Day Trip to Iago Peak

A fun day trip skiing Iago Peak off the Coquihalla Highway.

I spent Friday morning typing away and working on the website in between checking the Highway cam on the Coquihalla summit. The results didn't look promising - the highway looked wet, and the storm outside my window stayed warm.

Nevertheless, our plans were already set and three of us, Bill, Sarah and I drove up from Vancouver to meet Tod and Catherine, two of Bill's friends from Kamloops, for a day trip taken from John Baldwin's new guidebook. We were all fearing the worst - mashed potatoes or breakable crust was what I was expecting. After a quick washroom and muffin break at the Blue Moose, we headed up the highway to the Zopkios rest area on the Coq. The off ramp and parking lot at the rest area was a sea of gravel and mud. Still, we got our skis and boots on and skiied up the mining road towards Ottomite Mountain.

This has been the third time so far that I've headed up into this basin, and so far I've never managed to get the route finding right. The contours in the area are a bit deceptive, and combined with a bit of carelessness in the forest and the fog, once again I led us all off in the wrong direction. This time I broke trail all the way to the summit of Ottomite. "Are you sure you're headed in the right direction?", asked Tod, gently. Two skiiers behind us, a father and son duo who had been blindly following our tracks also had to turn back and reverse directions to get back to their destination. Ah well - no one minds bagging an extra summit - even one so minor that you don't even notice that you're climbing it, right? Right?

The snow, which I had feared from Vancouver would either be glop or breakable crust was actually pretty nice - several centimeters on top of a supportive crust and made for easy trail breaking. Catherine broke trail up to the Iago/Zupjok col before we headed up the ridge to the summit of Iago, where two snowshoers, who had passed us during our detour, were having lunch.

After a brief discussion, we decided that we'd rather do turns than continue on to Great Bear Pk, so we tore of the skins and got two nice runs in 5-10cm of decent fluff - way better than what I had been expecting! After a long traverse on our second run, we put our skins back on to climb to the col before skiing back to the mining road. This time, unlike the last I remembered to stay fairly high while traversing back to the road as by default, the slope wants to trick you down into the drainage west of Ottomite. We got back to the cars just as darkness set in, with the final few hundred meters lit by the lights radiating from the rest area.

I liked this trip quite a lot - easy access, and nice turns on moderate slopes. I'd go back!