Called in sick, because I still had my cold, then drove up to Darrington and tried Whitehorse. I didn't get all the way to the summit, due to time and conditions, but I got probably an hour from the top. It turns out that Whitehorse Glacier is pretty badly crevassed. It was very cold -- the snow was hard and crusted, and there was probably no danger of falling through a snowbridge, but it seemed wise to avoid risk, since I was up there all alone. A completely clear day, absolutely gorgeous. I took a bunch of photos -- of Baker, Schucksan, and all over Whitehorse.

I parked ¼ mile from the trailhead. The conditions at the trailhead seemed pretty close to how Beckey describes them: follow gravel terraces ¼ mile upstream, then climb up the side to the "old miner's trail."

That was the trial. It took close to 1½ hrs to get past the bushwacking and to the snow. The snow was hard -- so hard that I had to put on my crampons immediately, and still I didn't even sink all the way down on the points. Because it was so hard -- and fairly steep-- my feet were at a fairly steep angle most of the time, and my heels got pretty sore. Also the fronts of my ankles, at the top of the boots. I managed to put a number of holes in the pants from the crampons -- I'm not used to sharp ones.

The crevasses were a surprise. At first, I stepped over what looked like crevasses, but were something more like snow slipping -- they were two or three feet deep with rock below. Later on, though, the were deeper and looked like real crevasses -- it looks like upper Ingraham glacier up at the top of the glacier.

At one point, about 1/3 of the way up, I came across a bunch of crampon tracks, next to a tree. Later on, further up, I didn't see any, and when I was high enough to be making actual footprints, there was nothing that looked like footprints anywhere I could see. That implied to me that perhaps an organized party (a group of Mountaineers, perhaps?) had started up and turned around because it was too dangerous.

The book said to plan on 6 hours to the summit, and that was probably pretty close. I turned around after 4½ hrs, and was probably a good hour from the summit. I got kind of worried about the crevasse danger, and my feet were sore from the boots (no blisters, though!) and I was just kind of tired.

Coming down, I didn't feel comfortable glissading, because the snow was just too hard. I was afraid that I would loose control like that guy on Guye Peak a few weeks ago. In retrospect, had I used my ice axe to keep my speed down, it probably wouldn't have been a problem, but I am home safely and able to reflect on that, which means that I probably made the right decision.

I had considered descending via the Lone Tree Pass route, assuming it looked traveled. I certainly wasn't going to blaze a trail, but it seemed to me that if anyone had been climbing the mountain it would have been via that route, and I could have followed their tracks back. There was no tracks, though, so I took my ascent route.

Anyhow, the decent took about 3½ hours including a good hour slogging through the brush. The sun was still up when I got to the car, but before I got to the Nagels' it was pitch dark, so it was probably wise of me not to push for the summit.

An interesting thing was that at the trailhead is an abandoned mineshaft. It is about 4' wide and 7' tall, and still has the rails in the bottom of it. I didn't go in at all since it the floor was under a few inches of water, and I didn't have a light, but it struck me as something interesting to poke around in.

I became aware in the course of the climb that the miners of the old days around here were pretty tough guys. I wouldn't want to go climbing up that mountainside on a daily basis, even if the trail were cleared out. They crawled all over this area, according to Beckey.