we did the ptarmigan september 3-9 2004, the glaciers were pretty broken up, fairly maze like in many instances and offered a lot of challenges. I felt like I was in glacier school 101 day after day, something new was thrown at us each day. We had many experiences where we had to back track a through the weaving line we had chose to use to get to our end point, to find out it would not go. The trip was still extremly good, and by far my fondest memories were crossing the glaciers with all those challenges. We did not see any people, encounterd 4 bears, a little too much rain though, it rained the 1 and 2nd day and again the 5 the day, with a extremely wet descent through a bushwack of a river valley.