Trip: Sinister, Dome, and the Hanging Gardens -

Date: 8/16/2008

Trip Report:
TR: Ptarmigan Traverse (August 10 – 16, 2008)




Wolf spider with egg case. Koolaid Lake


“I wonder how many people have died of dehydration because they were afraid to drink from streams.”

“My only rule is that I don’t drink water with dead cows in it.”

“I won’t drink water that’s on fire.”

Don and I exchanged bemused looks after our brief encounter with a Canadian/German pair who had stopped drinking during a heat wave because they’d broken their water filter. We assured them that it was probably safe to drink from mountain streams, and that it might even be more beneficial than self inflicted kidney failure.

Several miles down river we found the German’s toiletry kit spread out, abandoned or forgotten, on the side of the trail, complete with styling gel, hair brush, hand mirror, fingernail clippers, 3 razors, 3 tubes of sunscreen (that’s gonna leave a mark), and 2 large bars of soap. My nails DID need clipping. No conditioner, though. Damn.

The Ptarmigan Traverse attracts all types, including two grizzled curmudgeons with matching blue boots and thirst for the remote and spectacular.

Our plan was a good one: exchange car keys with a team of 2 (Ivan and JoshK) headed northward; we drive their rig home, they drive ours. In addition, they would leave mountain bikes stashed at the Downey Creek trailhead. Neither team followed it, but it was a good plan anyway.

We never actually connected; the impetuous boyz came, dropped a note and a car key in my mail slot, and left for the woods on Sunday afternoon. Don and I headed out Monday morning for Cascade Pass. Both teams held fast to a hope that the other team would follow through. I predicted we’d meet up with our contrarians at White Rock Lakes.

Our first sign that we were not alone on the traverse came in the form of an orange splat of what appeared to be someone’s half digested dinner and 3 cigarette butts at Cache Col, probably the maximum range from the truck for white trash on the traverse. At Koolaid Lake we stumbled on an empty pack and week’s worth of food conveniently yardsaled out for the local fauna, including a liter of what looked to be whiskey. That posed a moral dilemma for Don; is it better karma to refuse this gift from the universe or steal? Or, at least I thought it posed a moral dilemma.

“I had no problem taking it, but I thought we might run into them later.”

At Art’s Knoll we rendezvoused with our goat chaperone and continued to a beautiful bivvy just beyond Spider Col.



Our shadow near Art’s Knoll


Our goat milled around until the following morning, hoping for a taste of night water, and finally left us as we dropped through the col to climb Formidable. Don and I took separate, low 5th class gullies on the mountain’s south face to the summit, then scrambled the bunny route down. The summit, by the way, is the far left pinnacle. Complicated route descriptions aside, that’s probably all anyone needs to know to find their way up. We then moved camp to a gorgeous bench just beyond and above Yang Yang Lakes, just in time for the clouds to settle in.



Formidable Glacier




Hairy, well endowed man leaps over Formidable



You never know when Don will drop into a yoga pose. Formidable descent




Paintbrush. South face of Formidable




Paintbrush. South face of Formidable



The following morning we gained LeConte’s summit in one brutal half hour push. The fog broke for ten minutes on the summit. From there we traversed the Dana Glacier and decided to scale Old Guard and skip the far more rotten Sentinal. This fun little peak offered one of the most incredible panoramas in the Cascades.



LeConte rendered in rock and cloud




Sandwort. LeConte Peak




Tiny sedums. West face of Old Guard




Above the Middle Cascade Glacier. Spire Point area in the background




Above White Rock Lakes. Dome Peak in the background


As we descended steep snow to White Rock Lakes, we heard a hoot. Sure enough, it was the boyz, playing a backcountry version of Battleship with rocks and floating lake ice. Amazingly, JoshK had managed to shoehorn his Audi Quattro all the way to the Downey Creek trailhead, bypassing the Suiattle River Road’s two major washouts via narrow ATV trails, eliminating the need to tack on 12 miles of biking to our trip’s end. The moon came up, a deer wandered in, shooting stars began to fall, and the magic continued.



