Route: Jack Mountain (WA)

Submitted by Jason Hardrath… on Wed, 08/11/2021 - 12:45pm
Location
Washington, US
Distance
21 mi
Vertical Gain
11,450 ft
Description

Jack Mountain (9075') is the 17th highest mountain in Washington state. It is one of the 10 non-volcanic peaks in Washington State over 9,000 feet. It towers dramatically over the south end of Ross Lake, rising 7,450 ft above the lakeshore in only 3 horizontal miles.

Though starting on trail, this is not a casual trail run. It involves extensive travel on steep snow, loose rock, 3rd/4th class climbing, exposed-high-consequence terrain, and difficult route finding. Previous experience and the tools for these things are highly recommended.  Keep an awareness that knocking down rocks on this route could kill climbers below, no FKT is worth that. Communicate with other teams on the mountain, take alternate gullies if necessary to channel accidental rock fall away from other teams, wear a helmet. Most would want to bring a rope on this terrain.

For those experienced and carrying the right equipment, this is an amazing light-and-fast, car-to-car experience. Choosing proper conditions, weather, gear, and day of the week (to avoid other teams) are all certainly a part of properly planning this FKT.

The fastest known time found during research was by two well known PNW mountain crushers in 2020, Ryan Stoddard and Richard Kresser in 14hr, 34min, 24sec.
see their write-up and warnings here: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1469755 

Donate (perhaps the amount you would have paid for a race entry) to support the Washington Trails Association (who maintain the 10 miles of trail you run on) here: https://give.wta.org/give/343832/#!/donation/checkout 

further research:

https://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=1699

https://www.summitpost.org/jack-mountain/151244

submitted by Jason Hardrath (FKTs)

Comments

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If Ryan and Richard really held the FKT then it must have been a short one since that same day Josh Stuart and I met them on their way down and we did it in 24 minutes faster overall (https://www.strava.com/activities/3957901487). Definitely possible to do in much less time, as we lost about 1 hour traversing a steep snow field without ice axes or any traction.

Thanks for this information. It isn't a streamlined process to find raw data online unless someone who has done it made a segment for part or all of the effort. Ryan and Richard's time was posted publically in some forums so I included it to act as a minimum baseline for future attempts. 

So now it looks like 14hr, 10min is that mark.

Thanks for writing this in!

Thanks for digging into the times! I just submitted ours. It never occured to me to submit it, cuz we didn't seem super fast. I looked into your climb. Didn't you have even faster time of 13:XX hours? Congrats on the Bulgers! and on that time in the midst of all the other climbs you did!

We did go 13:xx, but I like to sit and wait after building a route to let some "history of times" roll in for two reasons:

1. I want to honor the efforts of people who came before by giving them a chance to submit their times.

2. I want to be reasonably sure that if I claim a Fastest Known Time that it really is the fastest, rather than just throwing my name and time on something. Just seems like a more honest way.