Butwell Peak (Chancellor Ridge)

I thought I might be done with peaks in the Ottertail area of the Rockies for the year after a horrible bushwhack and ascent of Mount Duchesnay with Devan in mid-September 2025. Apparently my memory and / or tolerance for suffering is diminishing with age, and somehow less than a week later I found myself looking at other peaks in the area. I was browsing my list of peaks and came across an interestingly named peak with no idea of where exactly it was located. “Butwell Peak” was apparently named after Frank Butwell in 1894. Frank was a friend of Samuel Allen’s who dubbed the peak after him. When I realized where exactly the peak was and read Rick Collier’s 2003 beta on it , I was even more intrigued. I’d never really heard of “Chancellor Ridge” before, and realizing where the peak was situated I figured it would have some pretty amazing close-in views of the Goodsir peaks sitting just across the Ice River to the east.

As so often happens with me when getting excited about rarely ascended (or at least reported) peaks, I gloss over the details when planning them. This ensures that I don’t scare myself off of doing it. 😉 Of course, the devil is almost always in the details and in this case I should have done a little more digging into the conditions of the Ice River Trail. After driving to a very quiet (closed?) Hoodoo Creek Campground along the Trans Canada Hwy, I parked at a wooden barrier preventing me from driving any further. At this point I was still expecting a bike approach to Steep Creek, similar to the one Devan and I had a week previous on the Ottertail Trail to Float Creek. It all started out wonderfully. I was all alone on a good road for the first 1.2 kilometers to an open area on the Kicking Horse River. A small sign indicated the Ice River Trail along with the ominous words, “trail not maintained”. Uh oh…

NOTE : There are NO BIKES allowed anywhere on the approach, so don’t bother with them if you go. It’s not really worth it anyway. See this Parks Canada bulletin for details. I just assumed that I could bike the Ice River Trail because Rick did and because I’d just biked the Ottertail Trail (which is allowed BTW).

At first the Ice River Trail was pretty decent. Sure! There was a few trees across it but no big deal compared to trails I’ve biked over the years. Unfortunately, things rapidly deteriorated for the next 1km or so. Soon I was walking the bike and hauling it over multiple fallen trees and then within about 2kms of the parking spot the trail closed in and biking was no longer possible. Uh oh… Apparently my day wasn’t going to be quite as straightforward as planned. Typical, typical for the silly objectives that I gravitate towards. Why can’t I stick to established stuff?! I honestly almost turned around at this point. It’s not even that the trail was THAT bad at this point. It was just that things were already so different than I’d planned in my head and I wasn’t sure I was in the right mood to handle it today. I decided that I’d try for an hour or so and see where I got in that time.

Memories of Duchesnay’s approach flooded back as I begrudgingly propped my bike against a small pine tree and started up the trail ahead. Very quickly things got worse. Of course they did! In hindsight I’m not sure why I was surprised by this turn of events. There was even less recent beta on the Ice River Trail from Hoodoo Creek CG than on Duchesnay. These routes just aren’t done anymore, and there’s good reasons for this. The next hour or so was not what I was expecting or even in the mood for today. The trail deteriorated significantly in places, especially as it passed by a small lake and a swampy area along the Beaverfoot River. I found myself full-on bushwhacking in spots, stepping over fallen trees and plowing through willows and alders. As the road finally gained height out of the river flats, it improved significantly but was still very tight in spots.

The condition of the “trail” was bad enough, but making me more nervous was the incredible amounts of bear scat I was constantly trying not to step in. I haven’t seen this much bear poo in many years — it was shocking how much of it there was. I became pretty paranoid at this point. So there I was, thrashing around in BC bush with bears everywhere in the middle of nowhere and wondering WTF I was doing. It was a low moment. I’ve had many of these over the years — they are quite unavoidable when you pursue the adventures that I do. I kept yelling, made sure my bear spray was accessible and felt for my hunting knife to make sure it was still on my belt. Rick mentions the long gradual hill (he biked it) and also mentions not taking the first branch of Steep Creek. I hiked another 200 paces as recommended 23 years ago and came to a dry outwash leading through reasonably open forest to my left.

