Elevation Gain: 1,769m
Distance: 23.71km
Total Time: 10 hours 4 minutes
Date: December 2nd, 2025
The Sky Pilot group is one with a long mountaineering history, at least by Coast Mountain standards. The range was initially known as the Sawtooth or Sawteeth range and both Sky Pilot and Ledge Mountain were referred to as The Sisters. Sky Pilot or “West Sister” was first climbed in 1910 by Basil Darling, Hobart Dowler, Alan Morkill and J. Huggard Grubbe. That’s the same Basil Darling and Alan Morkill who did the first ascent of Tantalus alongside with a J. Davies.
The eponymous Ledge Mountain would see a first ascent just 2 years later by Don Munday, Frank Smith and C. Field where a huge ledge was discovered that would lead to the summit. That same trip also saw to the first ascent of nearby Mount Habrich, then known as “Eagle Head”. Soon after the first ascent, Ledge Mountain lost its initial name of “East Sister” and was referred to by its modern day name from then on after. Sky Pilot similarly shed its “West Sister” moniker by the 1920’s.East of Ledge Mountain lie a group of smaller peaklets: The Ledgeling first climbed by Dick Culbert and Bill Sharpe in 1959 and The Nai (both summits in winter) climbed by Glenn Woodsworth and Arnold Shives in 1960.
The winter climbing history is notable as well. Glenn Woodsworth and Arnold Shives completed the first winter ascent of The Ledgeling in 1960, along with the first winter ascent of Sky Pilot in the same year with Tony Ellis. Glenn and Arnold would go back the next year to climb Ledge Mountain. It’s clear the 1960’s were no doubt a busy era for this area! Ledge Mountain now sees a more regular throng of visitors since the advent of the Sea 2 Sky gondola and the decay of the old Mount Sheer townsite approach. It’s supposed to be a fun, exposed, but not too challenging scramble in the summer time.
I had already climbed nearby Copilot, Sky Pilot and Mount Habrich and I guess at some point was going to visit again for Ledge Mountain. A trip was finally set in motion when Alex started ruminating about winter ascents in the group east of Sky Pilot. Some combination of The Nai and/or Ledge Mountain all looked appealing. This seemed like a great way to come back to the range as I’d never been there in winter time. By some luck Alex returned from a trip to Ontario just as a weather window formed on the coming Tuesday. Avalanche forecasts looked promising and we came up with a plan to e-bike as far as we could down the Shannon Creek FSR and hike the rest.
When Tuesday rolled around we found ourselves a few kilometers short of where we thought we could drive to on the Shannon Creek FSR. The last stretch was very steep and already covered in a veneer of snow. I simply didn’t want to risk it with the truck. No matter though. We had the e-bikes and we intended to make use of them! After unloading and packing we were on our way and reached the gate before the gondola in short order. The snow never got so deep as to inhibit biking and we actually managed to pedal to within 1km of the trail.
Now on foot, we plodded up the remainder of the road and up the thinly covered trail. This was the first winter climb of the year and our bags undoubtedly felt heavier than usual. Thankfully, we didn’t encounter real trail breaking conditions until around 1350m where we slowly broke off from the trail towards Ledge Mountain. As we contoured around the cliffs above we caught our fist glimpse of Ledge Mountain and the eastern group of peaks.
Right away we could see the gunsight couloir was looking thin and likely in mixed conditions for two sections. The other two couloirs directly in our sight appeared even thinner. I had read about a hidden couloir between The Ledgeline and Ledge Mountain and suggested we could check that out. We weren’t 100% sure if it would get us around to Ledge Mountain, but The Ledgeling make for a consolation prize if not.
From the top of the basin we dropped down into the bowl and around the south east side of Ledge Mountain where a perfectly filled in couloir revealed itself. It also proved to be not all that steep as a bonus. We swapped snow shoes for crampons and then wallowed our way up the couloir to the col. Finally peering over the other side we could see it was quite warm and sun affected. However, it was low angle and easy to cross to other side so we hopped down to check it out. The snow felt firm enough over all and it wasn’t deteriorating in a bad way yet. We made the call to continue on and climbed north around too the entrance of the ledge.
A small steep wall blocked access to the ledge and Alex went up first managing to worm a way up through the snow. Unfortunately, there was little supportive snow left for to climb up on after so he set up a belay as a precaution and then I climbed up. Now we both had good views of the ledge ahead. It actually didn’t look too challenging at all with perhaps a handful of narrow exposed sections. Despite that the warm weather had seen chunks of snow slough off the face and steeper parts of the ramp had small runs of snow slip from them. We made the assessment to rope up as an even a small slide would be consequential. I went first and found reasonable pro along the way. Alex took the next lead up some sections of wallowing and finally I took the last lead up a deep steep wall of poorly consolidated snow. Several vege belays on trees and huffing were required to exit out to the top.
Ahead was a clear shot on easy terrain to the summit so I brought Alex up and we wallowed to the top. It’s fair to say we were both exhausted after that much trail breaking. With no wind in sight and a glorious sunny summit we took our time to relax and regain some energy.
After our small rest, we decided to down climb the steep wallowing section unroped and then we would simul climb back with a minimum of two pieces between us. This worked nicely and we finished the ledge in relatively quick time. We got to work building an anchor and rappelled the steep wall back to easy terrain. The sun proved not to have deteriorated the snow too much further and we found no issues returning back to the couloir. One lovely couloir descent back and we were done with all of the difficult terrain.
We reached our bikes just as night settled in and had a pleasant ride with some burning hot brakes towards the end. A fine outing and one that’s probably no harder than Harvey North Ramp if you’re curious.
If you’re curious about more history of the Sky Pilot group, Glenn Woodsworth has done an excellent write up in: https://bcmc.ca/m/docs/view/BCMC-Newsletter-May-2010.