Train Glacier Traverse

October 21, 2023

Distance: 20.67km

Elevation gain: 1762 m

GPS: Link (Note: This is not the optimal route up Face Mountain - see https://besthikesbc.ca/train-glacier-traverse/ for the easiest gully)

The Train Glacier Traverse crosses five mountains surrounding the popular Semaphore Lakes, around an  hour north of Pemberton. It’s a somewhat popular route, mostly because of the incredible glacier views, and partly because of the scrambling and routefinding opportunities. The most technical parts are all on the eastern side of the traverse, so it’s usually done clockwise to get that out of the way. Normally the route is snowed in by mid-October, but enough snow had melted this weekend to make it passable. 

The nearby Railroad Pass is an official name, named because it was considered as a route for a railroad (never built). Many nearby features have unofficial names based on this theme - Train Glacier, Locomotive Mountain, Semaphore Lakes - providing opportunities for silly photos.

The Semaphore Lakes trailhead is accessed from the Hurley Forest Service Road (see https://isurvivedthehurley.com/ for updates). The road can get pretty rough at times but when I went it wasn’t too bad. I car camped at the Grouty Peak trailhead (someone else was at Semaphore) and started hiking to the lakes at sunrise. I see why Semaphore Lakes are so popular in the summer: the trail reaches the alpine in only 2km, giving good views of mountains and waterfalls. Because it was so late in the season, I only saw one other group on Locomotive Mountain. 

Past the lakes the route got harder to follow. The cairns on Face were helpful and a trail is forming in places. After traversing under the cliffs I went up to the ridge through a large gully that looked promising at first, but became quite sketchy and icy near the top. Apparently another gully to the NW (the Matt Gunn route) is much easier. Past the gully, an easy but snowy ridge walk took me to the summit.

As said in other trip reports, the descent from Face looked pretty scary, but several ramps made it much easier than it looks. The short Class 3 section - the crux if avoiding that gully - was a bit snowy but still very doable. At one point the route briefly crosses the glacier, but not for very long, and there were no crevasses. Soon I found myself on the summit of Faceless Mountain.

Past that it was (mostly) a nice ridge walk along boulders and snow over Caboose Peak and Tender Mountain to Locomotive. Caboose and Tender are really just subpeaks of Locomotive. Microspikes were helpful. The weather was much better than predicted and the views were excellent.

At first, the route down from Locomotive resembled a trail, but it quickly became a confusing mess with random cairns everywhere. I dropped off the ridge to a very muddy glacial lake below Locomotive, then followed the creek. At about 1820m I cut across the valley and found a very pleasant tarn with good views. From there a faint trail follows another creek then joins the main Semaphore-Locomotive route. This descent seems a lot nicer than the endless ridge described in other reports.

Made it back to the car just before sunset. Apparently there’s a bear in the area but luckily I didn’t see it.