Mt Whymper from the parking at Stanley Glacier
July 25th 2019
Mt Whymper is the mountain directly across from Stanley Glacier parking on Hwy 93 S. Start from the parking but walk back east towards Castle Mountain turn off. The Gaia route shows going up the first avi chute but you would then have to cross over to the center one. So walk past that cairn and start as shown on photo. Most of the blogs on this hike are confusing !!! Spirko found a chimney. No one else mentions it and we never saw it. Others talk of turning left to early. Then talk about traversing across on a ledge. Don’t do any of that just keep going up the center gully until you see and pass the chock block. I don’t think we went much further before we saw the edge of the ridge and turned left at the snow patch see photo. The rest of the way is obvious. Now coming down we went into the big cirque south and west. NOT shown on GPS track it stopped working UGGG. Anyway it may be best to go to the COl we did not and the going was not good. Once in the big Cirque it is easy going until the drainage drops away and you need to turn left into the burnt trees and bushwhack across and down until you see the clearings in Photo. We split up and both ways took the same time. Question? Which way to come down. I don’t know it would have been hard down climbing the way up but a lot less frustrating than the loop around.
Avi Gully starts here not the one before with cairn
Mt Whymper approx route
Starting the hands on climb
The big slab steps
In the gully looking at Stanley Glacier
Keep heading up the gully
J.R. scrambling up
The first sign of the Chock Block
Go past the chock block
Don’t go this way
This is the place to turn left. It would be nice to have snow all the time to make it obvious
Popping up onto the Ridge Summit in the back ground
Start of the summit ridge
At last you can see your destination 15 mins away
The Goodsirs in cloud from the summit
Vermilion Creek fore ground ,Numa Mountain and one must be Mount Verendrye
Stanley and Ball all over 3000 m
Boom Mt with Castle looking good behind
Coming down the South West side from the Ridge
More S.W descent
Heading down there got in a bit of bum glissading on the snow patches
Big Cirque
Paintbrush with blackened trees
Bushwhacking across because drainage narrow and steep
After a lot of bad language we see the Stanley Glacier parking. Route out choices
NO TRACK BACK. UP ONLY
No GPS Track down so need to double km to 7 to 8 Time was about 6 hrs.
[recaptcha_form]
Recent Comments