From Sea to Sky to Sea

The region between Squamish, BC, and Whistler is known as the “Sea to Sky”. Perhaps nowhere captures this juxtaposition better than the Tantalus Range. The Tantalus sits just outside Squamish, rising from sea level to over 8,000 ft, with serrated peaks and tumbling glaciers. The Tantalus Traverse is a famous route that traverses the range from north to south, over the highest peak, Mount Tantalus.

After the Pickets, I have been taking it pretty easy this summer. But Anthony, Wyatt, and I wanted to get on the Tantalus later that summer. Slowly, friends got added (too many friends is a good problem to have) and we got to a group of 6. On such an alpine traverse, it did not seem like there was a good place for 6 people to sleep together, so we would have to go for a single day push. Although people have completed the route in under 8 hours, I also know national skimo team caliber athletes who have gotten benighted. Although we were all capable and experienced, we knew that moving in such a large group would count against us, both in the technical sections and the infamous river crossing.

At the southern end of the traverse, one must cross the Squamish river, which is hundreds of feet wide. Depending on who you ask, there are a few valid ways to cross the river:

• Hire a boat to take you across. But you have to know the guy’s phone number, and he only operates at certain hours. Locals favor this option, but I’m not sure how you get the guy’s contact.
• Boat Shuttle. With either a canoe, kayak, or stand up paddle board.
  • If you shuttle directly across: the river moves ~4mph, so you have to be a pretty strong paddler. You also need multiple paddle boards / kayaks and time to set up the shuttle the day before. Additionally, the river is one mile from the road, so the portage distance is not insignificant.
  • Locals says the best style is to actually put in upstream where the road is next to the river. Float down with two boats, then leave one at the finish point. Float into Squamish in the remaining vessel. Then, once you finish, you can float straight into downtown Squamish.
  • Floating down a river you don’t know in the dark could be a little scary.
• Tyrolean Traverse the cables. There are two vertically aligned cables about 30 ft above the river. They are used to measure river flows. One can climb the towers, clip into the lower cable with giant carabiners, and pull themselves across. But the cable sags in the middle and people report that this is exhausting. NOTE: using the cables is technically trespassing, but people have done this for decades.
• Walk the cables. One can walk on the bottom cable and clip into the upper cable for protection. Some people say that this is super straightforward, but other people say it is absolutely terrifying.
• Float on a sleeping pad. Believe it or not, people do this also. But since we were going for a day, we would not have a pad. It sounded sketch anyways.

We went back and forth about the different options. Dylan had done the traverse before and walked the cables. He convinced us it would be okay. Regardless, we did not have time to get up the night before to set up a SUP or kayak shuttle, since we were working the day before. We also did not really have enough vessels.

We met at the Sigurd (starting) trailhead late Friday night. Since we only had two vehicles, we did an unconventional car shuttle. Logan, Wyatt, Dylan, and Liz started up the Sigurd trail early Saturday morning while Anthony and I drove to the finish, dropped a car, and then drove back to the start.

The Sigurd trail is rugged and rough – a true “BC trail”. It was incredibly hot and muggy starting at sea level, but cooled off nicely as we got further up Sigurd Creek. Before the creek crossing, we ran into Dylan coming the other direction. He had puked and decided to turn around. This was a real bummer, not just for him, but for everyone. Dylan was the only one who had done the traverse before, and we were depending on his experience for the complicated descent off of Tantalus. But he started to feel better when he reached us, so he turned around again and continued up.

A few minutes after the creek crossing, I saw Anthony and Dylan break into a job uphill. “Bees!” Before I could even think, I felt stings in both my legs. As I learned last year in the Teenyway 50k, I can get pretty strong local allergic and even systemic allergic reactions from wasp stings. I took Benadryl almost immediately, but I quickly felt cramping inching up my legs.

We entered the alpine around 4k, impressively low. I dragged behind the rest of the group, trying to not incite the reaction. I knew it was going to be a long day with two swollen legs.

