We arose to a crystal clear morning, excited to push even deeper into this remote wilderness.  Our goal at the end of the day was to be at White Rocks Lake, which is the most remote spot on the Ptarmigan Traverse and, not surprisingly, the most stunningly scenic.  We followed the trail that we’d scouted the day before, made our way through talus, and wound our way through cliffs along easy grass slopes until we were way up on the broad alpine ridge under LeConte peak.  We had ideas to climb LeConte Peak but it didn’t look too exciting from here and decided to save our energy for a more remote peak, namely Old Guard.

The trail faded away up here and we spread out a bit searching for the best passage.  We probably went higher than we needed to but after passing through much talus, cliffs, and snow, we got to a point where we could see a clear path to the LeConte glacier.  It was mostly through snow so we donned our crampons and headed out.

It’s kind of tricky to see how you get from the LeConte Glacier to the other side where the South Cascade Glacier was.  We had to travel quite a long way on the LeConte Glacier to a high col that’s right next to Sentinel Peak.  We came to a point on the glacier where we weren’t exactly sure where to go.  To the left was a jumble of crevasses and seracs that might have a passage, straight a head was another jumble that looked impassable, and to the right was an unsavory muddy and steep gully along the moat to squeeze through.  We tried the left route and soon realized that all potential routes ended in crevasses to wide to pass.  We then tried the straight route and found that what looked impassable was done with a short steep snow step.  If that route wasn’t available, I guess you’d have to climb through the moat somehow or descend and try to pick your way through upward the crevasse maze.  Fortunately, it was just a few steep steps aided by the picks of our ice axes to arrive on top.

From here, it was casual glacier travel to the col that led to the South Cascade Glacier.  Just before arriving at the col, we dropped our packs and headed out for Old Guard Peak which looked really close to us, at the top of the ice cap.  We skipped over several thin crevasses on the way up.  There’s a snow finger that leads pretty far up on the south west side of Old Guard Peak.  It’s pretty steep and there’s a bergshrund underneath it.  So, I found this a little intimidating with this loose Cascade snow.  Exiting on to rock was tricky too because the rock was very sloping.  We ended up using an ice screw to hold our packs, ice axes, and crampons.  Armed with our cameras, we scrambled up solid and exposed 4th class terrain to easy 3rd class terrain.  On the top, we had the best views of the trip!  Old Guard is situated in a great spot with great angles to view the Chickamin Glacier.

The view back on to the LeConte glacier revealed a fish-gill design of crevasses.   We descended and were soon back at our packs.  There were also some other Ptarmigan Traversers at the col, two parties of two.  The view down to the big South Cascade Glacier revealed terrain that looked a good bit easier than we had been on.  We all headed out for the top of the glacier where we would then descend to White Rocks lake, our third camp.  Michael and I had ideas to climb Sentinel Peak though.

We were on a snowfield well above the glacier and the terrain was easy enough that we didn’t need crampons.  We crossed plenty of talus and slabs as well.  Michael and I dropped our packs again and headed up the grassy slopes of Sentinel Peak.  Michael spotted a bear pawing his way up the glacier.  We climbed maybe a third of the way up the peak and realized that we were pretty tired.  We rationalized that we should continue to save our strength and that the views wouldn’t be too different than Old Guard (not any better, that’s for sure), and it was getting pretty loose.  So we stopped, rested, then turned around.

The route down to White Rocks was a steep one, but not too long, thankfully.  The turquoise lakes are picturesque.  Across the valley (the west fork of the Agnes) we had a 5000 foot view, from the base of the valley, to the glacier slabs-lined with steep waterfalls, to the broken glaciers, to the high rocky peaks.  There were three other Ptarmigan parties at the lakes here.  Michael picked a spot next to the lake but I wanted to have the big view so I picked a small bivy site overlooking the valley and up to the peaks.  We all got together as the sun was going down to share Michael’s bottle (“gimme that bottle!”) of White Tequila – a great bedtime drink that warms the stomach! – and chat.  The climb up the Dana Glacier and to Spire Col looked quite intimidating from here.  That was the plan for tomorrow.