White Boyz rocking out at the White Rocks




Crab cloud. White Rock Lakes




Moonrise over Sinister. White Rock Lakes




Nocturnal visitor, with Dome Peak in the background. White Rock Lakes



White Rock Lakes is where the truly spectacular part of the traverse begins, but most folks shunt this section and head for Bachelor Creek. Our plan was to climb Dome and Sinister, backtrack, and do the same. Don came up with the idea of carrying over Sinister, descending the East Ridge, and going out via the Hanging Gardens, Canyon and Image Lakes, and the Suiattle River Trail. I’d have to stretch my food for such a significant increase in effort (same number of days), but, never having seen the Hanging Gardens, I was all for it.

And stretch I did. I spent the afternoons of the next three days trudging through a hypoglycemic funk, brow furrowed, scowl affixed, surviving the heat by soaking my hat and shirt in streams. It was worth it, but I’m not in any hurry to repeat the performance.



Negotiating the Dana Glacier en route to Dome Peak




Pine sawyer beetle (monochamus) with hitchhiker. Dana Glacier




Banded gneiss. Dana Glacier




Rockfall. Dana Glacier



We climbed Dome and Sinister the following day, surrounded by fantastic white granite spires and walls. Dome presented no difficulties, but Sinister’s West Ridge was well guarded by a gaping bergschrund. Rather than cross a sketchy snow block, we opted to drop into the moat and rock climb around it’s left side (low fifth) to gain the Dome/Sinister col (snow bivvy only), then took the ridge up directly from the col (some fifth). To our pleasant surprise, the original summit register was still up there.



Penalty for shitting all over the 8600’ bivvy: mummification. Dome Peak




8600’ col. Dome Peak




8600’ bivvy. Dome Peak




Approaching the summit of Dome Peak







Descending the Chikamin Glacier, just below the 8600’ col




Sizing up the bergschrund below the Dome/Sinister col




On Sinister’s summit, sporting a bootied feather boa




Sinister’s original summit register



By then, we’d abandoned our plan to descend the unknown East Ridge with full packs and a 30 m rope and drop directly from the west side col instead, preferably in the afternoon to take advantage of the softer snow. We terraformed a couple of bivvy spots about 1500’ down from the col.

The following morning we dropped down a steep, treed buttress almost to the valley bottom, then traversed several hundred yards of steep, tall timber with a slide alder finish to gain an obvious talus draw to Ross Pass.

The fabled Hanging Gardens, with flowers in full bloom and incredible views of Dome and Sinister, didn’t disappoint. If ever there is an Elysian Fields for mountain people, this is it.



Dome and Sinister from the Hanging Gardens


Once through Totem Pass, the route became familiar to me from previous visits. We camped just north of the Image Lake col our final evening, enjoying an expansive view of the Bath Lakes ridge, with Dome and Sinister as a backdrop. After that, it was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, over and over and over and over….



Calling card. Canyon Lake


The car! Plagued by heat and hunger, raw toes, chafed crotch, burned lips, a painful boil on my chin, and creaky back, complaining knee, and generally shitty attitude, I was really glad to finally see it.

Don turned the ignition key. Dead. No indicator lights, no sound, nothing. Luckily, JoshK had told us about the battery jumper he carried behind the driver’s seat. We got it out.

“Wait a minute. This is just an air compressor. I wonder if Josh realizes that.”

“Shit. We’ve only got one mountain bike in the car”. The other was stowed in the bushes 12 miles downriver.

Don turned the ‘compressor’ around to find a complete set of battery jumping instructions on the opposite side. Yeah, baby.

It’s hard to beat finishing up a long trip with some four wheeling in someone else’s relatively new Audi Quattro. Street tires required a certain forward momentum. Don drove, I provided videography.




Having done every variation save Agnes Creek, the Hanging Gardens route is arguably the most spectacular way to complete the Ptarmigan Traverse. Drop JoshK a line beforehand; maybe he’ll loan you his Audi.



