North Cascades Ski Mountaineering: Pickets Traverse 2022

"Picket Lines for my Wicked Climbs"

By Jed Porter IFMGA Guide, March 1, 2022

As they say, "ignorance is bliss". But do you want your mountain guide operating under that premise? Apparently some do. Dave isn't the first client I've had that wants to "on-sight" with me, but he is surely the most ambitious.

How'd we end up skiing across the Pickets anyway? We live two states apart, and neither of our home states touch Washington. To meet up in the Pickets we each drove past thousands of miles of amazing ski mountaineering. Ski traversing the Pickets isn't an obvious or convenient choice for anyone, much less a Tahoe skier and his Tetons guide. In this case, the "inconvenience" is exactly the appeal. In the Covid age, with international travel so darn complicated, getting to the North Cascades was about as wild and far as we could reach (get this: I personally book-ended this May of 2021 North Cascades ski trip with two trips into the Alaska Range. Neither AK trip had nearly the same wilderness feel that the Pickets Traverse did).

Wilderness is worth doing exactly because of the "inconvenience".

We arranged a car shuttle and launched from Hannegan Pass trailhead around 3am, with 4-5 days of food and fuel. Ruth Creek provided dark navigation, NBA-arena scale avalanche debris, dangling creek snow bridges, biting cold, and those extra precious border-country starry skies. A summit ski of Ruth Mountain provided our first and last real glimpse west to the "familiar" terrain around Shuksan and Baker. The miles of skiing off Ruth towards Chilliwack Pass are blissfully unmemorable. Musta been good skiing if we don't remember it... That first day we finished with a Mineral Mountain climb and ski that was as steep, bushy, and sloppy as Ruth was gentle, open and firm. Camp 1, head of Easy Creek.

Day 2 dawned cold, clear, dark, and providing our last glimpse of human evidence for 25 miles; a flyover of Musk's eerie Starlink "Constellation". What would a 20 year old Beckey have thought of such a sight? Climb onto Easy Ridge, long glide to the Imperfect Impasse, rocky shenanigans around this gash, all sprinting to beat the heat to Perfect Pass. There, some breaths; the ironically named landmarks are behind us...

The rest of today's route ahead (or so we thought...) would be kinder and gentler; skin across Challenger Glacier, scoot to this legendary peak's skier high point - spitting distance, but rocky climbing, from the true summit- and bomb into Luna Creek.

Let's slow the narrative here. Luna and MacMillan Creeks are the "meat" of Pickets ski challenge and navigation. Or so we would learn. The "depth" of ski history in the Pickets is misleading and fascinating. Everyone comes home from Pickets ski excursions, it would seem, with profound recollections and the desire to record those memories. There are amazing stories around the web of Pickets ski traverses. In researching our route and planning our strategy, we made some basic assumptions. With any other mountain route pioneered 40 years ago, if you found x number of comprehensive trip reports in the usual places (in addition to a full guidebook description) you can safely assume that there have been 10x unreported completions with attendant community discussion and route/logistical refinement. In this case, as deduced by conversations both before and after our excursion, as it pertains to ski traverse history in the Pickets, "what you see is what you get". All the known traverses are recorded. And there aren't that many recorded. The route options employed are many and varied. In short, there is no consensus on the best way to get across the head of these gnarly Pickets main drains. Luna and MacMillan creek drainages put up the good fight.

We got down to Luna Creek via a fall-line route that started in a series of bowls and ended with the rowdiest section of forested ski mountaineering (SKI MOuntaineering in a FOrest... "skimofo"?) we've ever encountered. If sustained 50 degree couloirs are intense, sustained 50 degree forest skiing is next level. Especially when that forested slope is melting out and turning punchy. "Tree skiing" has a whole new meaning.

At the bottom of Luna Creek we took a nap and hydrated through the heat of the day, finishing this second big effort with a sunset climb to Luna Col. What a place to camp and wake! Pickets in all directions!

Day 3 started with a zig-zagging, intricate, involved, serious (and seriously firm...) "descent" into MacMillan Creek. We took the 2010 McBrian/Hummell variation, 'cept everyone else, it would seem, did this variation in the other direction. As is often the case, complicated terrain is easier to figure out "bottom-up". Nonetheless, we navigated the in-n-out fog and ripped rowdy runnels all the way to the bottom of MacMillan Creek. The debris that reached valley bottom was the Pickets' greatest gift to us on this trip. It isn't always so smooth, we understand. It's a different world down there in the budding green; a land of burbling brooks and tongues of mega debris. We wouldn't stay long; impending weather was sneaking in. We had to get back up on the ridges before it rained and the sky clag densified. It worked; we raced straight up to Macmillan Spire col, hitting the skyline in zero vis and the first drops of rain. Our traverse around Elephant Butte to Torrent Col was an ugly, wet, skin-failing, up-and down-and-round-and-round race pitting dry base-layers against terrain that proved more complicated than we anticipated; the terrain won. Nothing was dry at that final night's col camp.

Jed’s ski route through the Picket Range North Cascades National Park

We were wet to the core. Even my brain was a little soggy, apparently. Dave watched across the 'mid, incredulous and powerless, as his guide proceeded to try and "fix" the dinner-time drippy canopy with a running stove burner. You, and Dave, aren't wrong to find that utterly mystifying and ineffective. We all found it ineffective, in the end. A huge hole in the sil-nylon barely protecting us from the North Cascades' best did nothing to enhance spirits or reduce occupant water content. There was some "logic" to my choice, but not enough.

Our final day dawned as the day before ended; raining, foggy, with temps right at the freezing point. We climbed onto Stetattle Ridge and motored along its corniced, foggy crest. At the North Stetattle Peak we saw our first sign of human life since the weird satellites 25 miles and 60 hours of life-altering wilderness transit prior. We followed the tracks of those day-hikers, eventually joining more and more tracks and increasing resolution in the summer trail situation, all the way down to Diablo.

Again, I can't emphasize enough the depth of this wilderness experience. Literally, the central AK range, with its dialed air service, is more accessible than the high Pickets. We saw literally no sign of humans (no planes, no cell service, no tracks, no trash, no trails) from Easy Ridge to Stetattle Ridge. Epic stuff. Further, we managed to tick the first guided completion of this traverse, the 8th overall known completion and the fastest completion known. At the end of 2021 Dave called the year his "best mountain year ever" and I called it my best guiding year ever. The Pickets isn't all we did (together or respectively) but it is a top tier highlight!

Jed Porter is an internationally certified American Mountain Guide. He calls the “Wydaho's Teton region” home. In the Summer you can find him doing Grand Teton Laps or hanging out in a Wind River basecamp, then it is on to deep powder ski mountaineering all winter long. The Mountain Bureau is lucky to work with Jed on special trips like the Picket Traverse.

If you are interested in starting your journey toward a rowdy “Jed-venture” like this one, The Mountain Bureau’s Mount Baker Ski Mountaineering Course is a great place to start. This course will jump-start your ski mountaineering experience, covering skills like roped glacier travel on skis, winter camping, and crevasse rescue using skinny ropes and modern ascension systems. All of this education is followed with a summit of Mt. Baker and descent via the famed Roman Wall. Your next adventure awaits!

Jed PorterApril 6, 2022backcountry ski, North Cascades