[TR] Winchester Mountain & Tomyhoi Peak- West Flank and Standard Route 3/21/2004

[JoshK]

Climb: Winchester Mountain & Tomyhoi Peak-West Flank and Standard Route

 

Date of Climb: 3/21/2004

 

Trip Report:

Did a tour up in the Yellow Aster Butte area this weekend. I started up Twin Lakes Road (which is drivable for quite a while but the WSDOT is being a dick about letting people in) and left the road at the summer trailhead for yellow aster butte and tomyhoi lake. I skinned up to Gold Run Pass then started up the "ridge" towards Winchester Moutain. I made camp on a prominant knoll (more like a cliff with one passable side) marked on the topo as 5924. Beautiful night to be out and a comfortable bivy. On the down side I was careless and let my wonderous spaghetti dinner slide down the snow, into a chute and off into oblivion. If anybody is hungry, there is a freez-dried spaghettie meal somewhere at the head of Swamp Creek.

 

IN the morning I skinned and climbed up tot he summit of Winchester mountain, and checked out the lookout while I was there. I couldn't get in and I didn't feel like extracting the snow from around the door. The ski down from Winchester kicked ass beyond belief. Great snow.

 

After packing up camp, I skied back down to Gold Run Pass and started the climb up Yellow Aster Butte. From the top of the Butte I skied down to the "many tarned meadow" a ways south of Tomyhoi. After gaining the very gentle rib ascending to Tomyhoi I dropped all my overnight gear and skinned up.

 

By the time I reached the top of Tomyhoi the lighting had become somewhat flat, but the snow was still decent, if a bit heavy. The ski down was uneventful and pretty fun. I grabbed my gear then skiied down to the road, only having to do about 15 minutes of swearing making my way down through thick ass north cascades forest.

 

The road out sucks balls cause it's literally flat for quite a while. I was looking forward to coasting down, but it wasn't to be. All in all, a very fun tour, I had a great time and the area is gorgeous. The views of the border peaks and the fraser river valley and the peaks up in canada are awesome. That Larabee mountain is also very nice looking, at least with snow on it. And, of course, the views of Shuksan and Baker can't be beat.

 

Hereis a topo map. Climbing/Skiing in red and Descents in yellow. I'll post pics when I get them downloaded.

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3973&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1

 

 

Gear Notes:

Skis, Skins, basic overnight bivy gear.

 

Approach Notes:

It's something like 4 miles to start out on road, but not very bad. If you are willing to piss of the DOT and shovel some of their burm out of the way you could drive up probably 1 1/2 miles of that, and it's all the steep part. Something tells me they dont actually have any jurisdiction over national forest land, so I really dont think they could do much.

 

Snow pack get's consistent at 3k (what a bizzare year) and is quite sizeable from 4 up. The cornices up high are mammoth!

[JoshK]

Turns down from Winchester false summit. You can see the true summit just to the left of the false summit. There was also a real nice run down that.

 

[Dru]

[forrest_m]

josh - cool trip! i love it when you get to just spend a few days exploring new terrain. a couple of years a go, three of us spent the thanksgiving long weekend in the hut on top of winchester peak, there's a ton of great ski terrain in there, the s. flanks of larabee especially. In early season, we were able to drive most of the flat road and the accommodations were great. At that time (don't know if this is still true) one of the b-ham hiking clubs maintained a coleman stove & propane tank up there, so we didn't have to carry tent, stove or pots. (there was an envelope to leave donations, which we did.). No wood stove, though.

 

am i reading correct that you were solo?

[JoshK]

Yup, I was all by my lonesome. It felt like I had the entire range to myself

 

The skiing in that area just looked endless. I could have camped up there for 2 weeks and not even begun to hit everything I wanted to. I wish I had time to go up Larabee but it looked like quite a haul from where I was at. Some of the big drainages coming down from the east of the approach road looked like they would be great skis too.

[Dru]

u can daytrip larrabee from the tamihi road with an early start by contouring under the west face of ABP. however with that approach it is pretty much guaranteed you will be on the SW slopes of Larabee late in the day when the slushiez start sliding.

 

[JoshK]

So Dru, from my camp, I could see the "light pollution" coming from the north. Was this Chilliwack or was I actually seeing the lights from 'couver? I'm not sure how big chilliwack is so I dont know how much light it puts off.

[forrest_m]

I wish I had time to go up Larabee but it looked like quite a haul from where I was at. Some of the big drainages coming down from the east of the approach road looked like they would be great skis too.

 

I don't know why, but from Winchester, Larabee looks like it's really big and really far away - the first time I went up there, I thought for a second that I was looking at Mt. Baker, which was plenty disorienting! But it's not as far as it looks - we were able to ski down into the drainage and then skin up Larabee (not to the top, but as far as you could easily skin) by mid-morning.

[Dru]

chilliwack is a city of 65, 000 people that was us. in fact you can see the summit of tomyhoi from the west end of chilliwack.

 

vancouver lights would have been pretty much straight west of you.

[JoshK]

I wish I had time to go up Larabee but it looked like quite a haul from where I was at. Some of the big drainages coming down from the east of the approach road looked like they would be great skis too.

 

I don't know why, but from Winchester, Larabee looks like it's really big and really far away - the first time I went up there, I thought for a second that I was looking at Mt. Baker, which was plenty disorienting! But it's not as far as it looks - we were able to ski down into the drainage and then skin up Larabee (not to the top, but as far as you could easily skin) by mid-morning.

 

You had the exact same impression as me, which is why I left it for another time. It just looked very large from that vantage. Oh well, that road will be passable in no time and I'll go do winchester and maybe ski down to the lake, that looked fun.