Whirlpool Ridge Scramble/Mountaineering
If you focus hard enough you don't notice the exposure until you watch the film
Whirlpool Ridge Scramble/Mountaineering
Notable Visited Landmarks
Mountains
Introduction
Whirlpool Ridge to Mount Frank is a 17km, 1525m elevation gain trip on an exciting ridge in David Thompson Country. Although it is statistically not too bad the exposure and some loose rock will inhibit your progress. These factors combined with long breaks for Urbi to capture drone footage meant that this turned out to be a 11:36h day.
In dry conditions I am sure this would be a pleasant scramble somewhere in the high class 3 to class 4 range. However, Urbi and I did this on May 22, 2021 and we had to deal with cornices, snow covering slab and some hard snow higher up on the mountain. Under these conditions the difficulty is pushed to the borderline of mountaineering, we had our ice axes out for a stretch of hours checking for cornices and dry tooling.
Views off the ridge at this time of year were fantastic. Combined with the thrilling terrain I would highly recommend this trip as a fun early season ridge “walk”.
Ignore the blue track, the green track is our approximate route
Ascent
We knew that there was going to be snow on the ridge, but we didn’t know how much, or what the quality would be like, so we brought crampons and started out at 5:07. The initial ridge was dry and wide which made for a pleasant walk as the sun came up and we got some alpenglow on the tops of the mountains surrounding us. Early on there was a steep loss of about 15m which we regained quickly on slab. From there it was smooth sailing for a while.
Regaining the ridge on slab after the drop
Alpenglow to the South
The trail continues (although faint in places) along the ridge until you are almost above treeline. At this point there will be an option to gain the ridge by the trail which continues climber’s left or via some scrambling which may vary from class 2-3 to class 5 depending on how difficult you like it. If you don’t want to go the scrambling route at this point you should reconsider if you are up for the ridge.
Scrambling to the right and a trail leading around the scrambling to gain the ridge
Although avoidable small holds on steep slab make the scrambling more exciting
From the ridge your views East will open up, the ridge starts off easy and gradually starts gaining elevation towards a noticeable high point. Nearing the high point the ridge starts to narrow and there are a couple of choppy sections before there is climb which we skirted around to the left and then regained the ridge on steep slab which was grippy.
On the ridge now
Urbi downclimbing near the high point of the lower ridge
Another downclimb before the high point
We skirted around this to the left
Going up slab to regain the ridge
From here the real fun starts, the ridge is now considerably narrow, on the right there is a steep drop that looked to be about 70 degrees, on your left there is steep slab which would looked about 55-60 degrees. Giving these angle estimates is difficult since when you are there all you know is that falling is not an option and you get so focused that you don’t even notice there is a drop for the most part. During these narrow parts we always stayed on the left side of the ridge with the slab.
Navigation on the ridge is conceptually easy but there are many small challenges that makes micro route finding difficult. The ridge has some up and down movement and when going down it is sometimes a good idea to descend on the slab to a break that will allow you to move horizontally instead of downclimbing on the ridge crest. When we were there, there were many patches of soft snow on slab which made that rock unusable, you can use your ice axe to try to find cracks in the slab under the snow as an alternative to a hand hold. There were many cornices along the ridge so it was very important to check any time you couldn’t see rock and wanted to take a step.
Typical terrain as the ridge gets more exposed, it’s pretty good here as you can stay off the ridge crest going under the slab
Urbi on a longer downwards section that was quite narrow
The crux of the ridge ends the difficult section, it starts with a rather steep down section that can be downclimbed by but scooting into a notch in the ridge. We opted to traverse around the immediate climb out of the notch climber’s left. After regaining the ridge for a couple meters you will reach another notch that you will have to downclimb. Once in that second notch we traversed around the right side of the ridge with much exposure but good hand holds to an obvious opening leading us off the crux.
Urbi but scooting into the first notch
Traversing around the climb out of the first notch to the left
Downclimb into the second notch
Looking back at Urbi traversing out of the second notch to the right of the ridge
Footage of difficulties on the lower ridge including the crux
Once off the difficult part ending the lower ridge the terrain widens giving a nice spot for a rest before tackling the upper ridge. The upper ridge is not as steep on the left side as the lower ridge and much of the difficulties can be avoided by staying low and traversing around slabby sections to stay on scree.
On the way up we stayed close to the ridge crest which dealt with slab that had soft snow on it presenting some difficulty. Close to the top there are a series of near vertical sections. For the most of them we traversed to the left which was not as steep but we came to a short section where we needed to traverse to the right side of the ridge to find a break in the rock.
Using my ice axe as a longer arm to reach across the snow
Urbi coming up a steep snow section to regain the ridge after traversing around some slabs
Urbi coming up a near vertical section from climber’s right close to the summit
Summit view looking North
Summit view looking South
Descent
Views from the summit were definitely worth it, and after a lengthy break we started to head back down. Going down we avoided most of the slab close to the ridge crest by traversing below it. This brought us to one hard patch of snow which we crossed using crampons. Once the slabs subsided we regained the ridge and travelled back to the start of the lower ridge.
Urbi crossing the hard patch of snow
We decided to descend into the valley via loose scree instead of taking the ridge back since conditions were less than ideal and after baking in the sun and not bringing as much water as we should have we were probably not in the best condition to deal with all the exposure on the ridge. In the valley we loosely followed the creek back but stayed skiers left above the creek when it turned into a canyon. After hopping over some dead logs we were back at the road which we followed back to the car.
Entering the creek which started out as snow
An easy patch of forest