Elevation Gain: 946m
Distance: 9.91km
Total Time: 4 hours 56 minutes
Date: March 30th, 2025
With a tricky snow pack over the weekend, Calum and I sought good weather and skiing out near the Harrison Lake area. Not the usual stomping grounds for those seeking good ski runs, but Calum was down for some adventure skiing. Our original plan was to ski up Mount Mcnair just south of The Old Settler with a stretch goal of Field Peak.
However, we hit a major snafu on the way in. We were making good progress down Harrison FSR, but some shale sliced through my tire just a kilometer before the Bear Creek FSR turn off. We spent close to an hour and half trying to get the wheel off, but it was completely seized on. I tried everything under the sun, but the wheel simply wouldn’t budge.
We finally resigned to limping the truck back to service where we could coordinate with a tow truck. By some luck while driving back an FSR angel by the name of Tod waved us down and set us up with some tire plugs and repairs. The leak completely held and now we had still had at least half a day to work with. I debated going back to Bear Creek, but thought of the egg on my face if we got yet another flat going back for seconds. In the end we decided on Slollicum Peak as it’s close to town and has cell service.
Slollicum Peak is a heavily logged mountain on the eastern terminus of Harrison Lake and it has a somewhat official trail and recreation area. I’d seen reports on it in the past, but it never particularly excited me. Now in the midst of trying to salvage the day it looked like a promising option. We made the drive up Slollicum Creek FSR and found it in great condition. A few tree planters were busy working at the highest cut block and we parked just after that.
Here we a-framed up and bushwhacked on the wrong side of the creek before re-connecting with the trail. We managed to put skis on at around 1200m and skinned up to the ridge on a few tricky sections of rock hard steep snow. Once on the ridge it was simply bliss. The sun was out, temps were perfect and the views exceeded all expectations.
For our return we skinned back to the southern end of the ridge and then skied almost down to 1100m. The snow was quite variable, but still fun to flail on. I finally resigned to walking when it was taking more time to make a single turn than to walk 10m. We had a short walk through the forest to the road at this point anyways and it was a smooth return to the truck.