The Vitals
Date: August 2-5, 2024
Location: Squamish/Whistler, BC
Distance: ~40 km
Time: 4 days
Partners: Brittany, Will, Christian
Resources: Guapo Greg – Alcoholic Traverse
Photos: Brittany
The Summary
We’ve come a long way since August 2016 when we did the Alcoholic Traverse as our first off-trail hike. Since then we’ve done many routes (like the Donjek) and even have some homebrewed alpine traverses to our credit (like the Sockeye Traverse).
A repeat of the Alcoholic Traverse was not our first choice for the August long weekend but a last-minute changeup demanded a trip that was easy to plan but still a worthy destination. Luckily the Alcoholic Traverse stands up to the test of time. It’s still straightforward travel in amazing terrain with views of many familiar peaks.
This time around we left on Friday evening of a long weekend. We dropped a car at the current end of the Roe Creek FSR and then continued to the lower parking lot for Brandywine meadows. The trail to the meadows took about an hour and then we spent another 90 minutes walking up the meadow and up to the ridge south of the summit. It was a humid evening but hiking in the golden hour meant the surrounding peaks were stunning.
Camping on the ridge was a great setting but the bugs were surprisingly fierce. Mosquitos and at least two kinds of biting flies did make it harder to just enjoy the solitude.
In the morning we set off to tag Brandywine, recreate the back cover of Matt Gunn’s Scrambles guidebook (again), and check out a strange shape below us on the glacier that turned out to be an abandoned snowmobile. In summer, the entire route has evidence of its popularity for snowmobiling and cat/heliskiing. Lots of broken bits of machinery and pickets that mark ski zones.
The first main descent after Brandywine had the technical crux of the route with a very short scramble near the bottom of some rock slabs. There was an option for a very steep snow slope or numerous other routes that may be easier.
There were footsteps on a lot of the snow patches and I was very pleased with the route choices these trailblazers had made. We followed their efficient route until we lost it closer to Mt. Fee. We met the likely party later in the day and it sounds like they traveled high on the ridge near Fee while we sidehilled on the steep and loose slopes west of the peak. I didn’t know it was possible to do this but it might be a preferable route to ours.
After a couple hours of travel and rests, we headed up to a low pass south of Fee and dropped down to a lake we saw on the map. It was a popular spot as there was another party already camping there (the group I already mentioned) so we set up a little ways off, talked to one of the group about the route to Cypress Peak, and went for a swim in the surprisingly warm tarn. No quick deep here! We swam around comfortably for a few minutes and got clean.
More bad bugs affected the evening but the views of the peaks and sunset across the Squamish river were a peaceful capper on a very pleasant day.
The bugs were thick again in the morning so Brittany and I started heading up to the chossy, red peak a little SE of our campsite as soon as we were packed. Up on the ridge, the lack of vegetation and a little wind helped to quell the onslaught and we were soon joined by the others.
The first time we did the Alcoholic Traverse we were too slow and inexperienced at navigating to consider any sidetrips, but this time we dropped our bags on this ridge and spent about 4 hours doing a return trip to Cypress and the two small peaks in between (Cypress N1 and the loose, red peak hereby dubbed Mt. Choss Factory).
I had scrambled Cypress many years ago as a day trip and it was another trip down memory lane to repeat it. The optional crux is a great section on solid rock in what is an otherwise easy scramble.
When we did eventually rendezvous with our packs, we had been in the direct sun for a few hours and the group was feeling a bit weary. We had a sit while Brittany demonstrated an incredibly effective sun shade setup with hiking poles and her sarong.
Next item on the to-do list was traverse the ridge over Keg peak and onward to Brew Hut. This starts with a significant descent before climbing to a small tarn and then, eventually, Keg peak itself. This descent is best if you keep following the descending ridge towards the col for as long as possible but we got suckered into descending on the hiker’s left too early and then had to contour on steep terrain that’s hard on the ankles.
At the summit of Keg we finally had a chance to rest in proper shade behind the big boulders on the summit. We had a long sit, during which we were treated to six eagles soaring together overhead and views back to Fee and Brandywine.
From Keg we did the requisite 50 meters of bush-bashing to get back to rockier terrain that leads all the way to Brew Hut. We arrived at the hut after 5:00 and no one was around so we decided we would stay rather than camp at the lakes. No bugs for us tonight!
Another warm swim in the tarns led to dinner and cards in the hut. Two more groups did arrive for a total of nine people but that still leaves plenty of space for sleeping. Brittany was in a particularly giddy mood as she found old hut logbook entries that I had made or her own from our last Alcoholic Traverse. She was also pleased to appear in the latest VOC journal in three colour photographs and in the text (though with the wrong surname). These days, the log book makes it seem that Brew Hut is the premier destination in the sea to sky corridor to do mushrooms.
The last day was a very quick descent of the main Brew access trail back to the car with more kilometers of logging road walking than I remembered but it’s easy travel nonetheless.
This rare repeat of a trip was a real treat. I loved seeing how far we’ve come in our experience which was highlighted by the ease of this trip compared to the first time we did it. I also loved that everyone by now has the right gear and knows how to use it. It’s such a pleasure to see a camp spot spring up in a matter of minutes as four people just get to work. Brittany is already planning our next relapse in 8 years time.
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