Little Knuckle

April 04, 2025

Little Knuckle

Little Knuckle - 1635M

75M Prominence

49.938835 -124.147205

April 4, 2025

360M Elevation Gain

4H 1M Vehicle to Vehicle

2 Hours Moving Time (Roughly)

The Little Knuckle is the North most peak of the Knucklehead group and sits approximately 100 meters below it's big brother. The Big Knuckle is the main draw to the area in summer conditions, but the little Knuckle area sees much more traffic in the winter. The slopes surrounding and to the North of North of Beta lake attract many ski tourers in the winter. Today's group goal was to summit the Little Knuckle though, and for me the ski touring was a welcome bonus. Clarke and Karen generously picked me up at 8 AM along with Tyler, and we made our way to the trailhead. The trail often starts for most people at the start of branch E100, where the road begins to get a little rougher, especially with winter conditions. For those lucky enough to hop on a snow machine though, a drive to the end of the branch saves a lot of time. All four of us piled onto the grizzly in a Tetris like manor, and drove all the way to the end of the branch where the trailhead is. The snow was hard in the morning, and my skis wouldn't even make a dent in the surface, climbing my way up to the lake proved to be a struggle in the steeper sections. I was forced to take them off and boot pack a few sections. Once we got a visual on Beta lake, we could see the terrain ahead of us. There are many ways up the Little Knuckle, but today we would chose to hike up "the ramp" as Clarke and Karen called it. I suppose it is probably more defined without snow, but the snow filled in said ramp, and it was really just a traverse across the terrain. It was skiable for the most part, but on the upper third I found myself taking off my skis when the terrain got a bit too icy to retain traction. This spot was also cliffed out underneath, so a slip here could have been very nasty, if not fatal. The terrain mellowed up significantly after this point, and I was able to ski up to the summit for the most part. A few more sections closer to the top were hard to skin up again, so I boot packed those short sections as well. Once on the summit we all enjoyed great views and lunch. Clarke took out his drone to gather footage for his YouTube edit. After a good break on the summit I eyed up my descent line. It was quite different from the way up. I began by traversing down and across the ridge connecting to the big knuckle. I then bombed down the more mellow terrain all the way down to Beta lake, where I awaited the rest of the crew coming down on snowshoes. The skiing was quite good after a few hours of afternoon sun, but the one North facing slope I descended was a sheet of ice, and I bailed a few times. We all reconvened at the lake, then made our way back down to the snow machine. I enjoyed some more turns on the descent. Earlier this year I had been out on a day of complete concrete snow, and did a face slide down the snow in this section Redemption felt good. I kept going down the road as far as I could until the snow ran out. At this point we all re arranged ourselves on the quad and tracked our way back to the truck.

Clarke and Karen's video : Awesome day in the Knuckleheads - Powell River, B.C., Backcountry - YouTube