Downton Creek: Ridges, Lakes and Mountains

Preamble:

You would think with the Covid shutdown I would have plenty of time to get my blog up to date, but I don't. I seem to have as many things as ever to do, however, I am slowly plugging through my photos from our "return to Canada trip" in 2019. The latest photos are from a three day trip in the mountainous area around the head of Downton Creek.

Our good friend, fellow mountain traveller and chief engineer of the incomparable Bivouac.com site, Robin T, recommended the area as a few years prior with a group of friends, they had a done a traverse through the area linking one alpine access trail to another and camping in the high alpine among a series of beautiful alpine lakes and tarns.

The kicker for us was that we had a two wheel drive minivan to ease up and down BC's notoriously rough logging roads. If we were able to get about 8 kilometres up Downton Creek FSR we would minimise our road walking and could do a similar trip to Robin's three day adventure.

Saddlebag Lakes and Peak:

We drove up from Vancouver the afternoon before. It is a longish drive, past Squamish and Whistler and up the Duffy Lake Road - scene of much winter ski touring - to a somewhat rickety bridge over Cayoosh Creek which in Australia would be a full blown river but in Canada is a mere rivulet. After a bush camp along the Duffy Lake Road, we started up Downton Creek in the early morning, slowly grinding the minivan up the rough road.

Happily we made it to kilometre nine, which was just a few hundred metres of the track to Saddlebag Lakes. Track is a bit of a stretch for this rough foot pad as, unlike the Holly Lake trail, further up Downton Creek which gets a fair bit of foot traffic, Saddlebag Lakes trail is infrequently travelled and in much poorer condition.

It is important to note that this is not actually a built trail, just a roughly flagged route from which all the flags have long since disappeared. However, by BC standards it is a pretty reasonable access as it does not suffer from kilometre long mud bogs, overly steep and eroded terrain, thick and impenetrable Devils Club or any of the other dozen or more challenges common to other BC access routes.

Basically, the route runs up the south side of a creek that drains Saddlebag Lake starting at 4,500 feet and reaching Saddlebag Lakes at around 7,200 feet. It is not overly steep, but there is a fair bit of crawling over and under fallen trees, a couple of areas of steep scree beside the rushing creek where it is good not to lose balance, and some clambering around avalanche debris. In a number of places we had to remove our packs to crawl under trees so overall, it was pretty slow going.

After about 3 kilometres and a bit over 2,000 feet of gain the trail disappears in an alpine basin. From here you can head west to a small tarn under some peaks, or curve east and then north around a big headwall and scramble up beside Saddlebag Creek to emerge in a gorgeous alpine area near the two large Saddlebag Lakes. This took us about four hours and we spent a bit of time finding a really excellent campsite, although there are literally thousands to choose from.

Our plan was to climb Mount Seton, at just under 9,400 feet, the highest peak in this area and we had a rough route description from Robin which said to scramble up beside a waterfall. Casting about, we saw a waterfall coming down from a peak to our northeast and somehow decided this was Seton Peak. I am not exactly sure why this made sense to us as we had a map and compass, but our mountain navigation was certainly a bit rusty as the peak we picked out as Seton was actually Saddlebag, at just over 9,200 feet, about 150 feet lower than Seton.

These are all unofficial names and, such is the immense number of Canadian mountains, this whole large ridge system covering many square kilometres has no officially named peaks at all. On this northern side of Downton Creek, the peaks are almost entirely loose and rubbly. To the south of Downton Creek the peaks are of firmer granitic type rock and a few have been climbed via technical routes.

In any event, we made camp, brewed up some tea and then packed some emergency gear for our scramble up Saddlebag Peak. In truth, the route looked gruesome. Exceedingly steep and very, very loose. We crossed the egress of Saddlebag Lakes and made some reasonable progress for a couple of hundred feet up firmer talus but then found ourselves grovelling up extremely steep and loose, shattered rubble. After a fair bit of hard scrabble, we traversed into a snow gully and kicked steps up finally coming out on lower angled terrain but still some 700 or 800 feet from the summit.

The last part was merely a grind over shattered rock and after something over an hour we arrived at the summit. There were showers around and it was cold so we put on all our warm gear and rain gear. Looking at the view, we were somewhat perplexed that we were apparently lower than the peak some two kilometres along the ridge to the west although we thought we were on the highest peak.

However, rain and graupel were coming so we hurried down leaving this mystery to ponder later. At the tent it was drizzly and cold. I made dinner and we hunkered down for a night of wind and rain. Puzzling over the map more carefully in the tent we realised we had climbed Saddlebag not Seton.

Skimka Peak and Statimcets Meadow:

We felt really lucky to wake to clear skies and we packed up camp and began our traverse over towards Holly Lake. There are countless ways this could be achieved. Robin's group had traversed over the west side of the ridge system dropping down to tree line again, but we decided to stay higher.

Leaving Saddlebag Lakes we hiked up onto the east ridge of Trilateral Peak and by staying high traversed meadow down to a small tarn. We then walked up a snow gully to a col between Trilateral and Skimka to a narrow windblown ridge. The north ridge of Skimka looked steep and had a remnant cornice at the top but it was not too bad going up to the cornice and Doug kicked some good steps through the vertical snow and we merely had to stroll southeast to reach the summit of Skimka.

We found a somewhat sheltered spot for lunch and enjoyed the view while deciding on our route ahead. Our original plan had been to continue along the ridge but there were many rotten gendarmes along the way that looked nasty to pass so we decided instead to drop down lower angled terrain and turn a prominent easterly ridge around 7,000 feet and then stroll up meadow to find a campsite.

This was mostly straightforward apart from a couple of grovelly steep bits and we found ourselves in an easy and pleasant draw that provided delightful walking up to a series of small tarns under the southeast face of Statimcets.

We spent some time again finding the perfect campsite and then set up camp and made a brew. Doug spent the rest of the day reading in the sun. The views were absolutely stupendous and it would be hard to not enjoy any time spent in this glorious location. I went off wandering and made my way to a bigger tarn on the south side of Fawlty Tower and then looped back to camp under the face of Statimcets. It was a glorious evening, warm and calm, and we sat outside until the mosquitoes made life unpleasant.

Statimcets and Holly Lake Trail:

Statimcets was an easy scramble from the east and we spent a long time on the summit admiring the peaks and the view. The air was clear and we could see all the way to Joffre Peak, very distinguishable by the big scar from the recent major rockfall event. To descend, we walked down the south ridge and got onto a good snow gully which made for an easy and pleasant descent back to camp.

After eating and drinking at camp, we packed up and meandered south down alplands and talus to intersect the Holly Lake trail. A better route would have been to angle south from camp and pick up the top end of the trail as we did have to descend some steep boulders and talus. Holly Lake trail is popular and in good shape and we were soon striding along following a creek downhill to reach the upper end of Downton Creek FSR. We had about a five kilometre walk down the logging road back to our car which was hard on the feet and knees. Finding the minivan with four fully inflated tires was a bonus, and then the slow drive out.