Mt. Garibaldi via Brohm Ridge Attempt
DATE HIKED: 5/2/25
TOTAL MILEAGE: 16 MILES
TOTAL ELEVATION GAIN: 5,700’
This has been the spring of attempting ski tours that have been on my radar for awhile, but for whatever reason were pushed to the back burner while we prioritized other trips. Mt. Garibaldi, just outside of Squamish, was on that list. Its steep NE face is an alluring ski line and the surrounding Coast Mountains make it a beautiful tour.
There are multiple routes skiers and climbers use to get to the summit. In the winter, when snow covers the forest service roads, many people access the mountain via the Rubble Creek Trailhead and Garibaldi Lake. In the spring and summer, when the snow line has crept up the mountainsides and you can drive further up the road, people use Brohm Ridge approach. Note, if you have a snowmobile this is also a feasible route in the winter since you can snowmobile to the Brohm Ridge Chalet and beyond. But, the Brohm Ridge approach comes with a challenge. The road to the trailhead is notoriously rugged and rocky. Based on the gov.bc.ca website, it seemed it was best to take Branch 1 of the Cheekye Forest Service Road. Many trip reports I saw mentioned taking Branch 2, which is not recommended.
Screenshot from gov.bc.ca with the latest road conditions, click the link to see updated status
After all the research was said and done, Alex and I decided we would drive Branch 1 of the Cheekye Forest Service Road as far as we could, park, and then take the Brohm Ridge approach to the summit.
Friday, 5/2 was looking relatively promising for a summit attempt, there was weather forecasted for the afternoon, but we hoped to be off the mountain and back below tree line by then. So, we requested off work and started the drive to the trailhead shortly after work on Thursday evening. The drive took a little longer than expected due to a delay at the border so by the time we turned onto Cheekye FSR it was already dark.
The first mile or so up the road went well, but when we entered the active logging area the road turned incredibly rugged. We were gripped as Alex navigated the Santa Fe up some of the steepest and rockiest roads its ever encountered. And this was the branch they recommend taking? Yikes! I can see why people who took Branch 2 called it a crux. At 10PM, after an adrenaline filled drive, we saw a large snow patch blocking the road and knew we had come to the end of the line. Thankfully, the road was wide just before the snow patch and another car was already pulled off to the side. We pulled in behind them and got ready for the night, but the moment we settled down to sleep, we heard something lumbering around right outside our car door. Knowing we weren’t going to get any sleep if we could hear something walking around, we put in our earplugs to drown out the noises and got a short and fitful night of sleep.
Our alarms sounded at 3AM and we groggily started moving. Whatever animal had been outside our car a few hours prior was gone (or hiding in the forest just out of sight). It was rough to have a third weekend in a row with an alpine start, but the weather forecast for the day necessitated an early departure. First, it was forecasted to be very warm and we wanted to get up and down before the snow got too sloppy and dangerous. Second, a weather front was supposed to sweep in during the afternoon and clouds were expected to roll in around 2PM.
At 3:45AM, we loaded our packs onto our backs and began hiking up the road. We weren’t sure how patchy the snow was going to be so we opted to start in trail runners, but we hadn’t needed to. Just a quarter mile from our car we hit continuous snow and transitioned to skinning.
Travel up the road was luxuriously easy. There was no navigation or route-finding to do, all we needed to do was follow the road and the countless snowmobile tracks that covered it.
After about an hour and a half we made it to the Brohm Ridge Chalet, which is a proper chalet run by the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club. It was quiet and empty when we arrived, but I could imagine it humming with activity in peak season. Even in early May, tracks criss-crossed all over the landscape, evidence of recent snowmobilers brapping around.
Past the chalet, the road continued downhill before climbing uphill again. As we gained the Brohm Ridge, the horizon lightened and we got our first good view of our surroundings and I was blown away. The Tantalus Range to the west demanded our attention with a string of glaciated peaks just starting to glow golden in the morning light. To the east, our objective, Mt. Garibaldi, dominated the horizon. It looked so far away. And it was! We still had about five miles and over 3,000’ to gain to get there.
The snow on the ridge had refrozen under the clear overnight skies, but it wasn’t a solid refreeze. I was happy with our decision to leave early because it seemed the snow would soften quickly in the rising sun.
