Tomyhoi Peak - August 5 2024

Border Ranges, Whatcom County, Washington
2266m

For the final day of my Civic Holiday BC Day long weekend, I was looking for something I could do solo (as most of my friends were busy), wasn't too big or complicated, and was south of Squamish due to lightning risk north of home. I still wanted to get some prominence or good scrambling in, so I ended up setting my sights on Tomyhoi, being both a p600, and a purported hard scramble. After securing my permit the night before (make sure to print it out, they want you to do that), I got myself a nice, slow start to the day on Monday.

The drive down was long from Squamish, and I needed a decent bathroom break at the Tim's just before the Sumas border crossing. As it was a long weekend, the border wait was an hour, but I was glad to have Nexus, which cut that down to about 5 minutes 🙂 This is why I tell my friends it's Nexus or I'll meet you in the states 😅 After getting across, it was an easy drive over to the trailhead, including a well-maintained forest road, which aside from a few potholes to navigate around, was benign enough for sedans to make it to the top. I parked in a "probably less commonly used" spot just by the trailhead, geared up, and got started at the super-alpine time of 11:03am 😄

The first kilometre or so weave through the open fields above the parking area, also gaining about 100m in the process. This was pretty warm/sweaty, so while the views were nice right off the bat, I was happy to dip into the forest and get some shade once it was over.

Since the trail was so good, and I was just solo listening to music, I didn't do much in the way of stopping or otherwise not just trying to grind out the distance as efficiently as possible. I hit the fork for the Tomyhoi Lake Trail (interestingly not the one you want for Tomyhoi Peak) on the other side of the forest at about quarter to noon.

After that, there were a couple small treed sections, but the trail largely remained open. This was nice from a views perspective, but less so from a heat/sun exposure one. Another 15 minutes brought me across the small creek that drains off of Yellow Aster Butte. On the other side, I found a small trail to a lookout that I ignored, but someone less on a mission might bother exploring to get some low-effort views.

At about 70 minutes into the trail, I hit the point where you stop going more-or-less directly west, and starting winding your way up the bottom of Yellow Aster Butte until the fork for its summit trail. Here, I could see Keep Kool Butte, the peak whose trail offers a shorter, but unmaintained approach. I chose to use the Yellow Aster Butte approach as the difference wasn't huge, but the quality of the trail made it more likely to offer speedy travel. That assumption seemed to be holding true.

I made the actual fork a bit before 12:30pm, where I was disappointed to note that I was going to have to lose about 70m of elevation down to the lakes where people seemed to be camping before I started heading back uphill towards Tomyhoi. It was nice to get to see the actual main objective of the day, at least.

Since this area is so popular, I decided to just use the generic AllTrails track and use the downloaded beta I had in case anything was weird. This worked fine all the way to this point, but it did navigate rather strangely through the lake portion, so about halfway through I improvised my own route across the largest lake using some protruding rocks. My way back just followed the most used trails, which was slightly more efficient.

By 12:49 (about 1¾ hours in), I reached a plateau at 1800m, where I got some decent views before continuing on, trying to keep my pace up while I was still feeling good.

By the 2-hour mark, I made it to the small high point between 1950 and 2000m, which was guarding yet another meaningful undulation, this time descending 60-80m before going back up... The trail seems easy, and to be fair it largely is, but those undulations get you at the end of the day 😅

The trail finally turned from "perfectly maintained highway" to "only a pretty good trail" in this section, as there were a few steeper steps that motivated some hands for balance, and the ground wasn't just perfectly beaten trail. That being said, it was still mostly that, and travel was still quite easy. In about 25 minutes I found my way across the gap and onto the 2000m bump on the other side.

From there, I pushed for another 15 minutes to pass the lone hiker still heading up (that provided good motivation to keep the pace up), and topped out the final bump before things got scrambly, finally cresting over 2100m.

15 more minutes (it's quite handy how all these stretches just line up with benchmark lengths of time) got me down that small gap and up the final bits of hiking trail. As the trail got higher past this last undulation, it started becoming more of an alpine "path through the rocks" than a soft dirt trail like it was to that point. As it approached the edge of the glacier, I noticed some foot tracks in the snow, but since there was such a nice path beaten into the dirt that went higher, and my AllTrails track also went up, I decided to follow it, even though I'd brought an axe and spikes knowing trip reports had mentioned snow crossings, even later in the year.

