Devin and I had been eyeing this route that Ben and Chris Dewey drew up for a few years now. We had been waiting for a perfect window - long daylight hours, low snow, and good rain/thunderstorm forecasts. This all lined up during the 2026 4th of July weekend. For the sake of weight, we decided to forgo a tent and stove. Iodine tablets were used for water purification and the perfect weather allowed us to cowboy camp each night. We each had 3 liters of water capacity and ended up using trail runners the entire duration of the trip.
Neither of us had done any portion of this route before so we spent a good amount of time researching the ridgelines and route options. In brief, the strategy is stay on the West side; I don't think we skirted on East side of the ridge a single time. Pretty much all gendarmes can be bypassed on the West and sometimes it is ideal to drop down even further into the basin to avoid major tricky scrambling sections.
We began the first day at the Surprise Lake TH and quickly made it up to Eagles Nest via a slightly alternative route due to snow. From there to Powell was also slightly modified due to snow. On Powell, you have a great view of Ripsaw Ridge. Peak C looks huge and intimidating; the rock on the direct NW ridge to C is a bit loose, and again, snow made us go up an alt route. This was certainly a major technical crux of the trip and we found ourselves on loose exposed 5.6-5.7. The traverse to C Prime was hampered by snow again. Instead of the 3rd/4th class bypass route, we ended up finding a line about 20 feet left of the Dewey line (their Photo 9) that went at about 5.5. The good news was after this point, snow did not cause any other significant issues on the route. The rest of Ripsaw Ridge to Peak H was tedious but the rock was mostly solid and we quickly learned to save time by bypassing the majority of gendarmes on the West side. Peak D to E stood out as the most gendarmed portion of the traverse, but the difficulty after C Prime is all generally the same. After Peak H, we dropped to the 11,200' near Upper Piney Lake. We were able to fill up on water here and bypass the notoriously slow The Saw section of the ridgeline.
Day 2 began with a quick ascent to get back up to Peak J. We found the Jigsaw traverse (J -> P) to be easy and straightforward. The Rockinghorse (P -> West Partner) had trickier route finding and is more punishing to stay ridge-proper. We had one scary exposed 5.7 pitch near the ridgeline that motivated us to stay further West and primarily skirt around all major gendarmes. During the Partner Traverse, we dropped down into the basin at 12,100' to speed things up and bypass the slowest technical section of the ridge. The descent off East Partner all the way to Climbers Point was nice and grassy and went by quickly. Just like the Dewey mission, we also encountered issues getting down off Climbers Point. There was a huge cornice above the ideal gully to drop into and during our time of year, the entire gully was too filled with snow to descend. We dropped down an extremely loose and sketchy rock rib but would urge future parties to look into a better route for this section. At this point we were hustling with the goal of Deluge Lake and a stretch goal to make it to Snow Lake before sunset. The ridge between North and Grand Traverse showed some signs of a use trail and this continued for the rest of the day. The route in the afternoon went by quick as it never got past 4th class; we made it to Sleet about an hour before dark and found a dreamy spot to bivy near Snow Lake.
The third day was a bit of a talus slog until we got past Silverthorne. At that point, the terrain significantly eased up and was a trail or class 2 for the rest of the trip. Coming down off Red (our 25th peak), we saw the very first people of the entire trip. Eccles and Buffalo were pleasant peaks to end on and we were able to jog down the lower portion of the Buffalo trail. Final time clocked in at 2 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes. We were pretty stoked about our time and celebrated with some McDonalds soft serve in Silverthorne which was a nice treat after our bar-based diet for the entire trip.
Huge thanks to Ben and Chris Dewey for creating such an inspired line! There is always going to be some level of contrivance on which peaks to hit along a ridgeline traverse, but we thought their list had logical criteria and hit all of the major summits. Again, we're quite happy with this time, but there's significant room for improvement if you're able to scout the line ahead of time or are simply faster/ have better endurance than me.
Day 1 (7/2/2026)
- 5:54am - Surprise Lake TH
- 10:03am - Eagles Nest
- 12:21pm - Mount Powell
- 1:45pm - Peak C
- 2:16pm - Peak C Prime
- 3:02pm - Peak D
- 4:10pm - Peak E
- 4:56pm - Peak F
- 5:37pm - Peak G
- 6:15pm - Black Benchmark
- 6:41pm - Peak H
- 7:51pm - Arrive at Camp near Upper Piney Lake
Day 2 (7/3/2026)
- 5:36am - Depart Camp Near Upper Piney Lake
- 6:38am - Peak J
- 7:19am - Peak P
- 8:42am - West Partner Peak
- 10:35am - East Partner Peak
- 12:51pm - Vista Peak
- 1:28pm - Mount Solitude
- 1:54pm - Climbers Point
- 4:27pm - North Traverse
- 5:36pm - Grand Traverse
- 6:39pm - Palomino Point
- 6:54pm - Mount Valhalla
- 8:09pm - Sleet Peak
- 8:46pm - Arrive at Camp near Snow Lake
Day 3 (7/4/2026)
- 6:04am - Depart Camp near Snow lake
- 7:15am - Hail Peak
- 8:36am - Mount Silverthorne
- 10:48am - Red Peak
- 12:43pm - Eccles Peak
- 1:42pm - Buffalo Mountain
- 2:37pm - Buffalo Mountain Trailhead