Ptarmigan Ridge — Sunday, Jun. 18, 2017

North Cascades > Mount Baker Area

So just to be clear: there is no "trail" visible at this time of the year: over 10ft of snow everywhere, so you need to know where are you going or follow a GPS track for the summer route. The road to Artist Point was closed, so we hiked from the ski resort to Artist point along the winter trail, seeing the huge effort that was put to clear up most of road: it will be open on June 29th 2017! From Artist Point crossing a few valleys and following roughly the summer GPS track that I had we managed to do about 75% of the trail but we stopped short of the end of it mostly due to low visibility. Amazing intermittent views of Baker and Shuksan and huge snow walls, but luckily most of the cornices were broken and we didn't see any dangers from above: still keep your eyes open and give wide berth to some cliffs that are just when you need to drop down from the first col after you come from Artist Point. I suspect the snow will stay there for at least for another 1-2 month or so :)