VOC trips are organized by members like yourself, not professional guides. The trips go into wilderness areas where assistance is unavailable and unexpected events can occur. You could be seriously injured or die. You are responsible for your own actions. Please use caution.
Spearhead in Red (Ski traverse) · Sat. Apr. 26th, 2025 - Mon. Apr. 28th, 2025
Warning: This is a tentative trip : weather/conditions
- Details Page: Where you can see brief trip details (publicly viewable).
- This trip does not have an associated Wiki Page.
- This trip does not have an associated Message Board Thread.
- Signup Page: Where you can signup, bail, edit participation entries, see/email members on the trip, etc.
- Wikitext Page: From where you can cut and paste information formatted for the wiki.
- Printable List Page: Which generates a printable list of participants.
- Edit Page: Where the trip organizer can edit the entry for this trip.
- Mark Going Page: Where the trip organizer can sign members up as "actually going".
- Modify Signups: Where the trip organizer can change signup classes.
Start: Saturday, Apr. 26th, 6:00 am
End: Monday, Apr. 28th, 6:00 pm
Pre-trip meeting: Thursday, Apr. 24th, 6:00 pm
Pre-trip meeting location: Zoom probably
Description:
(The Spearhead traverse is a ski traverse that starts at Blackcomb mountain and ends at Whistler mountain. It is 35km long with ~2000m cumulative elevation gain.)
I had a vision a few years ago to witness a bunch of VOCers wearing red on the spearhead. Mostly because it rhymed, but now because of the surge in Canada pride, it seems only fitting to try to run it again!
This trip is the Spearhead in RED because everyone has to wear red on this trip, whether that involves spray-painting your goretex, or using sheets as a red toga (I personally have a red T-shirt and loose red pants to wear over my other layers). If you think you are capable of doing this traverse, then you should also be capable of appearing red.
I hope to do the traverse in 3 days (2 nights of winter camping) so we can enjoy our time in the backcountry, and possibly ski some noice lines. If the weather window is smaller or conditions are meh, we will condense it to 1 "ultralight" night. Approach will be using the Blackcomb gondola: you can either pay $40 for a backcountry pass, or depending on your thoughts and feelings towards Vail, skin up ~45min.
This trip would be IDEAL for someone with overnight backcountry skiing experience, G1 or equivalent knowledge, and red garments, but may not yet have had the opportunity to use those G1 skills or do a traverse.
Spearhead pic by yours truly from 2022 - notice lack of red:
Posted: 2025-04-10 18:33:16
Last modified: 2025-04-10 18:44:38