The Spearhead Traverse had been on my ‘to do’ list for a while. It's a neat traverse that connects Whistler Mountain to Blackcomb Mountain via 34km of alpine touring with around 1900m of elevation gain along a giant horseshoe. So instead of the 15 minutes it takes via the Peak-2-Peak gondola, you can spend 1-4 days doing the same thing on foot.

I’m a VOCer (the VOC is UBC’s Varsity Outdoor Club, and produces some of my favourite lunatic mountaineers) even though I haven't been a student at UBC for years. The VOC is like a family (cult?) – you don’t leave the VOC – you just move away. And I drank the VOC Kool-Aid DEEP. I was the newsletter editor, then President, then the manager of their hut system – the largest in the Sea to Sky corridor. With the VOC instilled in my blood I’m always keen for a classic VOC objective. The Spearhead Traverse was established by a legendary member named Karl Ricker and some friends before Whistler resort even existed. It took something like eight years to sort out the route. Having done the traverse, I’m not the least bit surprised.

If you’re interested in doing the Spearhead – go get John Baldwin’s (another VOCer) map – it’s phenomenal.

Vancouver was home to me for years and while I’ve done the nearby, similar length Garibaldi Neve Traverse more times than I can count, I’d never done the Spearhead. The main reason I never did it was really just cost – the traverse generally involves using the lifts on Blackcomb Mountains to gain about 1600m of elevation right off the bat and the cost of a backcountry access pass – good for a single bump up the mountain – is a vaguely unreasonable $58 and since the aforementioned Garibaldi Neve Traverse is free, just one drainage over and doesn’t involve having to deal with the giant mess that is Whistler, I tended to always find myself there instead.

There’s a problem though. A coalition of groups including ACC Vancouver, ACC Whistler, BCMC and some memorial hut groups are trying to install a series of three huts on the Spearhead. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a strong believer that the world needs more backcountry huts (desperately) – but adding giant, swanky huts (and the proposed huts are both huge and likely to be ACC style expensive compared with the 0-$10 of most coastal huts) would completely change the feeling and spirit of the Spearhead.

Given the popularity of the area as-is, my personal wish would be to see outhouses installed at the logical camp sites to minimize wilderness contamination, but no huts. There’s lots and lots of other places that would be better served by more huts (The Duffy, Callaghan, etc), but I why plenty of people that are keen to see this project go forward. Providing a Wapta-like experience of a series of comfortable, tightly spaced huts would provide an experience not currently found on the coast. Regardless, with a huge change to the Traverse coming, I wanted to get it done before the huts change the flavour.

This past East-Long-Weekend-Friday, Christine and I found ourselves at the base of Whistler, surrounded by chaos, trying to figure out where to buy our single bump passes. Turns out you can only get them from Guest Services, not a regular ticket kiosk, they require photo ID, they demand to see your avi gear and skins and they basically act like you’re being a hugely unreasonable inconvenience. Now, I know what you’re thinking – ‘Phil, you are a hugely unreasonable inconvenience’ – but remember, I had Christine with me and she’s an actually nice person and even she was nearly flipping out by the end of the couple of hours it took to navigate the byzantine bureaucracy.