Gear Notes:
Someone else's Audi Quattro

Kool Stuff,Nice Close-up's Pic's!!

Sweet. Nice to see different variations of the Ptarmigan this year. BTW, glad to see our work on the 8600-ft camp is being well used. How did you like the lower 'kitchen' area? I'm not much for doing that sort of thing, but with this camp here already, it seemed appropriate to make it a better place to camp.

Anyhow, sweet TR and nice pics.

nice flora and fauna pics

that 8600ft bivy is the shiznit.

nice pics.

Love the hitchhiker pic!

Awesome t.r. ...just the sort of thing I wander over to CC for. Thanks!
BTW: the macro shots are great!

thank christ you finally wrote dis pat, so i don't have to do any goddamn work but insert my own inane observations and photo-phucks

having probably only a third of the total years of our more esteemed northern team, josh and i of course completed fewer peaks - actually i was the official summiteer for the team, doing what peaks we did while he worked the soul-stealing box - we did spire peak, old guard and la cunt and woulda done formidable if it wasn't for us running out of nearly every-high-powered substance known to civilized man that had been keeping us propped up and away from writing coquetish insanities into our matching pink little pony diaries - when the shit hit the fan, we went from yank-my-yang lakes all the way to seattle on the last day - i chainsmoked broncos, whatever the hell they were, the whole way home

i'd like to thank my sponsors for the mega-transect, little debbie and high times magazine, for their substantial contributions to the health and well-being of the "athlete-warrior-poets" involved

our highlights were:
- the mother-teresa humping snaffle-phuck that ate my trekking pole straps at spire col
-pile driving my unhelmeted skull into a rock horn just below the summit of old guard, leaving a half inch of blood, hair and flesh on the stone and sending blood coarsing down my face while finishing the last few feet up (i especially like how, upon reaching civilization a while later, this scaberous wound combined w/ my seared red flesh, stank clothes and gibberous nature to render me indistinguishable from the ubiqitious homo redneckus methaddictus typical in the greater marblemount-me area)
- bald eagle flying around the buttress just south of white cock lakes
-navy jets roaring through the mountains just off the deck, including 200 feet over our camp near la cunt pass
-crushing b52 sized flies and feeding them to the ants
-smoking damn near 3 packs by the time we finally escaped downey and bastard creeks
-rapping off of red ledges down to kool-aid lakes
-frozen lake battleship ball
-and finally, olympic women's beach-volleyball, for providing me with plenty of material to keep me feeling "anxious" all trip

as good as the bastard creek trail gets - 22 after 4 on just another typical monday


impending weather tuesday night at spire col


me in the gloaming of tuesday night


wind-wracked glacier peak by the penultimate waxing of the moon


looking down on josh from near spire pt summit, northern part of the traverse (white-cock) off in the distance


so much to shoot, so little time


some friendly ants helping my kills crawl into their justly-fresh graves


the marmots are fucking evolving out there folks - this one laid bare the basic tenets of national-socialism for me while opening my beer w/ his plenty opposable thumb


tvash and don bow down before the alter we consecrated around our final cigarette


where they dumped all the 'cid left over after woodstock


slog'n'past the south-cascade glacier - note the mp3 which is no doubt playing morphine's "rope on fire" for one of the 733 or so times i listened to it this trip


tvash-inspired time-wasting above la cunt - lichen on quartz?


downclimbing the margins of the middle cascade glacier


the rotten-ass snowslabs of the redledges

I know I'm going to sound like an old grouch, but don't you think this bivi site is a little excessive? I mean, it must be visible from space!



And there's a flat glacier right next to it. The following picture was taken within spitting distance of the site in 1985. There was no prepared bivi site at that time, as far as I can remember.



I think this bivi site should be erased and people should go back to camping on snow here.

Great trip report otherwise. I love that area.

fuck camping on snow in the middle of summer - i'll give over my environmental destructions if nature will promise not to give me cancer or rot me in my grave

I'll let you guys argue this one. We were just passing through.