As I wandered slowly up the rocky outwash I mused that it’s been a while since I actually found a Rick Collier register on an obscure peak. I love finding these artifacts, especially when it’s been decades since the last ascent but they are getting rarer and rarer to discover. Oftentimes, such as on the Back Lake peaks, the summit cairns are blown apart by lightning and there’s no signs of a register.

Other times there is simply an empty container with no register, such as on Mount Duchesnay. This is always very disappointing. I also mused that Rick did Butwell Peak as a two-day trip, camping far up Steep Creek. I wondered why he did that, especially considering he had a perfectly good bike approach all the way to the creek! Maybe he just wanted to get away from it all for a night. Just as Rick promised, once I finished a short bushwhack (very light compared to Float Creek), I merged into the main creek and the route ahead cleared right up.

Steep Creek was the mood booster on this trip. In a complete opposite reaction to what we experienced in Float Creek a few days previous, Steep Creek was an open rocky drainage with almost no debris for some reason.

After a shallow angle approach I spotted a significant narrowing ahead. Normally this would be where the complications would arise, but the creek continued through a narrow canyon hundreds of feet high on each side without issue. Shortly after this impressive landscape “gate”, I came to the first junction and went left.

After the first junction, Steep Creek kept improving on the fun scale. It also lived up to its name, getting progressively steeper and steeper the further I wandered up it.

If I wasn’t reasonably confident that it was a moderate route I would have been a lot more nervous about the terrain ahead, but instead I simply enjoyed the heck out of it. My day was now vastly improved from the bear shit trail only an hour earlier!

Steep ledges and staircase slab suited my Arc’teryx shoes perfectly as I continued past another junction in the creek — once again going climber’s left.

As Rick had experienced over two decades earlier, all running water seized at this point. I surmised that Rick used the righthand branch here to gain his camp for the night.

As with other peaks in this mountain range on the BC side of the Great Divide, Butwell has a significant amount of elevation gain for a relatively small peak at under 3,000 meters. I was travelling pretty darn quick up the dry creek and the vertical meters were ticking rapidly underfoot. Within about 3.5 hours of leaving the parking lot I had a decision to make.

Rick mentioned a few things in his trip report that made me cautious about the upper route.

“I had one minor summit to traverse around and then a few towers to circumvent as I climbed toward the final 250′ summit block. This block looks rather nasty from a distance and there are a few tricky scramble moves to move left away from the ridge so that one gains easier-angled shale cliff-bands and scree troughs . Zig-zagging up this face eventually brought me to the summit ridge, which I followed for fifty feet to the true summit at 11:15am.”

and

“After mooning about until 12:30pm, I descended the W face, not wanting to risk the acrobatics demanded by my ascent route.”

I had questions. “Tricky scramble moves” and “risking acrobatics on ascent”? And what about “W face”? Upper Butwell Peak doesn’t really have a west face when approaching from the north branches of Steep Creek. It has a few SW gullies but not a west face.

The closest thing I had to a west face was to go straight up rubble and slab terrain above me. This would deposit me on the upper SE ridge under the summit block, potentially leading to the aforementioned “tricky scramble moves”. I could clearly see a huge pinnacle above me and worried about difficulties from the SE side, climbers right of it. On the other hand, terrain to the left side of the pinnacle looked like it might get fierce as well.

Since I was already oriented in the creekbed I decided to keep things simple and proceeded straight up towards the upper SE ridge. I could always descend a few hundred meters if I had to find easier terrain. It didn’t take long to follow slightly looser terrain to the ridge. From there I traversed to a very intimidating summit block, first looking easier and then much harder than expected. Crap! What to do now? I tried several moves but backed off. Finally I found a very similar line to the difficult crux on Elbe Peak earlier in the year.

A very steep crack led up the summit block and after a series of acrobatic moves (!!) up and across several chimneys (I left a ton of cairns to guide me back) I was on the summit of Butwell Peak.

