We arrived in Whistler after 15 hours of bad road conditions, semi trucks in the ditch and slow traffic. Kyle and I were exhausted and opted to take a rest day at my parents house and do some Christmas prep. We had a week and a half ahead of us to ski and spend time with my family and it was nice to have a bit of downtime. By about noon, Kyle was already bored of sitting around and started doing some reading about ice climbing in the area. We had brought all our ice gear in hopes that Shannon Falls would be frozen after all the cold weather that the coast had been getting. Unfortunately it was not in climbing shape. What Kyle did find however, was a flow close to the house that had been successfully climbed in the last few days.
Angela was eager to try ice climbing and was very excited to come along. After driving all of 10 minutes from home to the Cal-Cheak turn-off (7 mins south of Function Junction), we stopped at Whistler Bungee to ask if they knew where the ice was. We could see a route down in the canyon but it looked difficult to access and the staff at the Bungee place seemed skeptical that it was climbable. They also seemed to think that we were a bit nuts to be going ice climbing in the first place. We drove back along the Cal-Cheak road to where we had seen a car parked on our way in. When we arrived, the owners of the vehicle were getting a boost and were able to tell us how to access the climbing. There was a trail entering the forest beside a flat-deck trailer and a mini van that were parked off the side of the road (very buried in snow). The trail made its way up into steeper terrain on the opposite side of the road as the river. We followed the trail for less than 10 minutes before we came across ice. This was the shortest approach ever!
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| Kyle starts up the Cal-Cheak flow |
