Serratus Mountain

July 15, 2026

Serratus Mountain

Serratus Mountain - 2321M

286M Prominence

49.79304, -123.30190

July 15, 2026

9H Camp to Car, 8H 10M moving

730M Ascent, 2750M descent

17.5KM

On the final day of the Tantalus Traverse we still wanted to bag one more peak while we were in this fairly hard to access area. Serratus was the obvious choice due to it's proximity to the Red Tit col where we had bivvied the night before. Alpha was also an option, but we underestimated the amount of terrain between us and the peak, and the elevation we would have to loose and climb again. Originally we had hoped to climb the "Crosmiques arete", but due to time constraints when Tyler had to be back down in Squamish, and mixed reviews from people we talked to at the hut, we opted to go with a more straight forward route. The two easiest routes on Serratus are the PD West Face Couloir, at a low 5th grade, and the D North Face ice/snow route. The face route looked quite snowy and unenjoyable from a far, so we opted to just do the snow climb on the North Face. I had a GPX file preemptively downloaded for this route, which did come in handy as the face is not exactly a straight shot, and a little bit of traversing is needed at the start. We started by descending 100 meters or so down the glacier to detour around a rocky section. from here the snow gradually started to get steeper until we reached a snow bergshrund. We traversed to the right below it, then made a rocky step to more snow again. At this point we were below the steepest section of snow of the day. Thankfully the snow conditions here were optimal and we could kick excellent steps in the soft snow. Above this steep section the angle eased off again and we followed a wind scoop arete of snow up the face. The rest of the face never exceeded 45 degrees, but was long and entirely a no fall zone, with big drops below. Just below the summit was a fairly short section of scrambling on less than excellent rock, and then a few more snow steps. The summit views might be some of the best I have seen, with unreal views of all the peaks surrounding lake Lovely Water, which we were soon to descend to. With places to be and a time limit we began the descent. I scrambled down as far as I could, then we carefully downclimbed the snow until a little below the bergshrund, where we could finally just hike back down rather than downclimb. We made our way back up to the Red Tit col and packed up our bags and made a swift exit. We traversed snow around the base of Serratus to the Serratus - Ionia col and scrambled up and over the col to a long snow descent. Eventually the snow disappeared as we reached the steep heather slopes. The crux of the descent was navigating the creek to the skier's right of the heather slopes. We crossed over it a few times on the old avi debris and then carried out a descent to plateau with a series of tarns on it. We hiked by the swampy Lambda lake, then down to lake Lovely Water where we finally stopped to have a late lunch. All that was left now was a 1150M descent back down to the Southern terminus on the Squamish river! The descent was steep... Much steeper than the Sigurd creek trail. It was pretty relentless, the area was enjoyable, but we were both pretty done with it and the heat was nearing 30 degrees. Once at the river we planned on doing the cable traverse, we brought gear for it, but it turns out there was a man at the crossing with a boat who was waiting to give someone else a lift. We bartered a deal with him and he gave us the 30 second boat ride across the river for 30 bucks each. It was a major time saver to be honest, we then hiked out to Tyler's truck and called it a trip.