[Randy]

This one starts at the end of Road 6830 (aka the Tonga Ridge Road), elevation 3600'. Terrace is the dominant high point in the immediate area and with its central location offers up impressive views to many nearby lakes and south to Hinman and Daniel. All this assuming you're not dodging lighting bolts during your summit stay and actually have time to enjoy the aforementioned views! We got a late start and headed into the trees around 0930. Up the hill to the south was our basic route following the subtle rib to about 4400' where we found an easy means of traversing the hillside around to Clarice. The traverse through here is fairly open, but it gets easier the higher you go. We traversed the first third of the route at between 4500' and 4600' without difficulty then things changed a bit. From this point Craig and I unintentionally took two different routes to the obvious basin just north of the Clarice cirque. Let me tell you, it's way better to walk the top of the ridge rather than traversing low at 4600'-4800' as I did. I got stuck performing acrobatic stunts in 8' high salmon berry and blueberry swaths while Craig was able to skip his way along the open high route. Anyhow, we met up along the ridge (where Craig had been waiting) and descended into the basin then around and down to Clarice. We relaxed at the lake for 20 minutes then after locating the trail we quickly made our way over to Marmot Lake. At this point, we had already decided to abandon our original plan of climbing Dip Top and Lynch Peaks as weather and time were not looking to be in our favor. Terrace Mountain was right on top of us, so we decided to go for it. From near the outlet of Marmot, we headed north around a small bump and then easily gained the ridge separating Marmot and Clarice Lakes at 5400'. We ascended the easy ridge towards Terrace and before long we were made aware of the weather "situation" behind us along the ridge containing Paddy Go Easy Pass, Robin Lakes, etc. Heavy rain, thunder and lighting looked as though they were really pounding the area, so we scurried along thinking we could out run the system. We made it to the last terrace (yes, the peak is aptly named as the entire east faced is "terraced" 4 or 5 times over) where I took a direct route right under the summit block. Fairly easy going on easy class 2 then it turns into class 3 on crappy rock, but little of this mattered with the ominous weather moving in uncomfortably close. As I reached the summit I dropped my pack and took up a low profile amongst the rocks. I managed to get off a couple pictures and spent some time looking for the old summit register which is no longer there. I could see that Hinman and Daniel were getting hit pretty hard with lightning and so were some of the high points just a couple miles south of Terrace. With all this, we didn't spend more than a few minutes on top and quickly took refuge on the less exposed west slopes of the mountain. Things didn't look like they were going to clear up anytime soon, so we just kept dropping on endless talus to Terrace Lakes (this was not our intended exit route, but would get us to where we wanted to go without the lightning factor). We traversed above the larger lake at about 5300' and made our way to Lower Ptarmigan Lake through easy, open forest. We picked up a trail going around the east side of the lake, but upon reaching the outlet we did not continue on the rest of the route to Fisher Lake. Instead, we simply followed the line of the outlet all the way back down to the road. This route goes fine to about 3800' where the brush gets ridiculously thick. We opted to walk in the creek on sections of the final 200' feet to avoid the worst of the brush. The entire trip took about 10 hours.