On Sunday, May 2nd, with the weather forecast looking like 60-50% clouds and a high of about 61 in Darrington and maybe around 36 at the summit, we had our hopes up for stable snow conditions, not too much soft snow, and some good views!

Stats

• Started at 2:55 AM, back at 3:55 PM (13hrs car-to-car)

Gear brought

• Trail runners for start
• Boots+crampons for rest
• Ice axe + second ice tool for summit
• Hiking pole
• Two 30m ropes (doing a full 30m rappel is nice, I frankly wouldn’t mind having two 60’s haha)
• Brought two pickets but didn’t use them
• ❌ No snowshoes (don’t think they would have been useful either)

The start

Up until 2,650 feet the trail is basically all snow free, so starting with trail runners is nice! The trail is pretty good too. A few downed trees, but no thorny plants on the trail itself. The first spotty snow started at 2,200 ft. At 2,650 feet, we switched to boots and cut a bit left on the trail to go up the open snow slope rather than staying in the trees. Just before this, we heard a giant avalanche (at 4am). Must have been some snow/ice falling off the really steep cliffs.

To Lone Tree Pass

The snow slopes going up to Lone Tree Pass are pretty good.

We put on crampons midway up, but they were only needed when there weren’t good steps kicked in from previous days (snow was quite firm outside of those).

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Traversing across the back

There were lots of little slides across the back, most probably a week old but it seemed like there were a couple that might have been only a day old. The traverse is a bit steep, but with crampons it went quite securely. The snow was still quite firm.

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After the traversing, you have to ascend ~1,000 ft up to another pass. We were worried about avy conditions as it gets a bit steep, however there were no signs of avalanche in that direct path (since the cliffs shoot down on the sides not directly in the center). So that all felt pretty good.

Once at the top of the final pass, getting over to the base of the steep summit went pretty quickly.

Summit headwall

It’s pretty steep!! We all had an ice axe plus an ice tool, we decided not to belay it, since the runout at least isn’t terrible (you’re going to stop, but it’ll be a kinda long slide).

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The snow was just perfect… with three boot punches in, you had a solid foot. I’m not sure how well a vertical picket would hold though. We made pretty good pace near to the final top, and then we could either traverse right (where some skiiers descended), or go straight over the top (which looked a bit steeper and actually had some ice). I decided to go straight up. It felt like probably 60 degrees at that point, I was definitely glad I had done some ice climbing before! I occasionally found really solid spots of ice that my tool securely placed in, so I knew I could hang on that tool if I had to. It was short, about 5 steps, and then at the top! But I was kind of wishing I was roped.

I set up the rope for Alexis and Gary since it’d be pretty silly if we decided not to do that and someone fell. They both made it up easily though!

Rappelling

Some people choose to downclimb the whole thing, but most choose rappelling. We did a 30m rappel (two 30m ropes), which put us close to where you could comfortably walk down, but we still spent some time downclimbing facing towards the snow. I personally wouldn’t mind being able to do a full 60m rappel, but I hate downclimbing steep snow.

Traverse back

The snow had started to soften quickly! It was about 11:30 AM when we were traversing back, and there was a bit of sliding and slipping on the softening snow.

Descent down

It was ~1 PM by the time we were back at Lone Tree Pass. The snow was getting really soft, sinking in to our knees often, just plowing through the snow going down. You can do some glissading though! The straight downhill makes it fast. And then the trail goes pretty quickly.

Overall impression

Whitehorse is a really beautiful peak. The summit headwall is definitely thrilling and steep. The close-to-8,000 ft elevation gain goes down relatively easily actually, I think because the trip is broken up into distinct segments (and you don’t gain that final close-to-1,000 ft gain till on the way back). I’m not sure I’d do it again (I’m just not a fan of steep snow), but overall it was quite good! And overall, a tolerable amount of steep snow, it’s not like you have to descend 500 feet on really steep snow or anything! It’s a nice small dose and then you’re done!