Spearhead Traverse - The Old, New, And Future

The Spearhead Traverse is one of the best training grounds in the West Coast.  The first traverse in May 1964, was tackled by a group of students in the Varsity Outdoor Club, and was one of the first extended high alpine ski traverses in the Coast Range.  It's first traverse was done in 9 days, and with no lifts, pure and simple.  Today the traverse is done in hours or days, depending on how much skiing the party wants, and how fast people want to move.

Pure traverses these days are rarely done, as Blackcomb's lifts are usually taken to gain access to the alpine, rather than going valley to valley and peak to peak.  A quick shortcut is usually taken on single day traverses and speed traverses, Singing Pass an escape route from the bottom of Cowboy Ridge, which eliminates multiple uphills to Whistler Peak.  Both multi-day parties and faster day parties do usually skip the last few uphills forgoing the pure and classic finish.
(photo left:  Dave Booth Climbing The Tremor Glacier)
The first traverse in a single day was by done by Brian Finnie, Brian Sheffield, and Graham Underhill in 1984. At the time, this was a visionary speed traverse, which now gets repeated on a regular basis.  Stano Faban skied a cool speed variation starting in the Village and finishing in the Village, also going all the way to the top of Whistler before skiing down, in just 8 hours and 10 minutes!  New variations include Greg Hill's 13 hour 32 minute epic not only doing the traverse from the valley up, but enchaining 11 peaks along the way, and gaining 20, 600 ft of elevation.  Currently, it looks as if Greg has the speed record for the traverse as well, skiing from the Boundary sign on Blackcomb to Whistler Village in 4 hours 1 minute.  The only contender for this record would be Keith Reid, but there is no official time available.

With all these what is there left?  There is always more we can do.  More variations, faster times, and creative enchainments can easily be thought up.  The traverse done from the lifts links together 13 glaciers, almost all above 2100m, and holds about 2000m of elevation gain.  Peaks and steep descents are waiting for new link ups.  In a time where we thought everything has been done, creativity and a new perspectives hide in shadow, where new possibilities of the Spearhead are waiting to be found.  (photo right:  Ty Petrusic on The Overlord Glacier)

Note:
To time your speed on the Spearhead, start your time at the Blackcomb Boundary sign, and stop it in Whistler Village, so there is consistency to these results.