Ptarmigan Peak Winter Ascent

Ptarmigan Peak (8,614ft), First Winter Ascent

Feb 27-28, 2021

Eric and Alden

40 miles skiing, 32 miles snowmobiling

Ptarmigan peak is perhaps one of the most remote of the Bulger Peaks, nestled deep in the Pasayten Wilderness just a half mile from the most remote point in the Pasayten. I don’t think it gets climbed that often. When I first climbed it in June 2018 there hadn’t been any sign-ins in the summit register in the past year.

Since last spring I’ve been gradually gathering data that would be helpful for a winter ascent of Ptarmigan. I couldn’t find any records of winter ascents, so had to figure it out on my own. There are three main access points in the summer. I accessed the area in the early summer from the Monument Creek trailhead. By mid summer the road to Slate Pass melts out and that’s the most direct access point. Finally, it can conceivably be accessed from the Billy Goat trailhead in the east. In wintertime the roads to all of the trailheads are unplowed, so it’s not possible to drive to any of them.

In May I drove and mountain biked to Harts Pass, where snow started, and then snowshoed in over Slate Pass to access some peaks in the Pasayten. If I could get to Slate Pass in the winter on a snowmobile, Ptarmigan Peak would be about 38 miles round trip. But that road is ungroomed and I suspected very sketchy getting around Deadhorse Point in the winter.

In September I did a hike from the Billy Goat trailhead to the area just northeast of Ptarmigan, and noted that the trail was surprisingly completely clear of blowdowns, despite all the recent burn zones. That route would be about 40 miles round trip to get Ptarmigan Peak, and avoided avy terrain. Though the road is ungroomed in winter so it was questionable how far it would be possible to get in on a snowmobile towards the trailhead, which is 16  miles from the nearest sno park. Then in October I hiked in from the Robinson Creek trailhead to access the most remote point in the Pasayten, a small tarn next to Ptarmigan Peak. That route was 55 miles round trip and also avoided avy terrain. That trailhead is only three miles from the nearest sno park and is groomed.

Finally, the approach from Monument Creek traverse some steep avy slopes below Pistol Pass, so would require stable snow in the winter and would probably not be an ideal route.

In late December I heard from a friend in Mazama that the road to Slate Pass was passable without any sidehilling on a snowmobile, so that seemed like a feasible option. In mid February I had a spare half-day and joined up with an expert snowmobiler friend to scout out the approach to the Billy Goat trailhead. The road was actually in decent shape for the first 13 miles, with a few other snowmobile tracks ahead of us. But then the last few miles had blowdowns and sidehilling. I brought an axe and cleared the blowdowns and my friend gave me guidance so I was able to get past the sidehilling no problem. We made it to the corral parking area a half mile before the official trailhead before being turned around by steeper sidehilling.

Then later in February my snowmobiler friend scouted out the road to Slate Pass and said it was very sketchy getting around deadhorse point. With all these data points I decided the optimal route to get Ptarmigan in the winter was via Billy Goat trailhead. The route avoided avy terrain so was a good choice as long as a clear weather window came along.

After a few weeks of asking around about partners for the trip the stars finally aligned and Alden was excited to join. It looked like an excellent weather window shaping up for the weekend, though the snow conditions were not ideal. But the route avoided avy terrain so that wasn’t a problem.

Friday night we met up at the Eightmile sno park north of Winthrop and car camped. We were the only ones in the enormous parking lot. Saturday we were packed up and moving on the snowmobile by 1:30am. We hoped this would give us enough time to tag Ptarmigan and make it down to camp before sunset.

The first five miles of road looked to have been freshly groomed and it was very smooth going. Then the groomed trail turned off to the west and we continued following eightmile creek. The route was rougher but still good enough I could maintain at least 15 mph. Finally just past the trailhead for the craggies the road went onto a sidehill and we had to stop. It was too difficult to balance with a passenger, but I had brought a tow setup just for this purpose. Alden put his skies on and held on to the end of the rope as I balanced my way through the sidehill. It had drifted in more than before and the combination of it being night time with blowing snow and sidehilling made it a bit trickier. But I balanced through it and towed Alden the last few miles to the corral trailhead by 2:30am.

We quickly packed up and started skinning up the road. I could barely make out my tracks from 10 days earlier when I’d made it to the hairpin turn before turning the sled around. We soon skinned up to the official trailhead then started up the trail. It was difficult to discern where the trail was, but I’d loaded a topo map on my GPS watch for just this purpose. I’ve had too many trips where I waste time trying to find a trail at night in the winter, but now I can just glance down at my watch if in doubt and quickly get back on course.

We traversed up to Eightmile Pass, then glided down the trail to Drake Creek. Past Drake Creek the trail was less exposed to wind and less drifted over, so was much easier to find. By Lucky Pass we could turn headlamps off and got amazing views of Three Pinnacles and Rampart Peak to the west. From Lucky pass we had a long gradual descent making our way up the Lost River drainage. This actually worked out well since we were breaking trail on the way down, meaning on the return we wouldn’t have to break trail uphill.

In a few places the trail traversed steep open slopes and we diverted above in lower-angle treed slopes, so we could avoid any avy terrain. By just after noon we rounded the final corner to emerge at Cougar Lake, which was completely frozen over. Alden’s ski boots were causing problems and unfortunately his feet were in too tough shape to go any farther. There was plenty of daylight left, though, so we decided he would hang out at the lake and set up camp while I went to tag Ptarmigan. We each had an inreach so would be in communication if needed.

