Partial Ragged Ridge Traverse (Cosho via Mesahchie Glacier)

This whole spring I’ve been jonesing to get out into the North Cascades for a ski traverse, but it’s seemed like every weekend has had something come up: bad weather, work, or other commitments (why would you commit to anything other than skiing?). However, the last weekend in April, everything came together: the weather forecast was perfect, the North Cascades Highway was reopening, and my favorite partners Adam and Matt were both free, along with my good friend Alex who was visiting from out of state. The Ragged Ridge seemed to be a natural objective for our time constraints. While I’d climbed all of these summits from the south in the summer, I’d never skied any of them, and I’d always wanted to set foot on the glaciated northern slopes of the ridge. We ended up having a great time, although it was too short of a trip! Next time, exiting via Red Mountain and Fourth of July Pass (and Ruby for bonus points) would be even better.

We dropped Adam's car a few miles down SR20 and left the Easy Pass trail head at 8:30. Beautiful day. We did not bring trail runners and started skinning as soon as we crossed Granite Creek but quickly ran out of snow and had to A-frame while walking up the trail in ski boots. We transitioned back to skiing at 4400 feet, and after a a little bit of faffing in the woods, we busted out into the open slide path below Graybeard for our first of many stunning views. It was straightforward going up to Easy Pass at 11:20.

Above Easy Pass we followed a nice skintrack up for a few hundred feet, then started traversing towards the Mesahchie Glacier at around 7,100 feet. The traverse was not so bad, but definitely exposed and starting to get a bit mushy. Once we reached the bowl below Kitling, we took a 400 foot lap that skied quite nicely before climbing up to the col accessing the Mesahchie  at 13:20.

We dropped in the steep entrance and skied a little bit of powder and then nice snow down the glacier to 6,500 ft where Matt and Adam and I left our overnight gear to take a lap up the upper lobe of the Mesahchie Glacier while Alex took a break. We climbed up to about 7,600 feet before skiing back and gathering our stuff. We skied very nice corn back down to the bottom of the valley at 5,100 feet, leaving behind a few parties of day trippers. We filled up some water in Panther Creek before starting the climb up to the Katsuk Glacier at 15:45.

We gave Alex a head start while we were filling water, and despite the fact that he was flagging, we hoodwinked him into going all the way to the Cosho Kimtah saddle (instead of Kimtah Katsuk) to camp. The climbing up to the Katsuk Glacier was pretty straightforward and easy at a mellow pace with a few steep spots. There was an enormous gaping 30-ft tall ice cave on the toe of glacier just east of the rock prow that juts into the glacier, which I noted to check out on the exit. We climbed below the rock prow and kick turned up to the saddle on the Kimtah-Pachyderm ridge at 7100 ft. There was a little bit of a cornice at the ridge which we navigated without much trouble and topped it out at 1745. Beautiful views.

From the ridge we traversed and climbed onto the glacier, climbing past the icefall to the saddle just above the 7,800 ft rock prominence, going pretty slowly as people were starting to get tired. From there we made a very easy descending traverse with skins on dropping down to 7,500 ft before the final mellow climb to the saddle immediately east of Cosho where we planned on camping. We arrived at the saddle just after 19:00. The views to the south of Logan and Goode were absolutely incredible. I dropped camping stuff and left the boys to set up camp while I hustled up Cosho for sunset, which took 20 minutes with some wallowing booting. Unfortunately as I got to the top the clouds descended just a little bit and I was mostly in a whiteout with peekaboo views.

I skied back down from the summit in a whiteout through pretty manky snow, the hung out with folks melting snow for water and making dinner as the clouds swirled.

I got up at 5:15 to go back up Cosho for sunrise, which  was absolutely gorgeous with clouds below in the valley. I came back down to the boys for breakfast, then we all went back up Cosho one last time to enjoy the view. We skied back and packed up camp, then started making our way out. We reached the Kimtah-Pachyderm Ridge at 10:00. Alex, going more slowly, wanted to boot part of this section, so Matt, like a saint, let Adam and I go ahead to have some extra time to check out the ice cave. We descended to 6200 feet then skinned up a few hundred feet to the ice cave, which was extraordinarily cool. I posed Adam for a picture and then we hurriedly skied down to the bottom of the creek at 6200 ft at 11:00. We threw our skins on and chased Matt and Alex toward the exit. We caught them for the final climb up to the ridge, which was kind of hot, then dropped in towards the highway at 12:30.

We skied the obvious fall line down through the slide path, which got a little brushy at the bottom until we entered the old growth which was fun skiing. With the usual shenanigans we were able to ski to just below 4200 ft along the creek before switching to booting just before 14:00. We traversed left to avoid getting sucked into the creek canyon, then booting down the moss in the open forest was very pleasant. We hit Granite Creek at 14:20. It took some exploring to find a log crossing, then we booted up the bank to Adam's car at 14:50.