Ridgeline · Log

South Peak by the Sawtooth Traverse

Saturday 6 September. Out at 05:40 from Iron Creek, on the peak by 11:20, and back down the same line before the afternoon wind came up.

Distance: 18.4 km
Ascent: 1,240 m
Moving: 3:38:30
High point: 1,998 m

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The last 4.2 km carried half the climb

Six hundred and twenty metres of the day's ascent waits past the saddle, and the pace record follows it exactly: 8:24 per kilometre along the lake, 18:28 on the final pitch.

km 0 · trailhead, 640 m
km 5.4 to 8.1 · the lake shore, no climb at all
km 10.9 to 12.8 · no signal
km 14.2 · pace falls to 16:01
km 18.4 · South Peak, 1,998 m

Elevation against distance: 640 m at the trailhead, 1,998 m at kilometre 18.4, sampled every five seconds by the watch. The hatched band is the stretch with no fix, and the dashed line across it runs between the last and first known points rather than over the ground.

Splits

The watch held no fix for 1.9 km

From the far end of the talus field to the notch, under the north wall. Elapsed time for that split is from the clock and is sound; distance is an estimate off the map, and the climbing inside it is unknown. Net gain across the gap was 118 m. The day's total of 1,240 m leaves the gap out rather than guessing it.

Eight splits, trailhead to South Peak. A zero is a measured zero, “no data” is a figure the watch never recorded, and a dash is a pace the gap leaves undefined.

Eight splits, trailhead to South Peak
Segment	km	Ascent (m)	Moving	Pace (min/km)
Trailhead → Iron Creek	2.6	95	24:10	9:18
Iron Creek → Marsh Bench	2.8	140	27:05	9:41
Marsh Bench → Alpine Lake	2.7	0	22:40	8:24
Alpine Lake → the talus field	2.8	225	31:18	11:11
the talus field → the notch	about 1.9	No data	21:44	No pace
the notch → the saddle	1.4	160	19:52	14:11
the saddle → the false summit	2.4	330	38:26	16:01
the false summit → South Peak	1.8	290	33:15	18:28
Day	18.4	1,240	3:38:30	11:53

Ascent excludes the unrecorded 1.9 km. Pace is moving pace; the two stops at the lake are not in it.

On the day

The first eight kilometres are the easiest walking in the range: a graded track through hemlock, then the flat shore of the lake, where the profile goes genuinely level for the better part of an hour. It is a poor place to judge the day by. Everything after the talus field is loose, and the notch is the point where a party either commits or turns round.

Past the saddle the line steepens for good. Four hundred metres of it is a single scree slope that gives back about a third of every step, and the last pitch to the peak is scrambling on sound rock with a long drop on the east side. Cloud came over the ridge at 11:05, cleared by 11:20, and the wind was up by one o'clock as forecast.

Design notes

Shape of the page: A document. One column of reading, one figure allowed to break out of it, and nothing else competing for the width.
What it leads with: The climb. The elevation profile carries the screen and the splits are marks on it; the table underneath is the record, not the argument.
Spacing: Generous. Every control clears the size Apple asks for on a touch screen, with room to spare between neighbours.
The one bold decision: A reader who has enlarged the text on their phone gets it here too, all the way to the largest accessibility setting. At that size the callouts move off the chart into the list of splits, the table keeps its own scroll, and nothing is cut off.
The second state: A stretch with no signal. Three things that must not look alike are on screen at once: a measured 0, a No data, and a dash for a pace the gap leaves unknown.
Where the colour comes from: Apple publishes its type sizes and asks that its colours are never copied out by hand, so this page takes the type from the system and lets the device supply the colour. Light and dark both come out of that, and one accent is declared for both.
Readability, measured: The tightest pair on the page, the faintest label on a grouped card: 5.17:1 light, 6.45:1 dark. The route line and the links that share its colour: 6.49:1 light, 10.39:1 dark. Secondary text on the page: 10.86:1 light, 10.97:1 dark. Higher is easier to read, and 4.5 is the accessibility floor.
What we changed: Apple's own secondary and faintest label colours are lighter than the accessibility floor by design. This page sets all three a shade deeper, taking in each case the lightest one that still clears the floor against the surface it sits on. Running prose is also given more line spacing than the system's default, which is set for a control label rather than a paragraph somebody reads.