Trip: Mt. Whitehorse - Whitehorse glacier
Date: 4/14/2012
Trip Report:
This is more of a conditions report than a trip report, considering that we did not make it past the 1st really cliffed out section. We arrived at the trailhead at 5pm Sat, planning to ascend past the slide alder and cliffs and such to camp as high up as we could safely and shave whatever elevation we could off of the next day. Then we were planning on summiting very early the next morning to duck any snow instabilities with the warmer temps.
Road still blocked off as usual, 1.5 mile hike or so to the trailhead. Once at the trailhead, snow gulch can be ascended via snow almost immediately. Lots of snow. I have never seen so much avalanche debris piled up anywhere. It almost looked like a broken up glacier field with toppled over seracs. On some of the bigger pile ups of snow, it must have been at least 30 feet deep or more down to the creek bed. Broken trees snapped like twigs laying everywhere. It was incredible.
Anyway, the snow in the drainage is very deep and staying there for a long time. Hiked through the chunky avalanche debris snow to the first cliff area (1800 ft. or so?) where you are supposed to go left of the little waterfalls. Not bad snow most of the way, even in the late afternoon fairly firm.
None of us had been up this route, and I think with all the snow we might have gone too far up to the base of the cliffs before heading up climbers left. Avalanche debris almost breached the first cliffs, but not quite enough. Tried climbing the remaining rock up past this point but it was very wet, slick, and exposed to dangerous falls. We backtracked to try and climb the steep slide alders out of the drainage, but lost our daylight. Carved out a little camp on the debris field. It looked like no slides had come through this point for at least a week.
Because of our low elevation camp, we missed our opportunity for being on and off the upper slopes before mid morning, so we called it. It does look like most of the bigger, more obvious avalanche zones in upper snow gulch and above on the glacier have gone already. But there was quite a bit of activity on the ridges and cliffs surrounding the basin higher up. Saw a wet slab go down to the rock on the cliffs above the toe of the glacier. Lots of wet, warm snow on the rocks getting shuffled around. Practiced crevasse rescue and other stuff among the debris the next day before heading out.