This route has been on my radar for a bit, and with every weekend seeming to rain, I finally decided to take a chance on a decent weather weekend. Thankfully, the thunderstorms held off until late that evening.
The rest of my family were hiking out to Watersprite Lake, so we had a later start than I would have liked, leaving the yellow gate just before 8:45 am. I made good time up the Watersprite Trail to the Demon Peak turnoff, although it was very hot along the old FSR. As I passed through the subalpine, I snacked on whatever blueberries I could grab and gained elevation to Demon Peak. There's a bit of descent off Demon, but the track was fairly easy to follow until the notch just before the final grind to Dreadnought. I got fairly turned around in the trees along the ridge and ended up doing a bit more up and down than I originally planned, trying to find a good route through it. With the bushwhacking out of the way, I pushed up to Dreadnought Peak, scrambled down the small saddle and up to the peak itself. Quickly reversing my route, I headed off toward Watersprite Tower. From here on out, the route was new to me; I had originally intended this to be a pre-run before trying for the FKT, but I was making good time and decided to keep pushing. A small, short gully led past the bump on the ridge, and I was glad it was an easy way to bypass the gain and loss.
I headed out to Watersprite Tower, not quite sure what I would find. I realized, as I stood on the true summit, that I'd done the 5th-class portion of the scramble without knowing it and bypassed the North Tower completely. I snapped a quick photo of the view of Watersprite Lake, then turned back and headed off to Gibson Peak. I made some errors getting off the backside here and dropped lower into the basin than I planned; this meant a tiny bit more gain and loss, as well as some boulder hopping, as I headed over to Martin Peak. On the summit, I grabbed a quick bar from the back of my vest, stowed my poles, and started heading down to the lake. My family was arriving at the lake as I passed, and I waved a quick hello before heading down the trail. There were a ton of hikers heading up here, and I kept having to dart past them as I ripped down. As I ran down the last km, my watch alarm went off; I had set it for what I remembered Jessie's FKT being: 5 hrs and 15 min. I felt devastated because I had come so close; it wasn't until the drive out that I double-checked the site and realized I had shaved a slim 12 minutes off the previous FKT.
I don't doubt this route can be done faster, and I'm excited to see what the next generation has in store for us!