On Wednesday we climbed the South Ridge of Whitehorn Mountain. That route was so unpleasant we decided to descend the West Ridge to see if it was better. It wasn't. From start to finish there is not much to recommend these climbs, in my opinion. The route of choice looks to be the North Face although there are significant access issues to get there.
We had a good look at conditions from Banff to Robson and back. There seems to be significantly more snow north of the Columbia Icefields. Although the south aspects are drying up a bit, we found plenty of snow on the west side of Whitehorn, and all the Jasper peaks are pretty white above 9000 ft on E, N and W aspects. The icefields are a bit drier, but it looks like there the snow has made the rock routes slippery and not improved the ice routes a whole lot. N Face of AthaB and Silverhorn looked good, everything else looked dirty again. Between the icefields and Lake Louise seemed pretty dry (eg not much snow visible on the summit rocks of Hector). In the Lake Louise area it looked like the snowline from last week's storm was about 10,000 ft on E, W and N aspects, and less snow than in Jasper.
Mark Klassen
Mountain Guide