BTW, to save weight and bulk for longer trips in the height of summer (33L pack), I don't pack enough ground insulation to camp on snow; a tradeoff which works well for me but maybe isn't for everybody.

my ground-insulation for this trip consisted mostly of empty whiskey bottles and cigarette butts

josh, on the other-hand, had jim nelson's specially recommended totally-phat inflatable pad'n'pillow - another day or two and josh would have had a little "accident" no doubt...

what kind of camera do you have??
great, sharp, crisp pics! love em!

Black Peak day climb, 7/8/07. I was just passing through.



Here's what it looked like before I knocked the wall down and redistributed the rocks:



It's possible to erase these things, even if you don't carry a sleeping pad. Hands don't weigh anything.

To me Lowell, if people are going to camp in a small place, especially at a pass where lots of people go, you may as well make one small place established. You say on the snow, not a hell of a lot of snow there this year, just a big hole, but it doesn't really matter to me. If you are up there, have fun tearing it down. I'm sure someone else will put it back up, maybe even me. The older you get, things change. One day I'll be pissed to see things I like change in ways I'm not so happy with. Seen it already. Like I said, I made some improvements, and hell, I took others down along the way to the impatience of my brothers. I'm not always as pure as I want to be but no one ever is.

And yes, you are certainly carrying the grouchy old man mantle these days, but I guess some ones got to do it Maybe one day I'll take over for ya.

Hands may not weigh anything, but time costs something. Even if we were of a mind to destroy the bivvy, which we weren't, we did not have the time to do so. If you feel that strongly about it, by all means, have at it.

Lowell, you can destroy all the bivvies in all the popular spots in the Cascades, but consider the unintended consequences: They'll just be rebuilt, increasing the impact, or people will trash a greater number of sites, including vegetated ones. Like it or not, the Cascades are a more heavily used place than in several decades ago.

I prefer pristine as much as you do, but let's face it; the Ptarmigan and Dome Peak are now trade routes. Semi hardened camp spots seem to be a reasonable compromise to prevent wider damage in such areas.

As an aside; there's now a crevasse running through the middle of your 80's camp. Times change.

Thanks Pat and Jason. Good points.

I don't have a problem with hardening campsites in heavily used areas. To me that is less objectionable than imposing strict quotas. I just think we should always be asking ourselves when it's appropriate. In the past few years I've often put the rocks back after camping in a spot that seemed untouched, or only lightly touched, when I arrived. If you never do this the sites just proliferate without end. Maybe having a permanent bivi at Dome col is okay, but I asked the question because your picture revealed SO MUCH site modification. Where do we draw the line?

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." --Voltaire

So is the Ptarmigan your ashtray?

I agree. One should always seriously consider the impact of their "improvements" on the land and on those who follow, and try to keep those to a minimum. The Dome bivvy is definitely over the top (otherwise it probably wouldn't have been worthy of a photo); one side of me was a bit miffed, and the other side enjoyed the architectural luxury of such a comfy site perched so spectacularly.

Another pervasive affliction in the Cascades is the proliferation of cairns by folks who can't seem to find their way back down an obvious route without them and who are too lazy to kick them down once they've served their purpose. Note to these people: the rest of us can find our own way up, thanks, and we'd prefer to do it on a mountain that at least appears to be untrammeled. We don't really want to marvel at your string of "I was here" monuments.

Don't even get me started on fire rings...I usually take the time to erase those.

And to boot - often, the cairns are off-route. I think I'd rather not have cairns at all, since so many are wrong, and can lead one astray.

dude, a ptarmigan would be a difficult ashtray to use, given that it's all flying around and whatnot

we packed our butts out - did you not read up there where i mentioned i was using them in my sleep system?

Would it be time to discuss trundling now?

I can personally attest that Ivan is an environmentally responsible backcountry traveller, despite his plethora of traveling vices (noise pollution excepted, of course). I have never once seen him put out his cigarette on a ptarmigan. Or grouse, for that matter.

Fair enough. I wish all backcountry smokers were as environmentally responsible...