalus in the centre.
Knowing I had the necessary skills to complete the traverse this season, I had been following conditions closely since spring. Things were finally coming into good shape, so I had started looking to take a stab at it. Originally, I planned to do a 2 day out and back attempt the Tantalus summit via Sigurd creek to avoid the infamous Squamish River crossing, but after my partner bailed due to being sick, I contacted Alex Barth, who had planned on doing the traverse in 3 days with Erik Reimers.
On Sunday night we dropped my car off on the side of the road at the Squamish River crossing and Alex shuttled us all to Sigurd Creek where we slept overnight. In the morning the slog up the Sigurd creek trail began. It was foggy and hot in the morning, leaving us all immediately drenched in sweat. Questionable weather forecasts had us on edge but as we got into the alpine bowl below Pelion, the clouds started to clear a little. After cresting over the ridge, we saw a brief glimpse of the north ridge of Tantalus before it was once again engulfed in clouds. On the ridge we encountered a pair who had decided to bail because of expected poor weather the next day. Alex studied all of the possible weather reports on the ridge as we got a bit of cell service, and said he was relatively confident we wouldn’t be completely fogged in or drenched by rain. The other pair probably made the right decision though, as one of them had gone all in on cowboy camping with no rain protection. Movement was fast from the ridge as we tried to get to a tarn close the base of Tantalus North ridge for our camp. We wanted to be as close as possible to give ourselves ample time the next day, while also having a camp with spots large and flat enough for the 2-man tent Alex and I were staying in (Erik had a tarp for himself). The camp seemed nice, but flat ground for a tent was still somewhat challenging, as the few flat spots seemed like they would become marshy if it rained overnight (which it was forecasted to do). Eventually Alex picked out a spot and we pitched the tent with some rock piles. Wind was starting to really pick up in the evening, and just as we started to get in the tent, the side ripped open on a sharp rock. We repaired it as best we could with duct tape and then went to sleep. Around 2 hours after we first started to try sleeping the furious sound of the tent flapping in the wind became even louder and Alex and I both sat up to check if everything was alright. One of the corners of the tent had come apart as the cord had cut on another rock. Just as we noticed this the tent collapsed from the release of tension. Alex jumped outside and quickly solved our issue before we both went back to sleep.
The next morning, I poked my head outside and saw nothing but fog. We had decided that if this was the case we would sleep in and wait for improved visibility so that’s what I did. Ten minutes later Erik came to wake us up and said that the clouds had passed, which was a welcome surprise I did not expect so soon. We saw our surroundings at the camp for the first time and it gave us motivation to start moving on for the day.
After some steep heather side hilling, we made it onto snow and started the north ridge. The route mostly consisted of traversing steep snow slopes and glaciers before scrambling some loose rock onto a different snow patch or glacier and repeating. A few kilometers from the summit the real meat of the route begins, a quality ridge scramble on pretty solid rock and relatively few crampon transitions. After rappelling off this ridge and over a moat between the rock and glacier, we traversed to a steep chossy slope that gained the base of the false summit. A final scramble on decent quality rock brought up and over the false summit and on to the true one. We waited at the top for a break in the clouds but unfortunately the only thing we ever saw through the fog was a glimpse of Dione and the witches tooth a few times. We didn’t wait long, as the somewhat infamous rappels were ahead of us, and we definitely didn’t want to end up having to bivy on the rappels like another VOC group… We followed multiple sources of beta for the rappels and found all the anchors without much issue. Due to loose rock and the traversing nature of the rappels, they still took quite a while. Hours in the extremely exposed position below the summit started to drain on our energy as most of the rappels had sections of exposed scrambling between them as well. When we finally un-roped on the Dione glacier, we had done 8 rappels from Tantalus summit and made shockingly little distance in the approximately 3 hours it took. Alex assured me that once we got on the Dione glacier it would only be 30 minutes to get to Red Tit col and the Haberl Hut where we would set up our second camp. I looked at the map and was very doubtful, as the section on the Dione glacier looked to be more than a third of the distance for the entire day. Alex started running to give his prediction a bit of a helping hand, but sure enough the glacier was extremely fast to traverse. Soft and low angle enough that crampons weren’t needed, and just slightly downhill for the most part. In just over 30 minutes we had made it to the area around the hut, and I happily conceded defeat to Alex’s prediction. Despite not seeing anyone all day, the hut had people walking by around everywhere. The clouds had cleared, and we started to see panoramic views of the entire region, including a direct view of UBC on the tip of Point Grey sticking out behind the north shore mountains. We set up camp, ate dinner, and prepared for our march down the next day.
The first section towards Lovely Water was quick traversing on glaciers and snow with a bit of scrambling between. This was fast and uneventful, except for a small crevasse we had to jump over (we could’ve traversed under it and back up if it was warranted). Once off the snow, the really annoying terrain started. Loose steep slopes interspersed with steep meadows where veggie belays were constant. Then the short but intense dive into the tight and small trees, which got to the point where the ground wasn’t visible and we were walking on lower branches while holding higher ones. This section culminated in a traverse across a waterfall where we were quite literally swinging on tree branches like monkey bars. We are quite sure we went too far left and this is not typically mandatory, but never have I had to campus bushwhack. Right after this we got back on track and started scrambling down until reaching relative flatness and beginning to hike again once more. The hike past this section is uneventful, great views of the cirque, and just above lambda lake an actual trail materializes. The slog down past lake lovely water was not difficult but there is a lot of elevation to lose, and at this point I certainly just wanted to get this whole thing over with. After brutalizing our knees, we reached the valley bottom near the Squamish River. I spotted a single frog and stopped to look at it. The others seemed uninterested. I started to spot more and more until the entire ground was moving. This is when Alex and Erik took notice as we tried to avoid stepping on the thousands of frogs hopping around on the trail for the last kilometer or so. If anybody knows why there are so many, I would be interested to know. After reaching the river we conducted an interesting and physically demanding method of crossing the river and appeared on the other side in less than an hour.
Overall, this was a great trip that went a little too smoothly for an award-winning trip report, but that’s certainly a good trade-off to make. I’m glad to have not encountered many of the issues that often present themselves in VOC Tantalus Traverse reports, and I hope this is a reminder that it is by no means a mandatory epic.
Sunset by the Haberl Hut