x Golden Ears, Edge Peak, Blanshard Needle, Alouette Mountain

July 24, 2026

x Golden Ears, Edge Peak, Blanshard Needle, Alouette Mountain

Golden Ears - 1716M

1002M Prominence

49.36286, -122.50736

July 23, 2026

Edge Peak - 1680M

240M Prominence

49.35639, -122.49787

July 23, 2026

Blanshard Needle - 1550M

170M Prominence

49.34345, -122.50002

July 24, 2026

Alouette Mountain - 1361M

101M Prominence

49.33856, -122.49645

July 24, 2026

The Golden Ears traverse is probably not the easiest way of bagging these four peaks, but it definitely the quickest and probably one of the bushiest. Travel times move to an absolute crawl once you turn off the Golden Ears trail for Edge Peak until you start descending Alouette Mountain. A month ago I read an excellent report in SWBC peakbaggers group by Cameron Ramsey, who completed this traverse in a ridiculous time and this made me want to do the traverse even more. Stella was interested in this traverse as well, and I know she has a bush battle in her, so we made a plan for it the day after completing Baby Munday Peak in Chilliwack. This trip was not really ever going to be any sort of FKT time, and we knew we were going to bivvy at somewhere along the route. We left the car at West Canyon parking and began hiking at a casual 10:15AM start. The main West Canyon trail was closed due to a washout, so we decided to not take it, and rather hike down to the Gold Creek parking and take the Gold creek falls trail on the East side of the river to the bridge. In doing so we probably added a few km's and some added time, but it was not much of a fuss and the creek and falls were lovely to hike by. After crossing the bridge we merged onto the Golden Ears trail and headed up to alder flats. There is not much to be said about this trail all the way up to the tent pads. It is an absolute highway and very eroded. Once at the tent pads there was finally a good water source so we filled up and did a big rehydration break, as there is really no good water source for the rest of the traverse. We then hiked up the rocky alpine, where the trail doesn't really exist anymore up to 1500M and dropped our bags. We did a quick and light out and back of Golden Ears, which is pretty much a hike with maybe a few class 3 moves. The views were awesome from the summit and offered a great view of the summits for the traverse ahead. We ripped back down to our packs, and at that point we managed to find one more small pool of water to have one last drink of water before carrying for the rest of the traverse. There was a feint trail at first but it soon disappeared as we started getting closer to Edge peak. Some short sections of exposed ridge brought us to the fixed lines on the lower part of Edge peak, I opted not to use them and stayed a bit right of them and pulled my way up the scrambly bush. This section of Edge peak was probably one of the steepest on the traverse, but the technical crux of the whole traverse came soon after. An actually quite challenging few moves on solid rock in order to traverse and then climb up along a little ledge. We both thought this was quite tricky. Eventually the terrain mellowed out and we traversed a boulder field to get to more scrambling up to Edge peak's summit. We descended left into a gulley and then climbed up and out of it. Near the top of Edge I had a scary moment when I grabbed a loose block of rock and a toaster oven sized block of rock came crashing down on my arm. We got lucky that I was ok and hanging on well, and Stella was off to the side. We continued the bushy scramble up to the summit of Edge Peak, which had two summits, I tagged the northern one and then we carried on to the broader south one where we stopped for dinner. After dinner we agreed to continue for an hour or two until we found a good bivvy site or it got dark. There is so much micro terrain and scrambling interspersed with bush between Edge peak's summit and Blanshard Needle's summit, I am not sure I have ever moved at such a slow pace and been so defeated by the continuous battle. The real crux comes when you need to start downclimbing the bushy scrambles, which was definitely the theme heading down to the Edge - Blandhard col. After continuing down the ridge proper for a while, a gulley split the ridge in half, a on top of the other side was a slung rock, but the line we would take descended the gulley to the right, aiming for some seasonal snow patches below. The gulley was quite steep in spots, so I got the rope out and set up a quick hand line off of some old tat at the top of the gulley. Near the bottom there was a tree that was also slung, and some more tricky downclimbing below, so I opted to set up the hand line again. Once at the bottom and next to the snow patch I put the rope away and we traversed above the snow patch to re-gain the ridge again, lower down. We then continued our way down the steep bush, with a few more fairly tricky downclimbing sections. Eventually we could see A perfect bivvy site right at the col, and with a few trees around it would be protected from the very harsh winds that had been thumping us from the West for the last hour. We enjoyed the magnificent alpen glow on the surrounding peaks and the sunset over Vancouver, then went to bed. My sleep was not optimal, as I opted to go without a sleeping bag. I ended up still being a bit chilly, even with my legs in my backpack. In the morning the horrendous bugs persisted, so I was eager to get going. We started off by battling one final bush crux of the traverse. We had to go up and over a slightly prominent bump from the col to get to the final ascent of Blanshard. The climb of this bump was quite steep and pretty exposed, and was more scrambly in nature, as it was on the east side. The descent was horrendous tunneling through bush once again, but when we finally started ascending Blanshard the bush seemed to ease off slightly.. The way up Blanshrd trends more on the West side of the ridge that is bushy, the East side is a sheer drop off. The bush got better near the top and eventually was just a steep pull up on blueberry bushes. The final 20 or 30 meters to the summit actually offered some scrambling on actual rock. The clouds had moved in by mid morning, so we pretty soon just began the descent. We descended south towards the fourth peak, Allouette. We downclimbed a bit, then trended left and went past the top of a large bushy gulley feature. We then downclimbed 3rd and fourth class terrain with yet more bush past a series of rappel stations until we had almost reached a plateau where the Alouette trail was visible. About 20 meters of significantly steeper rock led to the ground, so we pulled our the rope and made a single rappel. A quite solid trail then took us to the Blanshard - Alouette col, but then it mysteriously disappeared as we started to ascend Alouette. We found a flagged creek bed and made our way up to the summit of the plateaued peak. The peak was quite uninteresting as expected, but the clouds had passed and we could see the traverse we just completed behind us. From the fourth summit the descent was very straight forward. A hike back down a very established but fairly steep trail took us back down 1200 meters back down to the car at West Canyon trailhead.