(majestic ambient music)
- In the Spearhead Traverse,
you feel like you're out on this edge of the world,
and you're looking down into, like,
the cracked bottom of the big glaciers.
(majestic ambient music)
- This is real!
- Seeing the Spearhead opened my mind to,
kind of the whole world.
It was like a drug, we just wanted more and more of it.
(majestic ambient music)
- We are constantly changing and adapting.
There's always the next thing to do.
Then it'll evolve into a playground.
(majestic ambient music)
- It's changed a ton,
but do you wanna not bring people out
to these amazing places?
(majestic ambient music)
- Don't blow it, Eric.
Eric, don't blow it.
- This mountain is Decker, that's like, the Overlord
- Fissile's that, beautiful like--
- Yeah, with all those sweet lines.
- We're starting our Spearhead Traverse
First climb, done.
(guitar music)
- The Spearhead Traverse
travels through unbelievable terrain.
It connects the ski resorts of Whistler and Blackcomb.
It's about 34 kilometers,
and 1,700 meters through beautiful mountains
and across glaciers.
But those glaciers and mountains aren't atypical
to the Coast Range.
What's really different about the
Spearhead Traverse is access.
It's located on the periphery of a major ski resort
with lifts that travel high into the alpine,
similar to in the Rockies, the Wapta Traverse,
or if you're in Europe, the Haute Route.
The Spearhead Traverse is our traverse
for the Coast Mountains.
(guitar music)
- The first we heard of anybody trying to do the Traverse
was this gang in 1954.
As far as somewhere around Mount Pattison,
and the weather came in fierce, and they realized
it was bad, so they just bailed
and went straight down the mountainside to Fitzsimmons Creek.
I guess they stayed one or two days at Singing Pass,
and then they bailed down to Cheakamus Lake,
and then up to Black Tusk,
then down to Garibaldi Lake.
And they waxed and waned over how good the skiing was
at Singing Pass.
They thought there was nothing better to be found anywhere.
- Oh, it was just a lot of fun.
We were young then but still in university,
so it was a chance to travel everyday,
camp every night in the snow, and to explore
if it would be some kind of a high level traverse.
We had terrible equipment, leather ski boots
that got wet every day and froze every night.
The first trip we were out for nine days,
planned for ten but it only took nine.
(upbeat music)
- The whole coast mountains, they were unexplored.
Oh, this was just heaven for us,
as recreational mountaineers.
(energetic music)
Every nook and cranny we skied up there.
When we wanted to go further into the mountains,
we had to build an igloo or cave or camp,
so this was the right place to put a hut, you know.
But we couldn't get permit from the Parks.
Actually you know, we decided we wanted to build a hut,
so we built a hut.
We didn't ask questions you know.
- When the Himmelsbach hut was built in 1967,
the intention was to provide a destination
for climbers and skiers in the Garibaldi park area,
and it was really successful in doing that.
But I think what they didn't foresee was that
skiing and ski mountaineering was gonna change.
The peaks that were maybe just climbing peaks
would become ski destinations.
(wind whistling)
- Right now we're on the platform,
I mean, I think we're dreaming
of the north face of Fitzsimmons.
It is the gem of the trip.
Never have time back here, you always just rip around.
The stars haven't aligned yet. Maybe today they will.
(wind whistling)
(soft music)
- In my lifetime, we've always heard of
really good skiers coming from Whistler;
Eric Pehota and Trevor Petersen,
those were kind of the first guys that I had heard of
and they were two of the biggest stars.
- Well The Spearhead
had a pretty big influence on me
as far as my ski career for sure.
You know, it's my backyard right.
That was our daily training ground.
I guess what drew me back into the Spearhead
was a lot of things were getting done around the local area
and you know, natural progression was to go
a little bit deeper.
- I have to admit that we were always
more drawn to the lines that hadn't been done yet,
putting your signature on something was pretty special.
- There was a little competition
between a few guys that were out there skiing,
you had to be on your game to get it first.
Probably the biggest one was
that North Face of Fitzsimmons.
If you're coming from either side
you see it and it's just a gem.
