Ptarmigan Reverse (unsuccessful)

6/20-6/23

Ptarmigan Reverse

We made a gamble with the new snow and hot weather to attempt the Ptarmigan Traverse in reverse (south to north) – the Ptarmigan Reverse- due to the following reasons: 1) get the schwack over with the first day 2) ski down the glaciers instead of walk up them with confidence of coverage 3) do something new (I’ve walked it North to south). The challenge was tempting.

After skiing the Squak and sharing hugs with Snow Stomper, ZH and I met up with AL at 6:30 pm at Cascade Pass TH to drop a car off. We headed to the Downey Creek TH to sleep there. At 4 AM, we started hiking up the trail, running into few blow downs until mile ~6. It was easy to navigate until I realized that I could not find my sunglasses. ZH opted to run back and grab them with the intention to meet up with us at camp. The idea of separating is not something I entertain often, but he seemed confident in the decision.

AL and I continued on, pushing uphill through alder and huckleberry. The thickness was not too bad, and we were still able to see the climber’s trail for the majority of the ascent. Pink flagging helped us a lot. We started skinning around 5300’ towards the ridge above Cub Lake. The snow was mushy and led to some uncomfortable skinning. By 3 pm, we reached Cub Pass and found a dry east slope down to the lake. Bummer.

As we hiked straight down in our ski boots, we were relieved to see snow continuing from the inlet up towards Spire and Dome ridges. At 4 pm, we decided to wait for ZH at Cub Lake, unaware of his status or success in finding sunglasses. It began to rain for an hour and we hid in the trees for a moment.

By 9 pm, ZH arrived in one piece, triumphantly wearing my sunglasses.

The next day, we were moving by 830 am and began booting up the hill towards the ridge on an ascent to Dome Col. It was not long before a second wave of shenanigans hit: after taking my pack off to quickly pee, we watched it tumble down towards a hole in the snowpack where the waterfall was draining into. At the last second, the pack bounced away from the hole and the sticky, slushy snow stopped it from rolling much further. I’m usually cognizant about transitions with gear on steep slopes, but something was clearly happening in my psyche that was leading to all these mistakes….

AL went down to grab my pack for me and was back on the slope with us within 10 minutes.

At this point, I am trying so hard not to pay attention to any of these unrelated events of fortunate misfortune…

After a quick chat with seasoned mountaineers, we begin the traverse towards Dome Col and it becomes very apparent how dangerous the snow conditions were: we were sinking above boot top in extremely wet mush by 10 am, small point releases were happening, a broken up slope of snow served as overhead hazard for the traverse, and we kept slipping out on the skin track. It was safer to boot, but we weren’t about to boot the Traverse with our skis on our backs.

It only took brief discussions of observations, hypotheses on why the snow conditions were the way they were, and proposed solutions. We concluded that it was time to turn around. The weather was forecasted to only get warmer with very little chance of overnight refreezes, and there was a chance of rain throughout Sunday. If we had to boot things, this would slow us down significantly and might put us in a dangerous position on the Middle Cascade glacier, the big fat one with holes towards the end of the traverse. Although the alternative of walking Downey Creek again was extremely unappealing, at least it was safer.

So, we skied a small terminal moraine (a handful of times). One lap was shared during sunset, and we celebrated the peaceful moment with new friends back at our ridge camp with fun snacks and laughter. They had successfully summitted Dome and survived a wet slide. Despite a failed attempt at the Ptarmigan Reverse, I was genuinely happy that this random chance of mostly strangers sharing laughter and sunset on such a skinny strip of rock had happened at all. The bright full orange moon agreed with me as it rose at dusk.

We clambered back the next day, adding only a few more turns as we descended back towards Cub Lake and returned to the car by 6 pm.

This trip would have been miserable in any other situation, but it was anything but.

**EDIT** The group we shared a sunset with did not summit Dome, but got really close. If that party reads this TR, please DM me!