Views from the summit were absolutely stunning over the Ice River valley towards the Goodsir complex to the east. Despite smoky skies, views NE to the Hanbury Glacier and the source of the Ice River were also mesmerizing. Unfortunately views south and west were obscured by haze or I would have had a clear vantage all the way to Rogers Pass and the Bugaboos. Butwell might be smaller than a lot of the surrounding giants but the views from its summit are huge.

As I glanced at the summit cairn I noticed a familiar black PVC tube register sitting on open slopes ready to slide off the mountain. One more winter and I don’t know if it would have been sitting there anymore. It was wrapped in aluminum foil for some reason, but was clearly a Rick Collier artifact. I didn’t want to get too excited just yet, as a similar PVC tube on Duchesnay was empty, but my heart did start beating a little quicker as I opened it and found a Ziploc bag inside! Was this finally going to be it, or would this be another disappointment? The booklet inside was damp despite the protective wrapping, but I could clearly make out Rick’s entry from 22 years ago. And guess what? Yup. No other entries since! YES. FINALLY. There is something inexplicable about being only the 2nd person in over 2 decades to sign an official summit register on a remote peak with wild views. Once again, pushing myself harder and further than I wanted had resulted in a very special moment at 2936 meters above sea level in the Canadian Rockies.

Daylight fades quickly in late September so I reluctantly turned my attention from the wonderful views towards my descent. Terrain that had looked pretty gnarly from the creek far below now looked reasonable.

I decided that just like Rick, rather than reverse those acrobatics on the SE side of the summit block, I would descend a different way. Unlike Rick however, I didn’t think it was the west face, but rather a shallow gully down the SOUTH face under the summit. It wasn’t even really a gully, more of a face / shallow ridge.

Whatever the case, it worked perfectly and should be used for both ascent and descent to keep this a nice SC6 (moderate) scramble. My ascent route was definitely SC7 terrain. I kept following slab and scree right into the creek before continuing back along my approach route.

I can’t believe how much fun Steep Creek was. Honestly, it was the exact opposite of Float Creek in almost every way possible. The dry slabs and steep steps were fast and fun both on ascent and even on the way back down. It’s the kind of terrain that just keeps going on and on. Every time I thought it would get manky, it simply never did. Amazing.

I felt privileged to be the first person in over two decades to bother with this peak, especially with such a fun moderate route. Nearby giants such as Chancellor and Vaux will continue to get much more traffic than this mountain, but I vastly prefer such adventures with little to no modern beta.

Eventually the fun came to an end as I gave my poor knees a break from the firm staircase terrain and the creek began to level out through the short canyon. As I hiked down the creek towards the side junction bushwhack I spotted a pretty big and very black creature coming up towards me. Uh oh. I knew that this was going to happen today! Then I spotted two much smaller bouncing black things following in its footsteps. Uh oh. That wasn’t in the plan at all for today either! The wind was into me at this point and the creek was flowing and noisy. There was no way this bear was going to see, smell or even hear me at this point. There wasn’t much else to do but stand there waving my hands above my head and yelling until they did. So that’s what happened. Thankfully, mama bear was paying attention and spotted or heard me well before we got too close to each other to back off. She stood up and looked carefully before shuffling quickly to the side of the creek bed, her two cubs dashing up a nearby tree. I had to pass the spot — there was no way around it. It was a tight area of the creek too, with steep slopes on either side. I hurriedly but cautiously snuck past, staying as close to the opposite side of the creek as possible clutching my bear spray just in case.

After that bit of “fun”, I continued down to the junction, back through the light bushwhack to the Ice River Trail and from there back to my bike. My senses were hyper alert for more bruins but thankfully the one encounter was all I got today. Phew.

The bike ride was quick and fun and I was happy to see my new Rav4 waiting for me at the end of the road.

Despite a somewhat manky approach on the decommissioned Ice River Trail, I highly recommend Butwell Peak for scramblers who enjoy an obscure peak in a grand setting. The excellent scrambling and hiking up Steep Creek and under the summit more than make up for any doubts you’ll have thrashing around for the first hour or two.