Ptarmigan Traverse, Washington Cascades
Colin Abercrombie & Leor Pantilat hold the FKT, 14h36m, set on July 28, 2009.
The following description of the Ptarmigan Traverse is taken
from www.summitpost.org:
"The Ptarmigan Traverse is perhaps unique in Washington: a week-long, off-trail high route
weaving between the glaciated peaks of the North Cascades, never straying far from the crest.
The Ptarmigan is not for hikers, so much as for climbers, and experienced ones at that.
Essentially a mini-expedition, it requires off-trail wilderness navigation, extensive glacier
travel, self-reliance, and commitment. The rewards are the views, the climbs of peaks so remote
that this traverse is their most common approach, and the adventure of it all. The traverse is
usually completed in about a week, most commonly in July or August, and usually done from north
to south. How and when you accomplish it is entirely up to you and your partners. Race through
it in three days or take two weeks to climb every nearby peak and swim in every frigid lake.
It's even been skied in a single day."
The www.summitpost.org
page has a ton of details about this route. The Ptarmigan was apparently first done in 1938 by members of
the Ptarmigan climbing club, who took 13 days to do the traverse, climbing many peaks along the way.
Lowell Skoog indicates that the Ptarmigan is about 30 miles long with roughly 11,000 feet of climbing.
A map of the route is
here, which is taken Lowell Skoog.
Leor Pantilat and Colin Abercrombie did the traverse in a fast (but not FKT) time of 18h10m on August 14, 2008.
They posted a trip report with
time splits and many photos on cascadeclimbers.com.
There are several interesting comments on that trip report, including one by Lowell Skoog
that says this:
"The Ptarmigan Traverse was first hiked in a day in the mid-1980s, I believe. I met one of
the guys who did it, but I don't remember his name. I don't know how long they took.
Joe Stock and a friend named Andrew [Wexler] hiked the route in 15 hours, 40 minutes on September 4, 2004.
Joe submitted a brief story about the trip to the 2005 NWMJ but we decided not to publish it.
(I still have Joe's original story and I also have his address.) I don't know if other people
have been trying to set speed records. My brother Carl and I probably did the first one-day ski
traverse in 1988. Our intention was just to ski the route in a day, so I don't know if we could
have gone faster. I believe the route has been skied in a day several times since then.
When Carl and I skied the Ptarmigan in 1988 we did most of the trip in plastic mountaineering
boots. I think walking the route in lightweight shoes would be faster and you wouldn't need to
take ski gear. But skiing was what we wanted to do."
Lowell provided me with Stock's report.
Stock reported these splits for the trip:
3:25 am Go!
4:30 am Cascade Pass. Talking, excited, calculating.
5:50 am Cache Col. Perfect crisp snow for cramponing. Slow down!
7:20 am Middle Cascade Glacier. Slow down! No max heart rate! Coffee wearing off. Clear.
9:25 am Traverse below Le Conte. Need water. Need shorts, not gore-tex and insulated jacket. Found a pace.
10:35 am Descent to South Cascade Glacier. Andrew's rugby ankles hurt. Spire Col looks close! Confident now.
11:14 am White Rock Lakes. It's only up to Spire Col and down. Isn't that hard to believe?
12:00 am Toe of Dana Glacier. More Cytomax and Pandas. Feeling strong, but feeling it for sure.
1:07 pm Spire Col. Laughing! Light and fast is different!
2:10 pm Cub Lake. Advil for my quads. Relaxing in the sun. Nobody here.
5:00 pm Six-mile junction. Bee stings on my legs. Andrew rolled an ankle. But feeling so strong!
7:05 pm Downey Creek trailhead. Tired, but legs still strong. Kind of disappointed that it is over already. Too easy. 15 hours and 40 minutes.
Drinking warm Henries, we drove silently back to Cascade Pass to sleep in Andrew's truck again.
Cascade Pass felt strange when we expected to be still toughing it out on the traverse. It felt
like we had cheated. How could we have pulled it off so quickly? We were ready for a challenge,
but instead we got a nice day hike. We figured that's what is meant by light and fast. What is
possible is redefined. Hmm, I guess we need something harder next summer. -- Joe Stock
The Skoog's ski trip report is here.
Though we climbed no summits, I felt more satisfaction than on many climbs. Though we saw no
new country, the country seemed new to me. I realized that hurrying through the mountains does
not necessarily mean losing sensitivity to them. Rather it can be a way to embrace them more fully.
-- Lowell Skoog
Not to be outdone, Abercrombie & Pantilat went returned to the Ptarmigan on July 28, 2009, and laid
down the current FKT at 14h36m, over an hour faster than Stock & Wexler. Pantilat posted his usual
excellent, detailed trip report with splits, photos and video on cascadeclimbers.com.
On August 16-19, 2006, Jason Hummel did a unique link-up, hiking the Ptarmigan Traverse, and
then returning to his car by kayaking the Class III Suiattle River (24 miles)
and biking the final 43 miles to Cascade Pass. The entire trip took 74 hours, and is
reported in the Northwest Mountaineering Journal,
and on his website (the latter
with many photos.)