Whirlwind Peak - March 9 2023

Fitzsimmons Range, Whistler, British Columbia
2427m

Following my curtailed attempt the previous day which ended at Cowboy Ridge, there was still 1 more day of good weather and snow conditions, so I really wanted to get this peak done (along with Fissile afterward). So, I finagled with my schedule, worked late, woke up early for a meeting which ended up being cancelled anyway 🙃, and I managed to make it up to Whistler after all, with the plan to head up with my neighbour Philip who was staying at Kees+Claire once I could get myself there.

I already covered the details of this approach in the aforementioned Cowboy Ridge TR, so I'll just cover the timeline here. I got off the chairlift (Harmony Express this time) at 10:25am, then skinned/skied furiously over the Musical Bumps to the hut, making it there in 110 minutes, or quarter after noon. I have never been considered fast in the peakbagger world, but I passed a good few groups on the skin track, so that felt pretty good. I didn't even totally tucker myself out in the process, which was cool.

The original plan was to meet for lunch around noon at the hut, but Philip apparently got a head start 11am, which had me a bit worried that he'd be eons ahead of me by the time I arrived. Thankfully, though, he just went searching for fun kiting terrain+conditions, and I saw him not terribly high up past Russet Lake, so I caught up in under 10 minutes, where he packed up his kite, and we got skinning up toward Whirlwind.

After that ~20 minute break which I used exactly 0 minutes of to do anything productive like get water or have a snack, we continued on up the skin track, which thankfully was set. Now that we weren't frantically trying to catch up to anyone, we took a more measured pace. It worked out well for me, since I was now used to moving faster, and this felt calm in comparison, despite being a perfectly reasonable cadence. 15 minutes in (2.5 into the day), we regained elevation back up to 2100m, and started making our way around the south side of Fissile Peak toward the col connecting it and Whirlwind, which would be our "staging ground" for the 2 peaks.

As we continued along the skin track, we got closer and closer to those setting it, a couple of guys Philip had chatted with back in the hut, and while we did catch up once or twice, we never overtook them until the col itself, where they just "didn't go the same way". Very nice of them to break trail for us, although it was thankfully (for the way up) not very difficult trailbreaking, ski penetration was low and a wind+sun crust was definitely present on many aspects. Not the best news for skiing later (in fact, a lot of the musical bumps skiing on the way was somewhat mediocre for this reason), but on the way up, quite convenient.

Another 20 minutes brought us to 2200m, so quite steady progress. The terrain here is super open, so it's very easy to set a skin track at an efficient grade. Now that we were closer to the steeps off of Fissile, we saw our first sign of "instability", which was really just some natural point-release debris on solar aspects, which were pretty small and not-slabby, which is about all you can really hope for given this was day 2 or 3 of pretty intense sun.

We hit the col (2360m) 3 hours and 20 minutes in, or about 1:45pm. Here, the guys we were following looked about ready to gear up to head down, not seeming particularly interested in bagging any peaks (for shame!). We, however, had loftier plans. Philip, as a solid "adventurer" but not quite a peakbagger or aspiring mountaineer, was happy to head up, but didn't know too much about the terrain, and was pessimistic about summiting himself, expecting it to be too tiring for the skiing (or in his case, snowboarding) payoff and/or too technical for the gear he brought out on his kiting trip which I crashed for now 2 days in a row 😅.

We didn't stand around long at the col, as it was quite windy, and we did still have 2 peaks ahead of us, so we just started making our way up. For whatever reason, despite me feeling great and moving well all day, I kinda just died on the way up to the top. It took about half an hour to make it up to the top, which should've been <100m. However, my GPS tracked up to 2520m for the summit elevation. Not sure where the error came from, but if nothing else, it would explain why I felt so pooped. Contour maps place the col at about 2300m, so the elevation difference isn't too far off, even if my watch thought there was WAY more snow than there was 😅. I have come to expect maybe 10-20m of elevation error, but this was strangely high.

When we were just maybe 20m below the top, Philip considered stopping/waiting there (we found a cool little sheltered "corner" in the snow which hid us from the wind), but we found a very easy way to skin all the way to the top, so he figured he may as well top out. We did so, just under 4 hours into the day (about 2:20), which I'm pretty happy with given that's 12km and a good amount of vert (not sure how much gain, but probably nearing 1000m), with a lot of transitions along the way (thankfully my skin management has improved greatly since I started, and even with over half a dozen transitions in the day, they continued to stick throughout the day).

After hanging out for photos in the wind, we quickly retreated to the aforementioned sheltered spot just below the summit ridge, and relaxed in the dead-calm of our wind shelter. Given how my pace had just fallen off a cliff, I did the unthinkable and actually had some food+water on a hike! The horror! We relaxed for about 15 minutes before taking our skins off and getting ready to ski back to the col. While we were eating, Philip decided that the Fissile approach wasn't really in his comfort zone with the gear he had (no crampons/axe, namely). So, we devised a plan to try and make both of us happy and reasonably safe: I'd ascend the summit ridge from the SW side (where we came up) until a certain rocky spire I figured I wouldn't be scrambling, then I would swap over to the SE face of Fissile, which was a steep snowy face overlooking the Overlord Glacier. Philip would kite over there, since the winds+terrain were looking very juicy for that, and there was a good amount of non-crevassed terrain he was happy playing in. I'd ascent the line and if the snow felt good, I could ski down it in-view of him should the worst happen (even if it feels good, you never know...), then we'd unfortunately have a bit more ascent to get back to the col and ski to the hut, but it was safer than me yeeting off the steep lines on the other side of Fissile (even if those do look super fun, I'll have to do those another day).

So, with that plan in place, we skied down. Skier's right (close to the big corniced wind lip) was pretty crusty and wind-affected, but we hung a bit more skier's left and enjoyed some excellent wind-deposited snow on safe slopes down to just above the col, where Philip split off to the glacier, and I skied down to the col. There, I transitioned into crampons, took my axe out, and figured out my plan of attack.

For the rest of the trip, check out the TR for Fissile Peak, which continues from this point. Otherwise, I'll say "Whirlwind is a cool peak with some great skiing, and one totally should go check it out". Works great as an addition to the Spearhead Traverse, a one-and-done outing from the resort, or as a way to kill time staying at Kees+Claire. You can largely avoid avalanche terrain getting there too, so good for lower vis days, newer people (as long as they have the fitness), solo days, or just "chill days".

GPX Track + Map