We clambered up through boulder fields, slabs, and eventually onto snow slopes beneath Pelion. Starting at just 200 ft above sea level, our first climb was about 7000 ft in gain!

As we rounded the corner of Pelion, we got our first expansive views of Mount Tantalus, the centerpiece of the range. It looked huge, distant, and incredibly alpine. Inspiring!

Down at the Pelion-Tantalus col, Tantalus feels a long ways away. This traverse is unique because it covers vast distances but also has highly technical sections.

Although we had a poor snowpack and it was early August, we still had mostly sufficient snow coverage. There was a brief section of blue ice as we traversed the north side of the Rumbling Glacier beneath the long north ridge of Tantalus. With a little chopping steps, we managed it in aluminum crampons. As we transitioned to rock, Dylan realized he had left his climbing gear at the last break spot, so he turned around. Ultimately, he did not even fall behind because we had to climb over the loose col very carefully, often one by one.

We crossed onto the west side of the ridge, taking snow to bypass a large section of the north ridge. Later in the season, you cannot take this bypass. Instead, you have to scramble much more ridge, which is probably slower. We had an old bootpack in the snow, so that made it even quicker.

Eventually, the snow ran out, and it was time to get on the ridge proper. The scrambling starts out pretty mellow, but the position is incredible. Glaciers flank both sides and the valleys drop away 8,000 ft below.

The Rumbling Glacier to the east is massive, with giant crevasses and even some nunataks sticking up through the ice. Tantalus reminds me a bit of Forbidden, and the Rumbling Glacier reminds me of the Boston Glacier.

Eventually the ridge started to ramp up. We climbed to a high point, and had to backtrack to get down to snow. There were a few snow / rock transitions, but I imagine there are many more earlier in the season.

The scrambling kept getting more and more intense until we were pulling exposed low fifth moves en route to the false summit. From there, we had just one short down climb and a surprisingly easy short scramble to the true summit. We had been moving relentlessly, so it was great to finally take a break and soak it in.

It was still the middle of the day, so we knew we that we would avoid getting benighted as long as we didn’t completely screw up the descent. Still, we wouldn’t feel relieved until we were off this mountain.

We split into two groups of three. Dylan, Logan, and I went first. We had four 30m ropes, allowing us to descend separately in two groups. The descent began with a bit of exposed scrambling. There is some great descent beta from the guides. We chose to do the newer, cleaner rappel lines even though they were slightly longer. We had no trouble finding the first bolted rap station, which was around the corner.

The descent is especially complex because there is scrambling, often quite exposed, between each rappel anchor. The route weaves its way back and forth between different sides of the ridge and around blind corners. There are dozens of random rap anchors that are tempting but will lead you astray. It is probably the most complicated descent I have done, but the beta is really good.

It took us five rappels to finally reach the snow. There was a funky moat, but we were able to make a few steep snow steps to get onto the snow. In total, we took 2 hours to complete the descent for a group of six people, which felt pretty efficient. We all breathed a big sigh of relief when we were finally off the mountain! Tantalus is a mountain amongst mountains – there is no easy way up or down that thing.

There was just one last loose gully to descend (some rap here, but we downclimbed), and then we were free! We mobbed down the snow on the south side of Tantalus, eager to move quickly. We also had not encountered running water since well before the north ridge, so we were excited to find water.

We took a break by the hut and chatted with some folks there. Like most people, they took a helicopter in and out of the range. As my body pondered the 7,000 ft remaining in our descent, I understood why.

The descent to Lake Lovely Water is by no means simple. Many people get cliffed out, so we had to traverse far left before cutting back right and down some improbable ledges. It was never hard, but always tedious. I imagine it would be better with more snow.

The trail meanders endlessly through bogs and forests as it winds down to Lake Lovely Water. A bunch of people got stung again, but this time I was fortunate to be in the front of the pack. This section seemed to go on forever, and had a ton of sneaker uphill on a wildly rugged trail for such “flat” terrain. Finally, we popped out at the lake, which had dozens of tents on the other side – surprising for such a hard to access lake.

