My favorite kind of alpine experience: snow climbing with a rock finish, no cairns, no boot track, no climbers trail, all adventure!
A fun day climb under near ideal conditions.
Contrary winds and tides both ways, but a good crew makes it all worth while.
This trip was intended to teach participants how to plan and execute a trip in the San Juan Islands. The group did several planning exercise then executed a 5 day trip. Everyone reported they learned a great deal.
Great one-way trip in the early season with lots of flora.
Made the summit with a strong team: snow on summit block, plus falling wet snow under near white-out conditions, only added to the sense of adventure.
Great day for a scramble. 4 hours to the summit, 45 minutes of summit lounging and 3.5 hours on the decent.
5/29/16 (a year of low snow due to warm weather / high melt-off) Trail was overgrown at 3400' meadow, had several blowdowns, but was in pretty good shape overall up to 4600' large meadow, at which point it was muddy, slippery, and in some places tread was scraped bare due to avalanches. We reached snow at 4800'. at which point we departed the trail and traversed to about 5,200' ESE of the summit to (try to) avoid steep terrain. The snow was very difficult - quite a bit of bare ground, with shallow snow on borders that was sometimes icy, sometimes rotten, required VERY aggressive use of ice ax & kicking steps. The area ESE of the summit has less-thick timber, which made for more open, soft & easier snow, but we didn't go S far enough, and upon ascending towards the summit from this area, hit steeper terrain that was tough to negotiate again. (In hindsight, we would have been better off if we had traversed farther S all the way to the SE Ridge at 5,200', to stay on soft snow; this is basically the way we went on the descent.) Weather forecast of "showers" was wrong (as per usual) - we got quite a bit of heavy rain, hail, sleet, and strong winds that made for major hypothermia conditions. Luckily this was a very strong group and they handled it like champs. The lookout was unlocked and provided a majorly-needed shelter. Round trip 9:45hrs.
Summited Saturday, May 28th. Straight forward ascent with quick trail work to Colchuck Lake, steady elevation gain to the col, nothing uneventful ascending steep snow (perfect for kick-stepping) to Pandora's Box and scrambling the ridge to the summit.
May 28, 2016. South Peak of Teanaway Ridge (Gene's Peak). Successful scramble party including two Seattle Scramble students, one Everett Scramble student, and one Tacoma Basic student. Cloudy and cool, but only very light rain/snow flurries. Profuse flowers.
Summited Sunday, May 29th. Snow on the trail up to Long's Pass. Lot's of snow from the pass to the base of the route allowing a high traverse across open snow fields. Windy & cold on the ascent but with dry rock.
Excellent hike on a cool, Spring day. Trail is in very good condition, no snow.
Excellent trip, cloudy but some views below the clouds and otherwise pleasant weather, and perhaps best of all, 2000+ vertical feet of glissading.
Beautiful area to paddle especially the East side of the lake, pass South Shore picnic area. Note: On South Fork launch site, car must be parked in the parking lot before you reach the launch site.
Two peaks for the price of one.
First time hike of area and had a blast. Very different from North Cascades! Enjoyed it.
We were expecting >10 kt southerly winds, so we moved the trip to the Elliott Bay area where it was move protected.