Ptarmigan Ridge — Tuesday, Sep. 23, 2025

I left the Artist Point parking lot at 3:10am for a starlight hike and to see a sunrise at the East Portal. At that time, there was no local smoke apparent. There was a darkened horizon looming to the south which by dawn pushed a thick layer of smoke into the valleys to the south and east. Before the sun caused the smoky haze to rise, the deck of smoke was sharply separated from the cleaner air above giving the early dawn scene a very prehistoric ice age sort of look. Luckily, the East Portal and Baker scenes remained clear of smoke and haze for sometime after sunrise. On the return, the haziness slowly increased as I went lower in elevation and farther east to the parking lot. The upper reaches of Baker were dusted with a small amount of new snow from Sunday’s little storm. This dusting created an unusual pattern of tiger stripes on the Park Glacier Headwall. There was only one small stretch (maybe 50 ft long) of snow anywhere on the route. In the dark this snow bank was rock hard and very slippery ice inbound, but on the return, the sun had quickly made passage across the snow bank very easy.