Mt. Whitehorn is a very striking feature, owing to the precipitous rock ramparts, like mighty walls, that stretch out from it to the Grand Fork Valley. It is surrounded by glaciers, but it is not very white and does not convey the impression of a horn.”

— Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] [1]

Elizabeth Parker [1856–1944] says it is so called “from some twoscore waterfalls shining like silver or foaming white down vertical purple cliffs on either side.” [2]

George R. B. Kinney [1872–1961] discovered this sharp conical peak in 1907, calling it “Mt. Turner.” [3] Kinney accompanied Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939, who in 1907 or 1908 referred to it as “The White Horn; ” Coleman’s 1910 map of Mount Robson has it labeled as “White Horn Mt.”

It was first climbed by Conrad Kain [1883–1934] in 1911 during the Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition. Kain stashed a summit note in his match-holder; “I wrapped this in a handkerchief and put it in the stone-man. For greater precaution I laid a few stones together underneath an overhanging rock that protected this second stone-man from avalanches; because I knew that people would not believe that I had reached the summit.” [4]

Kain’s account includes the note that at the 1913 Alpine Club of Canada special camp at Mount Robson, “Walter Schauffelberger’s party returned from Whitehorn, bringing the matchbox and the paper with Conrad’s signature. It was found twenty or thirty feet below the summit,” an incident not mentioned in Schauffelberger’s own account. [5]