Blackcomb Peak, The Spearhead

 Blackcomb Peak is a somewhat uninteresting peak in most metrics, but it is well known as being one half of the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort. Realistically Blackcomb peak is sort of a sub summit of The Spearhead, and it does not even break 100M of prominence. Usually I do not care about tagging sub P100 peaks, as I view them as not really peaks, but like the Copilot a week ago, I am counting it due to the fact that I took a technical route on the ascent. The Blackcomb Buttress is a route I had been looking at for a while now, and seemed like yet another good introduction to alpine climbing. In Kevin McLane's Alpine select book, the route goes at "up to 5.7", with the route description being mostly low 5th or below climbing and a short bit of 5.7 near the end. Before arriving at the technical part of the day though, a long approach was required. Molly and I had been wanting to get out on an alpine climb together, so this seemed like a fitting day. We were certainly not willing to spend 180$ for the 7th Heaven gondola ride to take us up to the alpine, so we started in the village of Whistler at 680M, and began the grind up the Little Heartburn trail. There is so many trails, roads, and ski runs all around the lower mountain, so navigating the start was a little bit of a pain in the ass. The Little Burn then became the Big Burn trail, and after yet more hiking and elevation gain, the Big Burn became the Heartburn trail. At 1850M we had finally hiked all the Burn trails and we arrived at the top of the 7th Heaven gondola. We kept following some trails through some patchy snow, and this eventually took us to the edge of Blackcomb Lake, where we could see the climb in front of us. It was still quite a ways away and there was a pretty decently long snow climb that I wasn't really anticipating between us and the base of the climb. The snow climb started off pretty chill, but gradually got a bit steeper, we travelled up and left of a wind swept snow scoop, then around some melted out rocks. At the crux of the steep snow we decided to do some scrambling off to the left to avoid the steepest part of the snow. Back above the scramble we traversed a bit right and soon found ourselves at the bottom of the Blackcomb Buttress. The snow was optimal for climbing and kicking steps was a breeze. A few days prior to leaving for this trip I had read a report from Graham Clarke who had done the central "Black Rib" also on Blackcomb peak. He gave me some good info, but ultimately Molly and I opted to stick to the original plan I had made ages ago and do the Blackcomb Buttress. At the base of the climb was a bit of a ledge, so we took our first real break of the day and then got geared up to climb. the climbing looked blocky and not very steep, so we decided I would lead the simul. I was very happy with the quality of the rock, but the first 3/4 of the route was incredibly chill. I would argue that most of it was even 3rd class scrambling with sections of fourth class. The exposure was not too crazy on the blocky and ledgy rock. After 150 meters of so of rambly "climbing", I noticed the climb was about to get noticeably steeper, so I quickly slung a boulder and belayed Molly up to me in order to get my gear back for the crux. Just before the crux is a bit of a flat area where a few steps down were needed to get to the crux. The crux offered a little bit of fun movement and a few tricky moves, maybe closer to a 5.6 grade.