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.
This traverse we did in 2004 is no longer feasible to do. In 2010 a huge landslide destroyed several kilometers of logging road and a major bridge crossing the Lillooet River. The road and bridge are required to complete the traverse. The river is much to big to cross without a bridge. The road and bridge will likely never get rebuilt even though they provided access to the well known Meager Hot Springs. The entire area will remain undeveloped because it is the most geologically unstable area in all of Canada and perhaps North America. Numerous large landslides have occurred in recent years. Mount Meager is a dormant volcano which last erupted about 2,500 years ago and may erupt again at any time.
Following is a video and slideshow of the trip. The video is a Google Earth tour of our route.
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