Coleman Pinnacle 8/4/2024

8/4/2024 10.0 miles 1400 feet

For some reason I do not have a strava record of this so that annoys me I don’t have the exact numbers.  This is one I’ve thought of doing since I started wanting to do summits.  I was going to do it myself last year towards the end of the year but I got far enough to were the snow started and I turned around.

This starts at Artist point and I was a beautiful day so of course everyone was out.  The first mile of Ptarmigan Traverse is always crowded these days but once you get past the Chain Lakes Loop turnoff the crowds die down.  I did not have any weight on me today and we didn’t bring any gear besides poles, Ross brought his boots. I really was not expecting much snow if any. We did actually encounter more than I thought after the switchbacks, there was a pretty solid boot back so I never felt that my Altra’s weren’t enough.  We sat and had lunch before starting our final accent up the pinnacle and looked for mountain goats (we saw some last year or the year before down in the valley to the East of the ridge).

As we ate, we kind of came up with a loose game plan, we were going to follow previous routes and come up the South side.  There was a snow patch that we thought we might be able to go above.  While we were eating, we saw another party of 4 start to head up and we saw how they traversed, it looked like super slow going so it made me nervous.  Anyways, poles out and we got started!  When we got closer, we saw that we were going to have to ascend in the snow, it was not possible to go about it because there was an erosional cut and getting on top of that was not a thing. The snow climb was easy (even with my trail runners).  We started the traverse North and that was also pretty straight forward, I was wondering why it seemed the other people struggled so much.

We got up and connected with the saddle and what a cool view! But also, daunting, the scrambled looked pretty rough to me.  It is a pretty exposed ridge.  Ross did not seem to worried and I know that everything is one step at a time and things start looking more manageable as you get closer.  The people in front of us looked about half way when we started.  Up we went!  Ross talked me through everything that needed it, but it was a straight forward scramble.  He guessed (since I am not a great judge yet) of mostly class 2nwith some 3 and the way we went, possible one class 4 which probably could have been avoided. 

We caught up to the other group right before the summit, they were older and cautious and it made sense now.  What a cool experience, great views at the top of Baker, Shuksan and everything in between.  We stayed and had some snacks, took some pictures, chatted with the other group, and headed down.

The way down was just as straight forward.  We made the decision to cut down at the saddle in the sandier material to skip the snow patch.  Probably a mistake, the sand was super compact and slippery and scary, not fun.  I thought it was going to be loose and we would be able to just ski down basically.  That was the worst part of the day for sure, we did make it down unfortunately not gracefully.  And back to the car! I loved this summit, one of my favorites of the year for sure.