This year the spring skiing is wonderful! There is still an enormous amount of deep snow in the high country, and we have had long periods of beautiful weather. If you are not a fantastic skier, spring corn is forgiving and fun. Friday May 19, 2006, Klaus, I and Nico skied from the High Falls Creek Road to Cypress Peak. We parked when we could see lots of snow on the road, just before the penultimate switchback. We required Klaus' 4x4 Suzuki to cross the waterbars above the main valley beyond High Falls Creek. There is a fine view of Cloudburst Mt. from our carpark.

We left the car about 9:15 AM and were on our skis after about 5 minutes of walking on the road. The car was parked at 1050 meters, and our destination, Cypress Peak is at 2083 meters. The trip is about 7 kilometers each way, so this makes an excellent day's outing.

We stopped at some rocks about 1710 meters meters for lunch.

We could see some of the cornices above us had collapsed, including a chunk about the size of a house. There was a small tarn just above our lunch stop which we had to skirt because there was some open water (but mainly ice). Around the next corner we could see the open slopes leading to the summit of Cypress Peak. We arrived at the base of the summit rocks at 1:30 PM. You can just see the skis at the bottom of the scramble up this rocky ridge.

I am not particularly enjoying the scramble wearing my T2 telemark plastic ski boots.

Tricouni Peak is the next mountain to the south along this divide. Its east face is somewhat forbidding.

The summit of Cypress Peak is a satisfying destination with outstanding views of the Whistler and Squamish River corridors.

The map was produced from GPS data I collected, and is superimposed on the BC Basemap at http://trail.brijn.nu/. This is in the public area of that site. To explore these data yourself, register with the site (it's free). You will be able to use this map interactively, i.e. zoom out to see all of BC, or zoom in to view the individual data points.

You may not have a GPS unit, so why would you want to register? If you allow your cursor to hover over a data point, a popup box will appear that reads the exact time the point was recorded along with the elevation and position. You can easily see how long it takes to cover any section of the trip.