Darling Peak

Darling Peak - 2323M

123M Prominence

49.78694, -122.87918

June 17, 2026

1560M Ascent and descent

18.4KM

8H C2C, 7H 40M moving

I have to be honest I had not heard of Darling peak until I saw a trip report pop up from Steven Song a few weeks ago. I did not add it to my list when I saw the trip report, but i did acknowledge it as interesting. A few weeks after seeing the report Erica asked me if I was interested in heading up that way, and I was a bit reluctant at first, as I really just wanted to climb the prize of that area which is Mamquam Mountain itself. I ended up accepting as I thought it would be more good practice at pitching out some climbing in the alpine, which ended up not being the case. I had camped out on the Mamquam FSR the night before, so we met up at km 6 at 6:30 in the morning, and drove to the Watersprite lake trailhead. The trail started off as the Watersprite trail for the first little bit through the forest, but we soon hit the old logging road and took a left. The trail was quite good, aside from the spring growth, but it was very easily followed. At around 1000M the trail started to follow Paranoid creek, then soon we reached the log crossing. The log crossing went well, and was only slightly wet in the morning. Thankfully there is a handline across the creek too, so it feels much less sketchy than if it were just the log. On the other side of the creek the trail only seemed to get better as we entered some older forests. After the creek was a pretty steep 400-500M grind uphill, where we made up some elevation pretty quickly. Soon after this grind we were already at 1600M and starting to see signs of the alpine and snow. We traversed South East along the same elevation band to Darling Lake. Just before reaching the lake we hopped across some stones and crossed the outflow creek for the lake. From here we continued up the snow to an alpine lake that sat at around 1800M. We then continued the trek up the soft snow to a sort of col between Darling Peak's craggy towers and the rest of the Delusion/Mamquam area. From here we hiked along the outskirts of the Mamquam Icefield and then gained a snowy ridge around 2250M. From the base of this ridge we had a snack, geared up and left behind trekking poles. Darling Peak and the route we would take came in full view at this point, and we were pleasantly surprised with how much snow still remained in the gully. I think this peak is best done when snowiest, in order to minimize the amount of pure choss scrambling. The gully was quite steep, maybe around 45 degrees in the upper half, but the snow was still soft, so we never even bothered to put crampons on, as it only would have made the scramble even more miserable. At the top of the snow we put our axes away and then stayed close together and climbed the few chossy steps to the summit. This is probably one of the loosest peaks I have done yet. I don't think there was a single piece of rock one could claim as "bomber". Everything from the microwave blocks to the smaller stuff was shifting underfoot. We delicately climbed and managed not to trigger and chossalanches, and the summit was thankfully a lot closer than expected. Grey clouds appeared to be moving in quickly from the West, so we didn't do anyhting on the summit but take a few pictures. We quickly decided to downclimb the rock back down to the snow at the top of the couloir rather than rappel. We felt rappelling probably would have either gotten a rope stuck or pulled a bunch of choss down on us when we pulled it, plus the one slung boulder was quite far away from the edge of where we would need to rappel. I downclimbed first, and then Erica came down after me once I was in a sheltered spot. The downclimb honestly felt less sketchy than the climb, and before we knew it we were back down at the bottom of the couloir. I think in good snow conditions it is probably faster to just go straight down the broad snow slope from the base of what I would call the end of the couloir. We had however left our poles along the ridge, so we went back to recuperate them and we just ended up retracing our steps on the way back. The clouds never really moved in, and we probably would have had time to climb Mamquam in the same day, but it wasn't really worth the risk, and the objective was completed. We decided to just head back down to Squamish to go cragging instead. The descent turned out to be quick, and the log crossing was even dry on the way back. It turned out to be a fun and pretty quick day on an interesting peak in a beautiful area that I hope to come back to soon.

The log crossing. Photo Erica Dong

Breaking into the alpine, Delusion peak is the first to be seen

Erica crossing the outflow of Darling lake

Approaching the upper alpine lake

Reflections of Darling Peak and other spires in the upper alpine lake

Delusion Peak

Nearing the snow gulley

Darling Peak. It looks very imposing from the angle we approached it from

Me gazing across at Mamquam Mountain (left), Delusion Peak (Right),
and the Mamquam Icefield in general. Photo Erica Dong

Erica at the base of the snow filled gulley

Climbing the snow gulley

Erica nearing the scramble section

The piles of loose blocks on the scramble

Darling Peak summit. Photo Erica Dong

Descending the scramble. Photo Erica Dong

Erica descending the snow, Darling to the left

Looking back at Darling peak's South face

Returning to Darling lake

Garibaldi massif is so photogenic from every angle and location

Darling Peak route