Elevation Gain: 5386m
Distance: 74km
Total Time: 3.5 days
Date: April 24th – 27th, 2026
stats are for all 3.5 days of our traverse
Mount Tisiphone is rather prominent summit on the Western side of the Lillooet Icefield. It was first climbed in 1960 by: R. Hutchinson, W. Himmelsbach, J. Woodfield, J. Hutton by the South side and was originally known as The Archbishop. The FA party reported 5th class climbing but no overly difficult challenges. The east ridge was also climbed with reports of 4th class rock climbing. Since then a number of documented parties have been to the summit although limited information exists about the extent of the technical difficulties. No matter the condition it seemed to promise some interesting challenges to reach the summit.
These days the area is typically accessed by skiers on long traverses and I imagine most do not come with climbing gear on their already burgeoning packs. We had arrived with the explicit goal of climbing it, but we had made a calculated risk to skip climbing gear. It was late April and we felt confident we could find a snow route to the top or perhaps a short roped section at most.
We had spent our first day on the icefield climbing the summits of Mu, Delta, Dalgleish and Lillooet. Now we had built camp at the south side of Tisiphone and were poised to make a half day trip to the top before continuing on our traverse. As would be the norm for our trip, leisurely starts were in order. This time a 6:30am wake up was called for and we were out the door an hour later. Skis and snowshoes were left behind in favor of booting up the rock hard snow pack.
Our journey took us up some steep slopes on the south side where the angle kicked back after only 200m of gain. We traversed under the east ridge for a long ways until reaching the summit block. One potential line presented itself on the eastern aspect, but we elected to peek around the other side first. Lo an behold a rimed up gully provided a clean line to the summit ridge. It seemed we me might skip any rock at all. Steven set off first and the rest of us followed up close behind. We gained the ridge at a corniced notch where 15m of exposed snow traversing would take us to the summit. I put Steven on belay as a precaution with the cornice and he quickly dispatched with the one tricky bit. We all got belayed up and traversed over to the summit.
A huge cornice stopped us from going to close the edge but the views to the north and west were spectacular. Especially Peak 8715. Compton Mountain certainly caught my attention as well. We had a big day ahead of us still, so with our fill of views we started on the descent. To reverse the notch I put everyone on top rope below and then down-lead the snow pitch. From there we descended the icy gully and had an easy return to camp.
We had a long break and then packed up to head over to Mount Alecto next.