Flightseeing the Coast Mountains

June 25 2015

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Fuelled by wine and beer Sharon won a 2 hour flight sightseeing trip at the Canadian Avalanche Association silent auction fundraiser in winter of 2014. The plane holds 3 spots and as Shar doesn’t do well in small planes she passed the 2 other spots on to Trevor and Lisa. Trevor does a whackload of trailwork so I gave him front seat. Calls and emails were made to Rod Nadeau who donated the flight and on June 25 we met at the Squamish airport to take our flight.

While the skies weren’t perfect in retrospect I’m super glad we didn’t delay further as the smoke from multiple fires raging through the province would have made this flight impossible. Our route and description below.

KMZ for our route is here Flightseeing 25-Jun-2015

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Took off at Squamish at 7. Landed back again at 9

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Rod’s Cessna 182

Interior

Only selfie of the day

What a console. This is the higher end Cessna 182

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Squamish – Skypilot group

Squampton from the air. So well planned and so well laid out. Well done Squampton

Squamish Chief

Goat Ridge with Howe Sound on picture right

The Meslillooett Glacier is the closest glacier to Metro Vancouver

Skypilot Group and Habrich on picture left; Goat Ridge in the centre

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Garibaldi and Mamquam

Garibaldi Neve and Opal Cone

Mamquam Icefield

Pitt Drainage looking southeast. Misty Icefield to the background

The Spire group and Spire Couloirs

Table Mountain

Battleship Islands of Garibaldi Lake

This is why it’s called the Barrier. If it goes, buh bye Squampton

Obligatory Black Tusk shot

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Whistler to Pemberton

Weather was over the McBride and Spearheads so Rod beelined the Cessna directly past the northern Spearhead past Wedge – Hibachi and to the Pemberton Valley

Shudder Glacier. Tremor peeks out just under the wingtip

Shudder Glacier

Light over the Pemberton Valley. This looks west as we’re overflying the farms before the Hurley pullout

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Meager Group and the Bridge – Lillooet

Looking S down Capricorn Creek to the Devastation Glacier. Too bad about the cloud. No views of Overseer or the terrain around the Harrison Hut. Couldn’t see into Athelstan or the Pebble area on the other side of the valley also due to cloud

Slight detour to overfly Mt Meager

Big scars on Meager where the slide released. It overran the valley catchment below and made new kill zones. Debris is fanned out all over the Lillooett River’s drainage.

As we approached the western end of the Lillooett river this looks SW towards the Manatee Glacier. Some awesome ski mountaineering possibilities in there too

Now overflying the Lillooett Glacier this looks back from where we came (SE) towards the Pemberton Valley and the Lillooett River drainage. This is the E end of Silt Lake

This is the W end of Silt Lake and still looking back (SE) at from where we came. The Lillooett Glacier is not small!

The Lillooet Glacier then terminates and we’re now overflying the Bishop Glacier heading NW. Go straight and you’re headed for Bute Inlet. Turn right (N) and you’re headed for Chilko Lake. We turned right

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Stanley Smith Glacier, Ramos and the Tchaikazan

As we round the corner and turn North, the Ring Glacier peeks its head out of the clouds

The massive Stanley Smith Glacier

Dropping over a pass over Ramos there’s an unnamed lake and three glaciers dropping to an alpine lake

Generic awesome glacier ice cave shot

Approximate location

Lots more cloud unfortunately as we flew along the Yohetta – Tchaikazan group heading east. Taseko Lakes peeks out

Mighty Monmouth wreathed in cloud with the Tchaikazan and Hourglass Glacier spilling downvalley

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Sunset pictures

More cloud and the dipping sun plus my general complacency with familiar Chilcotin views made me put away the camera. The rest of the flight was spent heading back to Squampton and playing with light