Fitzsimmons was only climbed in 1982,
that's a pretty recent time.
I think me and Trevor skied it in, I'm guessing '87.
- I remember Trevor and Eric,
they came in a couple hours after us.
It was almost dark,
and they had just skied Fitzsimmons.
We were just high-fiving, "no way, yeah, the Gem goes down!"
There were so many classic lines in there,
but Fitz was the glory line for the range.
(majestic ambient music)
Now the Spearhead goes down in the day regularly.
- If you do choose to take more than a day to do it,
it's big terrain, the skiing is incredible.
(majestic ambient music)
- Are you comfortable?
- Yeah!
(wind whistling)
- Honking winds!
(wind whistling)
- The Spearhead Range
is exploding in popularity.
It's become the next step for people which is great.
It's also dangerous
and there's a lot of pitfalls to that.
- When you've got that many people
coming into an area like the Spearhead Traverse,
there are impacts.
The big impact we're seeing to the environment,
is human waste.
- You'll find dozens and dozens of people
during the weekend, and where do they poop, you know?
- There's also huge impacts to the safety
of the visitors.
We're really at a point
where we're loving the Spearhead to death.
- Shovel beacon probe is what we've put forward
as what we need for safety out there,
but there's a lot more to it.
There's decision making skills.
You just look at the climb up Decker.
People often are standing up on top
of cornices while there are people below.
(soft music)
We're modeling this after
something that's already been done.
You go to Chamonix and there's billions of people everywhere
but it gets real really fast, and people die all the time.
- There's no question that the increase of
easy access into that range
is probably gonna bring more accidents and more deaths,
but that's just the price of
the mountains and playing in the mountains.
And it doesn't mean that it has to happen,
you can play in them safely for a long happy lifetime
but, rider beware, you're in the mountains
And anything can happen at any given time.
(upbeat music)
- The Spearhead range is an area that's within
10 kilometers of Whistler village.
There's over two million visits a year.
So you have to make a decision
at some point, you need to get out ahead of that
and manage it.
The only way you can do that is if you start engaging,
you have something there that allows you to manage it.
- So right now there's a project to develop a series
of huts through the Spearhead Traverse.
One to replace the existing Himmelsbach Hut
at Russet lake.
One to be built on a South Shoulder of Mount Macbeth,
and another on the South Ridge of Mount Pattison.
As the Spearhead Huts are developed,
I think we're gonna see a pretty big change.
- To go out there and look at this terrain
not from the perspective of;
"I have this 50 pound pack on my back",
instead, we're gonna look up and be like, "I got 4 days here,
"let's ski that, that, that and that."
(upbeat music)
- The Spearhead huts will kind of contain
the human factor out there.
- We can create a destination
where people then aren't free camping all over meadows,
then got fixed roof shelter than people can get to
and get out of a storm, or high avalanche conditions,
those kinds of things.
(majestic ambient music)
- Look at the size of those packs!
You guys are real ski tourers.
- How's it going buddy?
- Glad you guys made it.
- I was just drinking all the whiskey I brought up for you.
(speaking faintly)
- Two double stages, four burner stations, two burners each--
- I think it's gonna be
the first kind of cohesive chain in this part of the world
that provides this fantastic experience for people.
But manages the impacts to preserve that experience
for future generations and future ski tourers.
(majestic ambient music)
- The only way you create constituents,
in other words, people that care about
the back country, and care about wild places, is if
they have an experience that's meaningful.
Then they understand the value of these places,
and why these environments are critically important
to manage and protect.
- Powder!
- We're talking about an area that already has
thousands of people going back there.
So the idea that somehow you can just put your head
in the sand, and keep it as it is, that's not realistic.
'Cause, what it is now
is not what it's gonna be in 10 years.
- If you're a regular Spearhead user
and you think it sucks
because now there's gonna be even more people
in the Spearhead,
it doesn't take much to get all by yourself here
in the Coast =Mountains.
- It's still the same place, it hasn't changed.
It is just easier to get to.
So it means you can spend more time
doing what you really came there to do.
Ski mountaineer, and be in the mountains
and see that beautiful terrain.
(majestic ambient music)