Whirlpool Ridge was a very enjoyable scramble. The trail starts at Whirlpool Point on the David Thompson Highway and follows an old roadway to the ridge crest. The "David Thompson Highway: A Hikers Guide" has good trail directions for this ridge. Hikers usually stop at the first highpoint on the ridge. The true summit of the ridge is quite a ways back and would require at least 7 hours round trip to reach. The scrambling I would say is beginner-intermediate. Nothing too technical here. However I would suggest that scramblers take the rock on the way up to the first highpoint and avoid the trail as it is miserable slogging and the rock is much more pleasant to scramble.

On this weekend my brother Roy and I were looking for something fun to scramble that wasn't too crowded. So since Whirlpool ridge was on my list and crowds are never a problem in David Thompson Country we chose this ridge. On the night before we were able to find Preachers Point Campground and camp by Abraham Lake for free which is a bonus perk of David Thompson Country.

We drove up to Whirlpool Point on Saturday and started our ascent. The old roadway is very pleasant to walk along and it doesn't take long to reach the ridge. From the ridge the views continue all the way to the top. So unless it is very foggy you will be able to see a lot in short order on this ascent. Unfortunately we had fog so our views did not appear until much further on when we hiked about the cloud. The cloud was layered so when we hiked above the first layer we could see the mountains nearby but there was still an upper layer of clouds blocking the sun.

After reaching the first highpoint we continued on to the second summit. There was some snow on the ridge and we had to be really careful in places not to slip. Just before the last section to the second summit we had to scramble to the right of the ridge as the left was way to slick and holds were not reliable. But the right side was fine. There was more scree and hands on which was better than trying to walk and not slip on slick snow and rock. Once at the top of the second summit we decided to head back as the high point was still quite a long way and the slick snow was looking much more hazardous. A very pleasant scramble and the fog did add some cool effects to my pictures although I would still like to come back and summit the high point on a sunny day

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