Having the week off I picked today to go up and climb Whitechuck mountain. Having gotten excellent information from the nw hikers website as how to get up to the trailhead and climbing beta I set off from the trailhead at 9:00 am. Starting at near 5000 ft. is a real plus. A good trail follows the ridge with good views. In what seemed like a bit over a mile you are at the gully between the nw summit and main summit. A climbers path leads off to the right after climbing up the gully for a ways. Today was a excellent day to climb this mountain as conditions were bone dry. As you may of read from other reports that when the trail is wet and/or snow covered you would not want to slip along the traverse on the upper part of the route. As Becky says of this route ""a slip would be more than serious"". Upon reaching the notch on the ridge,just befour the last summit scramble, I paused for a long minute comptaplating the 15' vertical down climb to the bottom of the of the very narrow notch. Fortunatly the rock formation offers good holds to the bottom. The short scramble on the other side puts you on top. There wasn't a wisper of a breeze today as I as enjoyed the 360 degree view,having made the summit by 11:00. I could even see my car from the summit not to far below. The climb back down was uneventful and I was back at the car in short order. I found some scat on the trail about 1/2 way back to the car. Talking to someone about this they said it might have been a cougar. That could of made this trip real interesting! I did have a big black bear bolt out of bushes though just after I started the drive back down the road. It narrowly missed hitting my car and then ran down the road for a few seconds befour darting back in the bushes. Amazing how fast he was. All in all it was a great day for a climb. I'm 53 years young now and it's good to know I can still enjoy doing this. Ps. I could not find the summit register. I had read an earlier report that there was one. I would like to hear from someone to find out where it is and if it is still there. I can't believe that someone would take it.
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