Once I was on the ridge, I did a couple easy scramble moves to get further along, until I came to a sharp descent that was not scrambleable directly. Looking down to the south side of the ridge, it seemed hard but doable to descend+regain on the other side of the notch. However, I recalled no beta about it being on that side, or that difficult. On the right, the descent would go down basically to the snow I suspected was the regular route. I decided to wait for the hiker I'd previously passed and see if he wanted a friend for the scramble, and see if his preferences would dictate a way forward for me.

After waiting for about 10-15 minutes (putting me just over the 3 hour mark in the hike), my new friend made his way to the ridge, and made a pretty prompt decision not to continue. Not everyone is a scrambler I guess 🤷

With that I was free to choose whatever route I wanted, but I still chose to descend to the easier route, as I didn't feel like yeeting into the unknown over serious exposure by myself when I knew there was a more effective option to continue. So, I descended some scree to the snow, then crossed a small snow patch towards some slabby rock that led up to the far side of the notch I saw from above.

Once I got onto the rock, I scrambled up some slabby rocks until I hit a ramp going up to climber's left, towards another notch in the ridge (past the one I saw from above). There were a couple class 3 moves, but it was mostly easy stuff. On the ramp, it was very easy travel, with the hardest factor being avoiding wet rock from the snowmelt. In a few minutes, I was on the ridge, where I found a rather hilariously unnecessary rap anchor (and another sling on a rock beside it too).

Once I got onto the ridge, it was mostly hiking up to the false summit, which I reached in a few more minutes (around 2:30pm).

At the bottom of the final notch, I stashed my axe+poles for convenience, then started the final scramble. The first half was mostly just following the obvious weakness on the climber's left side of the ridge, until it kinda tapered off into the slope, and the easier pathing turned right.

The whole route felt class 2/3 to be honest, with easy moves, solid rock, and ledges or grabbable terrain below. Like many places, sure, if you fell it might suck, but that can be true of hiking on a thin ledge too, and that's why I don't really like or use the class grading system that only looks at exposure. I try to consider "how realistic is it that you'll fall", and things were so easy here a fall is just super unlikely. Take that for what you will. I would feel dumb for carrying a rope up, at least.

After the little traverse mentioned above, there was one final squirt of easy scrambling before a very panoramic summit. I enjoyed it for 5–10 minutes before heading down, as I was still on the 0-calorie hiking diet courtesy of my colitis, so there wasn't much else to do after taking pictures and catching my breath a bit.

Getting down the scramble section was pretty simple, I just reversed my route up and was able to comfortably downclimb without ever feeling insecure or needing to face in, etc. Getting to the false summit took about 15 minutes, including repacking my bag w/ my axe from where I left it.

After mostly hiking back to the top of the ridge where I scrambled up from the snow, I started my downclimbing once again. This was the most important section, IMO, because slipping is easier on the slabby rock, especially when wet.

After weaving my way down the slabby rock, I traversed over to the larger snow patch I climbed past on the way up, avoiding the unnecessary gain, then crossed back onto the main slope. From there, I started moving back uphill to regain the trail, but realised after a few minutes that I could probably just sidehill/descend slightly on the side of the slope, and meet back up with the trail at one of the low points along the ridge. So, I took the nice scree down as far as was reasonable, then sidehilled along until I rejoined the trail at the undulation below the final non-technical bump.

Once I was on-trail, I could move quite quickly, and made it back to the top of the larger undulation in short order.

I was starting to feel tired coming up the other side of that undulation, but still had enough in the tank that I didn't feel like the day was going to be brutally long. I did stop at the small stream just below the high point on the other side to refill some water, though. It took a bit of time as my filter wasn't able to go super fast until I came up with a good way to keep the head submerged nicely, but I managed to get another 500mL or so, which would make the rest of the day much nicer (I brought 1.5L in my pack, which was enough, but not exactly luxurious). At this point, I was about 5.5 hours into the day, at about 4:30pm.

From there, getting to the lakes took about 20 minutes, and I just barely managed to catch my red-shirted friend as I got to the junction with the Keep Kool trail. He came up using that, so after chatting for a couple minutes, he headed down, and I started the 5 millionth tedious uphill due to undulation, bringing me up towards the fork between the trail back to the car, and the one to Yellow Aster Butte itself.

After we parted ways, I hiked back up to the junction in 8 minutes, then after briefly contemplating my life choices, decided "I came all this way, may as well get the extra p100 before heading home", stashed my pack in a bush, then started hiking up to Yellow Aster Butte before I'd actually be allowed to go down 😅

GPX Track + Map