Alpine Scramble - Iron Peak SSE Ridge + Bean Peak

Trip Report

Stats: 10.2 miles, 4.8k gain, 9 hours car to car.

Route Description: The goal of this trip was to ascend the SSE ridge of Iron peak and we chose to tack on Bean peak as well in a clockwise loop starting and ending at the Beverly Turnpike trailhead. 

GPX: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=2844247

Blow by blow:

The 5 of us arrived at the  trailhead at 8:30am to lightly snowing conditions much to our relief after driving through pouring rain. The snow didn't last long, most of the day we had on and off sun, with gusty cold winds. The road is snow free to the trailhead, and the potholes posed little trouble. We headed directly west off trail from the parking lot to avoid the first crossing of Bean creek, which worked out well. We ascended west, then traversed north, before ascending west again to the ridge. The travel up to the ridge was straightforward on dirt, with some light shwack in the last 300' until we hit a small point just north of pt 4747.

The first half of the ridge was a mix of open easy travel and minor shwack, UNTIL some lethal alder appeared that at first glance looked to be a trip ender. Thankfully, we had a prior GPX track that stayed somewhat low on the east side of the ridge and we found a clean way through. It's tragic we didn't get a photo of it. 

There was a dusting of overnight snow that turned into continuous snow around 5400'. We chose to ascend the east side of the south bowl of Iron, primarily because we weren't paying attention as we climbed and didn't want to lose elevation once we realized, and secondarily because it seemed like a more adventurous option (though really we just didn't want to drop back down). As we got close to the ridge, we opted to traverse below the ridge into the bowl to avoid scrambling on the slightly snowy/slick  very rocky ridge line. The snow was soft but supportable for kicking steps.

As we traversed around the false summit, the snow became very firm/icy as the wind was stripping west facing slopes, leaving very large cornices to be navigated throughout the day. Always give these a wider berth than you may think. We opted to put on crampons at this point and kept them on all the way until the descent off Bean peak which was a good move, because we ran into similar firm steps throughout the day in a few locations. The wind was not too bad for the most part except at high points along the ridge where frigid gusts kept us from taking too long of breaks.

 

We plunge stepped our way into Beverly basin  and found several lucky snow bridges across the creek that allowed us to climb up to the saddle between Bills and Mary's. If it wasn't so cold, the bridges would not be very trustworthy and will surely be gone soon. With the cooler temps, travel across to Volcanic neck was mostly easy on supportable snow, though a few times someone would find a soft spot and plunge to the hip. The scramble up to Bean peak allowed us to test out or mixed climbing in aluminum crampons amongst the rock, ice, and various forms of snow (shallow wet, deep dry pow, cream cheese).

At the top of Bean we finally took off our crampons and got to feel real ground again. After the wind necessitated cutting our break short once again, we started making our way down the scramble. The rock was dry and grippy, but the normal route had quite a lot of snow in the gully, so we chose to go further west and dropped back into the snow before traversing back towards the rock on the east.

Once back at the base of the rock, the summer trail was mostly followable down into Bean basin,  with patches of soft snow that kept trying to get us off track. For the final Bean creek crossing, most folks opted to walk the tight rope across the narrow log bridge, though some forded the 8 inches of water.

All in all, another successful and fun day out in Teanaway!

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