Walter A. Wood led a teamconsisting of Foresta Wood, Swiss guide Hans Fuhrer, Joseph W. Fobes, Harrison Wood and I. Pearce Hazard. The expedition approached the peak on the eastern side from Kluane Lake. Base camp was established at the foot of the Steele Glacier with horses carrying loads to Advance Base Camp further along the glacier. ABC provided good views of the mountain and the team decided on the east ridge as their line of ascent. After waiting for the weather to improve after heavy snowfalls, a four-man team consisting of Walter Wood, Harrison Wood, Fuhrer and Forbes left Camp 8 at the base of the ridge. Their plan to was to make a push to the summit. After steady upwards progress, deteriorating weather forced them to return to Camp 8 where they waited out a five-day storm which dumped over a metre of fresh snow. They started out again on August 15 and the ascent was made easier this time by windblown and hard steep snow slopes rather than steep soft snow on their earlier attempt. At, a plateau of wretched snow forced the team to crawl on all fours. Walter Wood commented: Alternating the lead every 100 paces, they made their way from the plateau to the top, finally reaching the summit at 2:30 pm. The team enjoyed a blissful thirty minutes of windless conditions on top before beginning their descent.
Avalanche and landslides
On 22 July 2007 at approximately 13:25 Pacific Daylight Time, a massive avalanche took place on Mount Steele when a slab of ice with a volume of about broke loose from its north face. The slab broke up as it fell down the side of the mountain, developing into an avalanche that crossed Steele Glacier, overtopped a ridge, and continued onto Hodgson Glacer, where it finally came to rest after traveling a total horizontal distance of. The avalanche covered about of the surface of Steele Glacier. The avalanche registered as a 2.1-magnitude seismic event. At 17:57 Pacific Daylight Time on 24 July 2007 – only two days after the avalanche — a massive landslide occurred on the north face of Mount Steele when a wide section of ice and rock fell. With a volume estimated at between, it lasted about 100 seconds and reached a maximum speed of at least. Falling down the side of the mountain, the landslide traveled across the wide Steele Glacier, and reached the top of a ridge on the opposite side of the glacier, where it came to a stop before sliding back down onto Steele Glacier. It traveled a total horizontal distance of. It was immediately recognized as one of the largest landslides in Yukon Territory history, if not the largest, and is one of the largest in the recorded history of western Canada. On 11 October 2015, of rock, snow, and ice with a volume of about slid down the side of Mount Steele and across the surface of Steele Glacier. It was one of the ten largest landslides of the year worldwide.
