Stevens Peak

June 18, 2015—Stevens and Boundary; 12 hours. GAIA had us at 7,000’ and 15.4 miles…I am suspect of the calculations as we were pretty slow moving and stopped frequently (also accounting for our 12 hour day). We were successful on both Stevens and Boundary, completing Stevens first then Boundary from the south.

There is no snow going up the creek (lots of water though) from Snow Lake. You first encounter snow just below the saddle west of Unicorn. It is easy going and getting on/off the rock is no problem (bottom of this snow finger had running water on our return trip). We ended up following the trail up to Unicorn and should have begun to traverse just about 200 feet above the saddle west of Unicorn and head towards the Unicorn/Boundary saddle. It is not marked by anything off the beat path to Unicorn. As it turned out our extra elevation to Unicorn worked out great. We descended five minutes on the ridge back towards Boundary but peeled off towards Stevens on a minor ridge (scree and snow) and just caught a series of benches (some low exposure class ¾) down to the Stevens/Boundary Saddle.

When we passed below the low saddle between Boundary and Unicorn we could see the notch to descend the normal route. It looked to have a bit of a moat in it.

We traversed the green fields below the large rock band on the south side of Stevens and then just worked our way up a gulley on the other side of the large rock band to gain the main ridge which had a trail to the summit. There is plenty of water in a tarn in the saddle between Boundary and Stevens.

There was a nice line we could see up to the SE side of Boundary to gain its south ridge. From Stevens you can see a leftward cut/gulley up to the saddle. It looked to be a bit friendlier than navigating the notch to the north of the peak. We stayed on the west side of Boundary until just below the peak (there are lots of sub peaks in the ridge you will want to avoid) and headed straight up. There is a short unexposed class 4, 15’ section and then you are on the summit.