Ah, Whitehorse. The scene of two prior, ill-fated attempts. The first in April of 2018 with Dale resulted in a Jane Fonda “Total Body Workout” bushwhack up the East side of the drainage only to decide that it was far too warm to be safe on the exposed, rollover slopes which had recently shed some huge wet slides, resulting in troughs over 30 feet across. The second two weeks ago when we received more snow than forecast and, after ‘schwacking up the slightly better ridge on the West of the main creek, we bailed due to snow stability at 2,600 feet.
This time had all the stars align. We’d experienced a week of high pressure the week prior, our only snow stability issue was wet slides and the temperatures weren’t supposed to be high, we knew the better bushwhack route, and it was forecast to be a perfect, bluebird day. To get an early start, we drove out on Friday night, arriving at the trailhead alone and crashing in the car. We woke up at 4am and left the car just after 4:30, right after a group of 4 who had arrived in the early morning.
We passed them on the trail and said a quick hello before continuing on in the darkness. The bushwhack went quite well on the way up—really not that bad compared to more unsavory Pacific Northwest ‘schwacks, like getting into the Northern Pickets. At the edge of the forest at about 2,000 feet, we dropped our trail runners and began walking up in our ski boots. We stayed in boots with crampons over the ridge at 2,700 feet and decided it would be most efficient to keep walking all the way until 3,600 feet where the snow became much more soft and it made sense to skin.
Coming up the rollover
The skin was quite pleasant for the most part, except for a few sections of harder wind slab. It felt good to be outside on a breathless, blue-sky day and out of the house. The cirque provided an awesome ambiance, with steep rock walls plastered with rime and a view to the North of Baker and Shuksan. At 5,500 feet, we switched back to boots to go up the rollover headwall, which went quite easily, thanks to an existing boot pack. We decided it wasn’t worth transitioning again before the top and walked up to the summit ridge at 6,700 feet.
The last bit to the summit was a bit steeper than I’d expected at the top, but the runout wasn’t bad in case one were to fall. We each headed up solo with a whippet in one hand and an axe in the other. After a couple body lengths of steep, icier snow, we pulled into the sunshine on the summit just shy of noon. The view was awesome, especially of nearby Three Fingers.
We soaked it in for a few minutes before down climbing, which wasn’t too bad after kicking in steps on the way up, and descending to our skis for lunch. After we descended, the party of four headed up to the top and another party of two was just arriving at the final ridge—I didn’t expect this route to be so popular!
After lunch, we began our ski journey. We encountered breakable wind crust up high, side slipping over the rollover, some decent buttery snow in the middle, and sloppier snow with an icy crust near the bottom. At the very end, we decided it was better to save our knees and just plunge step the last couple hundred feet. With some bourbon to dull our senses a bit, we crashed back down the forest and slide alder to the trail and hoofed it out to the car for right around a 12-hour day. We knew exactly where to go and were pretty fast throughout the day, so it’s unfathomable why the ski tour book expects only 7-9 hours for this. Even with avy debris to skin and no bushwhack, that seems really fast.
Having slain this white wale, I can move on emotionally and look up with a little sense of accomplishment and pride every time I drive through Darrington. Whew.
