The morning was another cloudy one but dry. We headed up the steep slopes to the ridge at the head of Bachelor Creek. We were anxious to see the avalanche devastation. After wending around a bit at the top of the basin, we came to our first scramble and slide through fallen trees. It wasn’t until we got into the forests though that the really thick avalanche debris appeared. We actually dealt with it pretty well, following a faint path here and there through sections of the mess. We did plenty of crawling under and over fallen trees and eventually ended up getting in the old growth forest on the right until we got beyond the debris. Then, we hiked down to the creek and spied the trail on the other side of the creek. Feeling proud and relieved, we continued our march out. We passed a party camping nearby who, I thought, said we were mostly done with the difficulties. This certainly wasn’t true. Though there is a trail the whole way, there’s plenty of invasive brush and log crawling and hopping. The descent out Bachelor Creek felt really long; I’d imagine the ascent would be quite taxing. Finally, we started switchbacking steeply down, a sure sign that we were entering the glacier valley of Downey Creek.
We rested at Downey Creek and finished up all of our food and prepared for the final trek out. Michael prepared an ugly brew of iodine water and gatorade that had the appearance of mud. He grimaced sourly when tasting it. I didn’t fill up my water here. I had a reasonable amount left and didn’t trust the water here. The Ptarmigan is so high and goes through so many glaciers that we filled our water directly from glacier streams which are pretty safe.
The hike out Downey was uneventful. We were back in deep dark forests winding in and out of smaller stream gullies feeding the larger creek. When we saw the signs announcing the wilderness boundary, we got really excited that we were finishing the climb. Then there was the road and the car. Man, it hit us suddenly – six days, six glaciers, five major passes, and five peaks later, we were done!
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One extra interesting tidbit of information is the effect that the Ptarmigan had on my hiking clothes! I抳e worn the same clothes for like the past 4 years, an REI pair of adjustable pants, a white North Face polypro long sleeve shirt, standard wool socks. Well, each one of these garments (including my backup pair of socks) pretty much disintegrated after getting back home. My pants randomly started forming holes (not rips)! Dirt was ground in sufficiently into my shirt such that nothing, save perhaps gasoline, would get it out. Of course, my socks had holes worn in them. So, I gave my great reliable apparel an honorable burial when I got home.
