Whistler Mountain and Lookout
Castle Wilderness
April 21, 2006

After summiting Table Mountain a year ago, almost to the day, I assumed the nearby Whistler Mountain would be in season now. But we were surprised by the amount of snow in the area. The only snow we encountered on Table Mountain was just below the summit, but when we drove to Castle Wilderness this April, the snow extended to the base of the mountains.

To get to the trailhead we received directions from a warden we ran into. Just before the Beaver Mines Lakes campground we turned right and drove a short way down a road, passing by a few campers. This brought us to junction number 7 (GR943715), a T-intersection.

On our left, the road immediately crosses a wide but shallow stream. With my low-clearance Hyundai, it seemed unlikely we would get far down the South Castle River access road, but the warden suggested we should try.

The road was replete with potholes and we drove no faster than 20 kph. At one point a mud puddle stretched across the road and I had to stop and check its depth before proceeding. After covering 5.5 km we made it to the trailhead (GR944669), unmarked save for a yellow sign that said, "Trail closed to motorized vehicles." We started out on the trail an hour and a half later than I expected, but thankfully we didn't have to hike up the road.

The trail rose steeply in trees but in ten minutes, we reached an open slope. Whenever the trail led back into the trees, though, we were forced to slog in deep snow. Following the snow-covered trail where it etched into a steep slope was tricky; it was often easier and more prudent to circumvent the trail because of the snow. In a couple of spots it felt like we were cutting across avalanche slopes. Strange to say, but we used our ice axes to go up a lookout trail!

Finally the trees thinned and we were again hiking on a dry trail. When we reached a plateau, the lookout was to the left, but we headed right to ascend the summit of Whistler Mountain. All around us were snow-covered peaks while we hiked on the colorful rocks of the area.

The summit, which held a small cairn, was disappointing as a few trees interrupted the views. We pondered continuing along the ridge to another point that appeared lower than the one we were standing on, but there was no good reason to do so. The wind had been increasing all day and was now making it difficult to stand still let alone hike. Also the lower point appeared to be under a great deal of snow and its summit was also in trees. Confident that we had reached the summit of Whistler Mountain we started back down. We took a detour, however, to check out the views from the lookout.

It wasn't until we returned home and I looked at my digital NTS map (for the trip I had used the free Castle Special Management Area map which is more up-to-date but shows less detail) and realized the insignificant-looking point farther on was in fact the summit! All we had achieved was to reach the lookout.

Postscript
We learned later that the map was wrong and we did in fact reach the summit of Whistler Mountain. See Sonny's trip report.

MOVIE (1:12)