Elevation Gain: 1,838m
Distance: 33.27km
Total Time: 7 hours 17 minutes
Date: May 2nd, 2024
Drone Peak is a relatively obscure North Shore summit that’s nestled deep in the Furry Creek area at the headwaters of Downing Creek. It’s located almost two valleys in form the ultra popular Brunswick area and while logging roads run close to its base, a key is required to access these roads. For these reasons, it doesn’t see visitors very often as one must arrange for access from the BCMC or bike/walk ~13km up steep logging roads and then bushwhack from there. All of this came to light while I was scrolling through maps on Bivouac and I was never particularly keen on the long approach. However, I recently acquired an e-mtb and knew this would be the perfect peak to trial it out on. Despite it seeing few ascents, there’s good beta online from Russell Coffin and Simon Chesterton on their respective trips and I knew I wouldn’t have much issue reaching the top.
Andrea was keen to join me and had even rented an e-bike to make it happen. Our plan was to head up the east side of the nearby Sheba Peak and then traverse over to Drone Peak. Time permitting we’d head over to Appian Peak as well.
We arrived at the Britannia Creek/Furry Creek entrance around 7am and started our way up the road. Unfortunately, we hit a snafu only 3km in. Andrea’s rental bike started to leak air in the front tire and just 100m later it was completely flat. Both of us paused on the road to figure out a plan. There was still at least 10km of road left and nowhere close enough time to do that on foot. Andrea still wanted me to go ahead and try out the new bike and in the end she made a huge sacrifice and opted to let me continue on. She’d take my truck back to Squamish and do a run up the chief instead. A little bummed about the early end to our day, I eventually got moving on and we parted ways.
The remaining sections of road were quite steep, but very manageable with the e-bike and I was soon at the end of the activated part of Downing West Main. I thought that would be the start of my walking, but to my surprise, there was a maintained trail beyond the activated part of the road. This bought me another 6-700m of biking before I finally had to lock it up and start on foot.
From this point onward the road grew progressively more overgrown, with not much snow until the very end. I exited the road and into the old cutblock and quickly started post holing in the patches of isorthermal snow. The choice now was between post-holing intermittently or wear snow shoes and walk on dirt patches every 5m. Ultimately the snow shoes won and thankfully the snow cover picked up a few hundred meters later. I made two small creek crossings and then traversed into a forested bowl on the east side of Sheba Peak. This bowl lead me to the ridge line and the col between Sheba Peak and Chanter Peak.
Now, I had to ascend up some typical steep north shore ridge line to gain the summit of Sheba Peak. The snow was deteriorating quickly in the sun and I wasn’t keen on returning this way. I made the call then that I would try to find a route down the north side of Drone Peak where the snow was staying firm in the shade. After climbing for nearly 200m up the sun soaked ridge line, I reached the summit at last. Despite being forested on most sides, it offered amazing views to the east and I was happy to have added it on to the trip.
I was now feeling some time pressure to out pace the deteriorating snow conditions. From the summit, I dropped down the ridge line heading west and then trended south around a minor point at 1250m. The forest was quite steep in this part, but I managed to pick a reasonable line that landed me at the col for Drone. Looking up at the route ahead, the most obvious path up the south east ridge was looking sub optimal. While it was mostly treed, I had some concerns for avalanche danger and most of all deep post holing in isothermal snow.
I made the last minute decision to traverse across the north facing bowl and up the north ridge to avoid the most sun affected snow. There was one short section of steep saturated snow to exit the bowl and then I was on the ridge proper. This proved to be the right call as the snow was still in good shape, albeit with some powder to trail break through. I was gassing out a bit by this point, so took a few pauses along the way, but eventually I reached the summit block on the north east side. I skirted around a few steep rolls and then made it to the top without issue.
Now came time to figure out a way down the typical bluffy north shore terrain. I had spotted what looked like a tame route following Downing Creek, so I reversed my tracks down the north ridge and towards the drainage. I stayed on the left side of Downing Creek until about 1090m where I became cliffed out on all sides. Not wanting to ditch snow shoes or downclimb bluffs, I climbed up ~40m and found a perfect creek crossing. Now on the east side of Downing Creek I found straightforward slopes all the way back into the cut block.
From the cut block I traversed along the 900m contour to reach the road again, but cliffed out for a second time. A deep 20m ravine blocked the way where I thought a tame creek would reside. Again I had to ascend another 40m or so to find a way across and then linked up with the road shortly after. Before long I was back at my bike and on my way down the FSR. Andrea was still on the chief, so after reaching the gate I biked down to Britannia Beach and drank iced coffee and lounged out until she was back. All in a super fun adventure, albeit a bit less fulfilling without Andrea to join along.
Nice bike.