We do almost all of our trips with friends or friends of friends. Our 2004 ski traverse of the Lillooet Icefield was quite different. We put this two week trip on the Alpine Club of Canada – Vancouver Section regular trip schedule. This made the trip open to anyone to join. Our role as trip organizers was to take care of the logistics and make sure anyone who signed up for the trip had the right experience and equipment. We ended up with four other people, none of whom we had done a trip with previously: Doug, Sandra, Scott, and Zamon.
The Lillooet Icefield is a wild, remote place despite being only 180 kilometers from downtown Vancouver. There are several big, interconnected glaciers forming a big sea star (starfish) shape. The icefield is about 30 km east/west and 20 km north/south measured by the longest glacier arms. The central icefield is about 15 km in diameter.
We flew by ski plane to the Tchaikazan Glacier and traversed the icefield north to south. The south end of the actual Lillooet Icefield was about the midpoint of our 100 km trip. From there we crossed several other glaciers and ended the trip by walking out logging roads to where Meager Creek joins the Lillooet River.
We had 10 different campsites and one cache which we placed by ski plane on the flight in.
Following is a video and slideshow of the trip. The video is a Google Earth tour of our route.
Now the photos. If you expand the photo viewer to full page the “Adventures” menu will stop working. This is because of technical issues with the website software. Pick any other menu item and go to that web page. The “Adventures” menu will then work properly.