After a quick swim, we began the long descent to the Squamish River. I got stung again, but my calves were already swollen like bricks, so it did not really make a difference. While slightly better than the Sigurd Trail, this trail behaved like a lost hiker, descending straight down the drainage until it cliffed out, and then climbing sideways through brush to the next drainage, before repeating itself over and over. BC trails are simply built different. Down we went, all the way to sea level.

We arrived at the river around 10 PM and walked down river to the cable crossing. Liz was already heading across. We listened to her exclaim “My feet aren’t touching anymore!” but eventually she made it across.

Anthony and Dylan struggled across, developing a strategy where one would weight the upper cable while the other moved. It was difficult to track their progress, as all we could see were a few headlamps in the distance. The sound of the biners sliding echoed through the cables like blasters from Star Wars.

I was pretty determined to have a quicker crossing, so I tried to go solo. But as I got partway across the river and the lower cable sagged, I found the lower and upper cable oscillating perfectly out of phase in some sort of resonance. I was fully outstretched, burning my core, unable to make any progress. I had to retreat and regroup.

It seemed to me that the only viable way across was to go in pairs so that one person could dampen the upper line while the other moved. But since Logan and Wyatt were on the other side, we would have to go as a group of three instead, so no one was left alone. This meant more time on the cable.

This is what I found to work best:

• Have two double length slings girth hitched to your harness. Clip them to the upper cable with large locking biners.
• You need two slings because you have to pass these cones on the upper cable. Having two allows you to be clipped into one at all times.
• One person should literally sit down on the lower cable, weighting their slings on the upper cable. This makes it easier for the other person to walk the cable.
• Switch off in blocks to make progress.

We got the flow down, but it was still slow, especially in a group of three. I gave up on my hopes of a speedy crossing. I was hungry, parched, and exhausted. But when I sat down on the cable, turned off my headlamp, and watched the water flowing beneath me, it actually felt kind of peaceful.

“Oh my god, it’s the Northern Lights!” Cried Wyatt.

Here we were, 50 feet above a river, sitting on a steel cable, watching the Northern Lights. Add that to the list of experiences I never expected!

Eventually, we made it to the other side, climbed down the ladder, and crawled through the convenient hole in the barbed wire fence. It had taken us almost 90 minutes to get 6 people across the river. Then we only had a mile walk back to our car.

Tantalus is a mountain amongst mountains, and this day was a day amongst days. The Traverse was an unforgettable adventure, from the wasps to the summit to the cables. More than a traverse, it felt like an alpine climb with a rugged approach and high route on either end. We went from sea to sky to sea – through the heart of the Tantalus.

Notes:

• The traverse was 25 miles and nearly 12k ft gain. It took us 18 hours from car to river (this is what the FKT times you’ll hear quoted are counting) and another 2 hours to get to our car. 20 hrs was the longest single day I’ve ever had in the mountains!
• This Tantalus descent beta is super helpful. Thanks!
• While we managed the cable crossing, it definitely seems like a boat shuttle is the most enjoyable, if you have the means.
• The finish crosses Squamish Nation land, so please be respectful of any no parking or trespassing signs. There were none where we accessed it.
• You need to be solid in exposed scrambling and complicated descents for this route. Nothing was too hard, but it took a lot of mental stamina.
• There seems to be a pretty narrow window for the traverse. Groups turned back earlier in July because of cornices on the ridge. Much later than our timing will result in blue ice on the glaciers. I think we were on the tail end of the window. On this year, that window was probably mid July to early August.
• There were a decent amount of bivy sites along the north ridge before the summit, but none larger than 2 person spots. There also was no running water from the glacier below the north ridge until close to the hut.
• This is much more technical than something like the Ptarmigan Traverse in the US, but much longer and slightly less technical than the more comparable Torment Forbidden Traverse.