Horseshoe Glacier Exploring

This past week, in honour of Gerald's Thrash & Bash (T&B), four of us decided to explore the area around the Horseshoe Glacier, a smallish icefield not too far from Jumbo Pass, at the south-east end of the Glacier Creek valley.

It's a 2-hour drive up the Lake and up to the end of the Glacier Creek FSR, followed by a short distance past the Jumbo Pass trailhead. Our progress there was stopped by a massive pile of trees, debris from an avalanche sometime during the winter. We made the transition to foot power and spent the next couple of hours making our way up the valley until we found a good campsite in a cirque just below the toe of one tongue of the glacier.

We made two forays up two different pieces of glacier, looking for a route onto the main Horseshoe Glacier Icefield, but nothing we climbed had that direct connection. We had nice views of pretty much everything, including Monica Meadows to the north, Jumbo Pass to the north-east, Hamill Creek and Earl Grey Pass, a trail we had hiked last September.

On our last day, we hiked out via a slightly different route, taking a faint trail along the crest of a lateral moraine. It was easier and faster than the route in, with much less boulder-hopping, but the narrow crest was probably the most dangerous part of the trip in some ways. It was a very deep valley viewed from the crest of the moraine, so we were especially careful as we walked along it.

Pictures of the trip can be seen here.