Overlord Mountain, Whirlwind Peak, Fissile Peak, Flute Summit, Whistler Mountain

August 28, 2025

Overlord Mountain, Whirlwind Peak, Fissile Peak, Flute Summit, Whistler Mountain

Overlord Mountain - 2625M

415M Prominence

50.01568, -122.82084

August 28, 2025

Whirlwind Peak - 2427M

115M Prominence

50.00966, -122.84154

August 28, 2025

Fissile Peak - 2439M

119M Prominence

50.01884, -122.84873

August 29, 2025

Flute Summit - 2015M

127M Prominence

50.03994, -122.92569

August 29, 2025

Whistler Mountain - 2189M

471M Prominence

50.05904, -122.95683

August 29, 2025

45.07KM

3677M Ascent, 2516M Descent

30H Car to Lift

This might not be the most usual introduction to the sea to sky area, but it is a relatively interesting one. Weeks ago I came across a message in the SWBC group chat from Taras who was looking for partners on his 2 week S2S peak bagging rampage. I had some work to do back at home, but knew I wanted to make a trip down to SWBC and the PNW before the summer was over, so I committed with him to doing Overlord Mountain. Frankly I had never heard of it, and there was many other peaks that were on his list that I would of rather done. His schedule was fairly regimented though with passes and permits and whatnot, so I just went along with the Overlord idea. On Wednesday the 27th I made the trip down to Vancouver from Powell River, wasted a few hours in the city and then made the drive up towards Squamish. After a quick swim at Murin lake I made my way to Check campsite for the night. The next morning I got up with the sun and drove up to Whistler in an effort to get to the Singing Pass trailhead where I would meet Taras at 7AM. After a bit of time wasted looking for a parking spot, we met in the parking lot as we were both trying to figure out the parking meter. Once all was sorted, we walked to the gondola drop off and then started making our way up the Singing pass trail. The hiking was easy, and super well kept and flat. I was impressed. Without really feeling it we gained over 1000M before reaching the pass. At the pass we turned east and climbed a few hundred meters towards the Kees and Claire hut. The views were starting to open up in this section and we already had great views of the Black Tusk and Castle Towers. After the hut we quickly descended to Russet lake to eat lunch and set up camp for the night. After a bit of a break, we got going again towards Overlord with lightened packs. The route took us South East around Fissile peak, and then across a glacier outflow before gaining a ridge that went perpendicular to the previous few kilometers. This section did not have a very decisive or easy to follow trail, but the route finding was easy as it was open terrain and still quite flat. From the ridge after the non problematic water crossing the trail started to steepen up a bit. The small scree showed an easy to follow path, even if it was pretty obvious where to go. From here on out it was going up and down the bumps on the ridge all the way to the summit, keeping the Overlord glacier to the left. We crossed one very small patch of snow that did not warrant bringing any gear, and soon after we were up on Whirlwind peak. Whirlwind peak was under 100M of prominence on peakbagger, so I barely even gave a shit, but later in the day Taras confirmed with his GPS that the Key col was indeed lower, and the peakbagger info was probably wrong. I will take it I guess, after all it looks pretty cool from either direction with its North side drop off into the glacier. We kept moving down to the Whirlwind Overlord col, then started making our way up to the ridge, on the way up to the ridge we bypassed the bumps of Refuse pinnacle. This is the only part where I could see someone considering this route a scramble. It is easily doable without hands though, although there are a few slightly more exposed spots. After the Pinnacle there was roughly 100 meters up to the summit of easy walking once again. Not the most exciting mountain to have as a first S2S summit, but the views made up for that. Especially unreal views looking South and East. Getting to the summit had taken us longer than planned unfortunately, so the plan to bag Fissile peak on the way back kind of fell apart. We trekked back the same route, this time making sure to stand on the Whirlwind summit and grab a picture. We made it back at camp just in time to eat dinner at a regular hour, and came up with the plan to get up relatively early to bag Fissile Peak in the morning before heading back down the following day. After a good night's rest we got up just as the sun was rising and illuminating the clouds. Taras and I hiked our way back in the direction of yesterday's ascents but soon turned toward Fissile. I had a few routes that were a bit different to one another, so I kind of eyeballed a route. We started by hiking up a steep bank into a sort of crater where there has previously been an ice patch. The scramble then started and for the 30 or 40 minutes we climbed up the South West side of the peak. It was extremely loose so we intentionally spaced our or climbed beside each other in an effort to not trigger any rockfall on one another. The scrambling was quite straight forward class 3 choss with lots of different possible routes. At the summit I hiked to the left of the summit block that looks a bit exposed upon approach, but it is very self explanatory and simple to top out. The views were spectacular and we had a fantastic view of yesterday's objectives across the Overlord Glacier, and this afternoon's descent across the musical bumps. We then descended back down a similar of a route as the ascent, and after 2 hours and 55 minutes the morning detour was complete and we were back at camp at Russet Lake. Fissile Peak was my favorite peak of the trip as it offered the most scrambling and looked the most interesting from any vantage point along the trip. We then packed up the tent and got going back up toward Kees and Claire hut by 10:45. We then descended back down to Singing Pass where we had come from the previous day, but instead of going back down the Singing Pass trail we took the Musical Bumps Trail and began our ascent toward Oboe summit, which is sub 100 meters of prominence. After a short descent we hiked back up along the mellow trail up to the ridge summit which is Flute Summit. We then hiked down below the East side of Piccolo Summit under the chair lift to make our way to Whistler Mountain. From here on out we were just hiking along gravel maintenance roads for Whistler Mountain. After hiking along these maintenance roads we gained a final 200 meters of elevation and sat on the summit of Whistler Mountain. The summit is pretty lame as there is all sorts of ski resort infrastructure all around and there is nothing natural about it. At this point we knew something strange was happening as there were trucks and golf carts driving all over the place. On the summit of Whistler we looked North at gnarly storm clouds In the valley. We then began descending to the Roundhouse lodge at 1830M. The descent was yet more unenjoyable gravel roads, but we planned to return this way as we had heard rumors of a possible gondola descent back down into the Whistler village. Once we got to the lodge we were informed that the gondola was in fact not running due to the thunder storm, and that the mountain was being evacuated. We were forced to wait in the lodge for over an hour and a half until finally trucks started shuttling the dozens of people in the lodge back down to the village. Finally at 5PM I was lucky enough to be put in a shuttle and was brought back down to my truck, I could then throw my gear in the truck and make the drive down into Washington state.