I completed the full Mosquito-Tenmile traverse from north to south, which is opposite of the traditional direction. This adds about 3,000ft of additional ascent compared to prior efforts. Aside from the aesthetic appeal of starting low and ending high, this direction also puts all of the difficult scrambling earlier in the route, making it easier to hit it in the daylight with fresh legs.
I started at the paved bike path in Frisco at 3:15:18 AM on Saturday, making it about halfway through the Tenmile Traverse by sunrise. I did a quick out-and-back to Pacific Tarn to refill water in the morning, then met a friend on the ridgeline between Tweto and Mosquito around sunset to resupply on food and water. I also switched to a different GPS watch at this point (the Strava activity is a combination of those two tracks). I continued through easier terrain in the dark and made it to the Weston Pass sign at 4:07:22 AM Sunday morning.
I summited all 34 named peaks, and aimed to stay as close as practical to the ridge top in between. The biggest exception to this was from Atlantic to Fletcher, where I followed the example of previous finishers by dropping a few hundred feet off the ridge to avoid some major class 5 difficulties. My only notable deviation from past attempts was not doing the quick out-and-back to Buckskin's historical summit, as its true summit was found to be located conveniently on the main ridge crest via LiDAR in 2021.
I had a good idea of the terrain ahead of time, having hiked the majority of the ridge in pieces across prior years. It's deceptively difficult compared to what the stats suggest, comprising mostly ankle-breaking rock hopping, with just enough scrambling mixed in to keep things interesting, and even a few glorious stretches of grassy tundra. The biggest unknown for me was the stretch from Atlantic to Wheeler, which certainly had more than its fair share of surprises. Drift to Wheeler in particular was unrelentingly long and difficult, with certainly a few class 4+ moves mixed in.
Conditions on the day were pretty horrendous for September. I solidified plans a few days out based on the forecast showing no more than 5% chance for precipitation chance for a couple hours on Saturday afternoon. I knew there would be some lingering fresh snow on northern aspects, but correctly predicted that the majority of the route would be dry by Saturday morning. What I didn't anticipate was on-and-off light snowfall all day Saturday and into the early hours on Sunday. While I'll gladly take this over thunderstorms, it resulted in incredibly slippery conditions whenever the sun (often) went away, including all of Saturday night/Sunday morning. I probably lost the better part of an hour just clambering over wet rocks in otherwise easy terrain.
I felt pretty good physically throughout the entire attempt. I was able to eat and drink a lot of calories in the first half, although this did become a big struggle on the later night section, as expected. My legs felt surprisingly great the whole time, with a bit of normal fatigue but no significant pain. My biggest difficulty was with the altitude: even being fairly well-acclimated, breathing hard above 13,000ft for 20 hours straight is always going to be brutal on the lungs. By the halfway point, I was already starting to slow down on the uphill sections due to difficulty breathing, and this turned into quite the sufferfest on the last handful of nighttime peaks.
Overall this is a fantastically challenging route across a very topographically unique ridge. I'm surprised it's not far more popular than it is! I'm certain the FKT will go under 24 hours soon enough, and I wouldn't be shocked to see times pushing 20 hours some day.