Beginning at the West Ten Sleep TH on Saturday, Aug 29th, I quickly made my way through the first 7.5 miles of rolling trail to Misty Moon lake. A mile later I began up the drainage into the boulder and talus section. Early on in this section I chose to follow cairns that wound their way up the left side of the drainage to the first false summit. It was slow going due to all of the scrambling, but I kept pushing to the summit. At the summit I took a little extra time to take in calories as I was a bit deficient on the ascent.
On the descent, I decided to take the cairned route to the right instead of following my same track down. I was pleasantly surprised to find a whispering of a trail mixed into the boulders, and was able to descend at a decent pace. I wish I would have known to take this route on the ascent as it would have saved me quite a bit of time.
After descending I filtered some water and then hopped back onto the trail. At this point I was way behind my planned time and I decided to take a comfortable pace back to the trailhead, stopping only once for a bull moose.
Overall, I think this time could be brought down a lot if someone were to take the right-leading route up the drainage. Also, following Aaron Robson’s male FKT beta, this route should be done earlier in the season so that the boulder and talus section can be ran on top of the snow. All things considered though, I’m pleased with how things went.
Cloud Peak Female Unsupported FKT: 7:46:52, 23.32 miles, 5,436’ of elevation gain.