Whitehorse mountain, May 22nd, 1999

 

Cormac, Chris, Jesse, Derek and I left Seattle shortly after 3am, and reached the trailhead at around 4:30am, our early start prompted by the frightening snow conditions the weather forecast implied. This was the first real sunny day since several feet of snow the week before, and by far the hottest day so far this spring, with freezing levels predicted to rise to 12000ft. Avalanche-o-rama! Friends of ours had attempted the mountain a week before in a whiteout, trudging through sopping wet fresh snow, and had almost been nailed by an avalanche below Lone Tree Pass.

Whitehorse is only 6800ft high, but it rises spectacularly over 6000ft from the town of Darrington, a couple of miles away. The trailhead is at 800ft.

After the usual trailhead gear discussions ("Are you taking your crampons?" "We're not going to need them" "What if we do, and you don't have them?" "I always bring too much gear and never need it" "Who's carrying the rope?" "How serious is the glacier? Do we need the rope?"), we hit the trail at 5am.

Early morning start.

 

A hour later we had reached mostly open slopes, and lots of snow, still fairly easy to walk on. We hiked up to the basin below Lone Tree Pass, which looked to be only a thousand feet higher. Figuring Chris's and Jesse's altimeters must be off, we headed up, expecting to be up at the pass in a half hour or so.

Jesse also had realized he had forgotten his sunglasses. Oops. He hiked with his eyes closed, and we tried to keep to the shade as much as possible. Eventually, he improvised sunglasses with a bandana.

 

Our first good view of Whitehorse, somewhere well below Lone Tree Pass. You're looking at the Snow Gulch. The pointy thing, unfortunately, is not the summit.

"Hi. My name is Jesse, and I like to climb mountains. Have you seen my sunglasses? How about my ice axe?"

Cormac, upon reaching Whitehorse nirvana:

Starting the seemingly-short hike up to Lone Tree Pass, through the previous week's avalanche debris and broken trees.

 

An hour and a half later, we were finally getting close to the top of the pass. The distance was deceptive, but the going was also made really slow by the horrible snow conditions. 2 inches of breakable crust on top of a foot and a half of slush. You'd punch in almost to your knees at every step, and then have to pull your foot out through the crust, before taking the next step. We improvised several new techniques to ascend the snow, such as crawling on all fours to avoid breaking through the crust, and using the flat side of the ice axe as a 3rd/5th leg. Near the top, in the shade, the crust was firmer, and some of us could gingerly walk on top of the crust if we kept our boots absolutely flat against the snow.

 

Approaching Lone Tree Pass. Mt. Baker way off in the distance.

 

Once at the pass, and no longer making good time, we kind of realized our summit chances were getting slimmer. Nonetheless, we traversed along the ridge for a bit, and dropped down a broad forest gully towards a little lake, in preparation for a long traverse over to a long broad gully that would take us up onto the glacier.

Chris, probing the slush depth.

 

A view from somewhere along the ridge south of LTP. Three Fingers is in the background on the left. Mt. Bullon is closer in, on the right. Pretty evil-looking for 6000ft mountains.

 

Deep slush slowed our progress. Every once in a while, we'd encounter a section of snow out in the open, still in the shade, that we could walk on top of, but mostly it was punch through up to your knees. We pretty much new at this point that we'd have to bail on the summit attempt. At least we would go as far as was safe, hopefully to the base of the next gully, to scope it out. However, the route ahead looked like it took us through some avalanche terrain, and things were getting softer and softer. We heard, but didn't see, a few large avalanches coming roaring down off in the distance, and we saw a small ice fall on Mt. Bullon.

 

Our turn-around point. The gully heads to the left, up to High Pass, onto the glacier.

 

We began heading back, and encountered the first of four other parties we would see. They seemed remarkably unconcerned about the avalanche danger, and said they were going to try to summit today. At this point, it was almost noon, and they were probably only slightly more than half way there.

A view of Snow Gulch, and the So-Bahli-Ahli glacier.

 

A view of the cornice our friends unwittingly climbed the previous weekend in a whiteout. You can just barely see their tracks below the arrow.

It's Bandanaman!

 

Once back at Lone Tree Pass, we scoped out the safest route down through the bowl. Fresh debris had come down an covered tracks from this morning, and on our descent, there was almost continuous snow sloughing from one of the gullies still receiving sunlight. Every once in a while, the snow flow would increase, and shoot out over the cliff band like a waterfall.

 I was first down, and I started a small slough on a short steep section. I didn't think much of it, until a minute later, when I came into view of a gully lower down, and my little slough was now probably a few tons of snow sliding down the gully. Yikes! We started small slides to scour out sections of our descent, to be extra safe, and eventually made it to flat, safe ground. The first party we met caught up to us at this point. They had turned around exactly where we did. They had also retrieved Jesse's ice axe, which had fallen off his pack on the way down.

The descent from Lone Tree Pass.