I scarfed down some food and headed up around 12:30pm. Ptarmigan Peak was about 4,500ft above camp and I estimated about five hours away. That meant I might just barely reach the summit by sunset if my speed estimate was correct. There were three route variations I was considering. The northeast ridge was the shortest and most direct route to the summit, but had a short steep part at the top. It might be all scoured down to rock, but might instead have cornices. There was also a route up the east face to the Dot-Ptarmigan col that had slopes less than 35 degrees. However, it might also have cornices at the top due to the recent strong west winds. Finally, there was a longer route to go to Dot Lakes, gain the east ridge of Dot, and follow the ridge below Dot and up Ptarmigan. The east ridge was unlikely to be corniced given the previous wind directions.

I decided to go for the Dot Lakes route since it was most likely to be in good shape and avoid sketchy terrain while I was solo. It was unfortunately the longest route, so meant I might not get to the top by sunset, but I would give it a shot. I skinned upstream from Cougar Lake and zig zagged steeply up the northwest ridge of Many Trails Peak to gain Ptarmigan Creek. I then followed the east side of Ptarmigan Creek through open burn zone all the way to Dot Creek.

I then skinned up Dot Creek up low angle terrain, and had excellent views of Many Trails and Johnny Peaks. Interestingly the upper west faces were completely scoured down to rock up to the ridgelines. Below the prow of the east ridge of Dot I paused to see if I could make out any cornices on the East Face of Ptarmigan, but it was still too far away. So I stuck to the plan and continued skinning up to Dot Lake.

At 7,200ft I cut north and followed a gentle slope to gain the east ridge. The sun was getting low and I knew I would be doing some night hiking above treeline. But the views were great. I could finally see Ptarmigan Peak and realized the entire ridge from Dot to Ptarmigan was scoured down to rock. So unfortunately there would be no skiing from the summit. However, I held out hope that maybe I could take a shortcut down the east face if it looked good. So I strapped my skis to my pack, put on crampons, and started scrambling along the ridge.

It was slow going scrambling in crampons, but I eventually got to a flat area below Dot and turned north. As I got out from behind Dot I was blasted by a strong west wind that nearly knocked me over. Maybe the skis sticking up from my pack acted like a sail. I worked my way over to the west edge of the ridge and peered down at tarn 7045, the most remote point in the Pasayten Wilderness. I had hiked in to that tarn in October in a big 55 mile nonstop 36-hour push, but hadn’t been able to see it in the daylight. The view now was excellent, with the sun setting over the mountains and storm clouds rolling in from the west.

There was no skiable terrain above the col since it was all rocks, and I considered ditching my skis there to get on the way back. But it was so windy I worried they might blow off the mountain, and I would likely have trouble finding them again in the dark. So I ended up just carrying them.

I stopped to take a bunch of pictures, then continued up. I stayed on the rocks and avoided the occasional snow drifts, and eventually staggered onto the summit at 6:36pm. There was just barely enough light left to not yet need a headlamp. I admired the amazing view south to Lago, Carru and Osceola to the south and Lost and Lake to the southeast. I had thought it would be cool to dig out the register and sign in, but there was surprisingly deep snow on the summit. It was also pretty cold (7F), windy, and very dark. So I only stayed about 30 seconds before heading back down. I had also planned to text Alden from the summit, but the thought of digging out my inreach and fumbling around to type something wasn’t very appealing.

On the way down I tried to plunge step in the occasional snow patches. Down at the col I briefly considered taking a shortcut down the east face, but that seemed like a bad idea navigating an unknown route at night. So I continued back towards Dot Mountain. I briefly also considered going and tagging the summit of Dot. If it were a Bulger I would have certainly done it, but it was just a bonus peak and I was pretty cold and miserable up in the heavy wind at night, so I scrapped that idea and kept heading down.

I soon reached the end of the east ridge from Dot and finally got back into skiable terrain. I reached my tracks and put the skis on at about 7,500ft and there began my amazing 2,500ft powder descent. I made dollar signs around my up tracks, carving fun turns through the wide open forest. It was thrilling backcountry skiing down at night. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any good video in the dark, though.

By 8:45pm I reached Ptarmigan Creek and the terrain leveled enough that I switched back to skins. I texted Alden my new ETA and continued following my tracks back down. I transitioned back to skiing to briefly descend the northwest ridge of Many Trails Peak, then skinned back to camp by 10:45pm. Alden had dug out a magnificent trench down to dirt and melted a bunch of snow. I laid out my bivy sack, ate some Ramen, and soon went to bed.

That night it snowed a little bit but my bivy sack kept me mostly dry. We were up and moving by 6am Sunday morning. I kind of wished this trip was like a volcano where the way in is all up and the way out is all down, but unfortunately we had a lot of ascent to get out. Luckily, though, the trail was already broken.

Travel was easy in the morning, but by mid day the temperature had risen enough that we were having serious glopping issues on our skins. I think this was the first warmup of the season and all the powder was getting very sticky. I actually just took the skins off and scooted up in ski mode, the glopping was so bad. We did manage to get some fun turns back down from Lucky Pass, and then scooted back up to Eightmile by 2:30pm. Interestingly, I saw a skunk running around near eightmile pass. I thought they were nocturnal and should be hibernating, but maybe the warm weather made it think it was spring.

We made quick time of the ski back down from Eightmile Pass, and were back to the snowmobile by 3:30pm. Not surprisingly there were no other tracks there. We quickly loaded up and Alden held on to get towed. I was still nervous about the sidehilling, even though I’d done it three times now. I slowly towed Alden to the sidehilling section, then leaned way over hanging my leg as far out as I could to keep the sled upright.

I guess it wasn’t as bad now that it was in the daylight and there wasn’t blowing snow. I made it through no problem and then we loaded Alden’s skis back on the snowmobile on the other side and continued both on the seat. It was fast going on the flat section of road, and we were back at the sno park by 5:15pm and soon driving back home.

Video of the trip:

 

 

© 2021, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.