The Brohm Ridge was much more undulating than I had anticipated, we descended twice only to re-ascend again. I knew that was going to be frustrating on the way back.
The Brohm Pinnacle was another crux of the climb, some people opt to climb or scramble up and over it (depending on how much snow there is), but Alex and I thought it looked easier to descend down and to the left and go around it. So we ripped skins and made our first ski descent of the day, an icy traverse down to a flat-ish area under the pinnacle. There was also a huge old wet loose avalanche debris pile to navigate, the avalanche looked like it had slid during the previous day or two, a stark reminder that the mountains were still shedding.
We transitioned back to skinning and made our way toward the Warren Glacier. I looked up at the summit of Mt. Garibaldi and was taken aback when I saw small clouds forming and whipping off the summit. It was only 8AM, the clouds were forming far ahead of their predicted arrival. Alex and I decided we would assess conditions in thirty minute increments as the day progressed. For the time being, the clouds were still small, but they were the first sign of the incoming weather system and we wanted to keep an eye on them.
At 8:30AM, we made it to the edge of the Warren Glacier. There were a few melted out campsites on the ridge and they looked like a scenic spot to spend a night. The ridge also offered a beautiful view of the NW face of Garibaldi, with bright blue glaciers hanging off the mountainsides and its spines illuminated in the morning sun.
The Warren Glacier crossing was another long downhill traverse. We could have (and should have) taken our skins off there too, but we didn’t realize that until it was too late, so we plodded along. The views along this stretch were by far my favorite of the morning. To the north we could see iconic features like The Table, Black Tusk, and Garibaldi Lake. The northern sky was still pretty empty of clouds, so from that perspective it looked like a lovely bluebird day. However, when we turned our attention back to the summit of Mt. Garibaldi, we saw a growing cloud bank. What once were small wisps had transformed into a wall of clouds.
We continued up the Warren Glacier and crossed onto the North Pitt Glacier. The wind was howling, the clouds were growing, and our motivation was diminishing. We finally had eyes on the remainder of the route. The summit was still ~1,500’ above us and the entire NE face was in the shade. It is a sustained 45-50 degree slope to the summit and we knew if we wanted to ski it (and we did—skiing from the summit was our main goal), we would need ideal conditions. These were not ideal conditions. Between the ominous clouds slowly engulfing the summit and the winds buffeting us, it felt like the mountain was giving us the message that today was not the day for a summit.
Begrudgingly, we made the decision to turn around. So close, yet still so far. We found a flat spot and transitioned to ski mode. The first few turns were actually really good, the snow had softened a bit and was genuinely fun! Unfortunately, our good turns were short-lived as we had to traverse back to the Warren Glacier. We tried to stay high and maintain speed over the glacier to avoid having to transition. We did have to side step quite a bit, but we made it back to the ridge without needing to put skins back on.
We continued our traverse under the Brohm Pinnacle, once again trying to stay as high as possible, but eventually our momentum ran out and we transitioned to skinning to get back up on the ridge.
This continued on the rest of the way back. We side stepped, skate skied, and poled as much as we could, but we couldn’t avoid skinning. We ended up transitioning eight times on the way back.
The ski down the road might have been the most fun of the day. We absolutely cruised and we made it to the end of the snow so quickly that we thought we somehow went the wrong way. Are we really already back?! We were! Just a few hundred yards ahead was our car.
The goal-oriented, objective-motivated part of me is very bummed to not have summited, but the other part of me that just likes to be in the mountains reminds myself that we took a day off work, toured in some of the most beautiful terrain, and saw zero other people out there.
I’m glad that Alex and I attempted Garibaldi, but I’m not sure I’ll come back for it. If I do, it will not be via Brohm Ridge, that’s for sure. One thought that stuck out to me throughout the day was that the Brohm Ridge route seems more suited for an overnight climb than a ski tour. There weren’t many opportunities for fun fall-line skiing, but there was a lot of traversing, side-hilling, and transitioning. When it comes to big ski days in the mountains I’ve learned I want to pick objectives where the main focus is a fun ski line. If we had made it to the summit and got to ski that NE face, I might feel differently because that would be a fun ski line!
