Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

November 11, 2026

2057m

Cle Elum / Teanaway, WA

“Bean Peak” is a popular objective in the Teanaway area of the SE Cascades and the area is known to have fine weather when everywhere else’s soaked in. The area also provides fine views of the Enchantments. “Volcanic Neck” is a rugged sub-peak but doesn’t boast over 100 m prominence to qualify as an independent peak. “Devils Head” is further down along the ridge but again, it does not have an official name nor 100 m prominence so originally I wasn’t very interested in tagging these sub-summits to “contaminate” my stats page. However, Lulu is nowhere as nerdy as myself and she simply wanted to have some fun time together, so why not doing them all. The ridge traverse would be scenic and the scrambling on Volcanic Neck would provide some challenges for us to work through together.

A few days earlier we had just done Earl Peak in the vicinity so I wasn’t very keen on returning, but the weather forecast pushed us to the far SE again. I prioritize having sunny weather over almost anything else, so down south we went. This time we were able to leave White Rock at 8 pm and the 1 hour time change after crossing into Washington also did us a favour. About 3.5 hours later we pulled into the empty trail-head. The last few kilometers were decently rough with a newly repaired stretch that required a bit of clearance. I wasn’t sure about the snow situation so the decision was made to bring a 30 m rope, a light rack, ice axe, crampons and a bunch of contingency gear. We ended up using almost everything except for crampons. The temperatures were very warm for this time of a year so the snow was soft the entire day on all aspects. The next morning we slept in till 8 am (local time) since there’s no point in rushing.

I was able to see a bit of the alpine in the morning so we made the last minute decision to leave the boots and snowshoes behind. In retrospect the depth of the snowpack had definitely increased since a few days ago, that having only the trail runners seemed a bit on the “light” side. However, the warm temperatures and the fine weather meant we were able to make do. This time I went ahead to set the pace and we made decent progress up the approach trail. Passing the end of the maintained trail we started to encounter continuous snow but a group-of-two ahead did us a favour by breaking trail to the top of “Bean Peak”. We followed their steps up onto the SE Ridge and the SE Ridge itself is a fun scramble with some optional 3rd class moves. I thoroughly enjoyed this ridge and the high clouds were also dissipating. Too bad the other group turned around on “Bean Peak” so we would have to break trail onwards down along the ridge. Nevertheless we took a long break on the summit soaking in the experience.

Down the north ridge of “Bean Peak” we had to deal with a lot of knee deep post-holing. After negotiating the initial scrambling stretch we decided to don gaitors. However, one of my gaitors was broken but I had brought some alpine draws and simply tied a double overhand around the ankle and that was able to make do. This ridge was longer than I thought with fair amount of micro-terrain to content with. We then picked up the climber’s path traversing around the south side of “Volcanic Neck” to the NE corner where we ditched some gear to make a final decision based on the condition of the route.

The standard scramble route was on the NE aspect and was definitely very snowy, and in fact, the lower section felt more like a steep snow climb in the current conditions. Fortunately the snow was soft but I still gave the ice axe to Lulu for extra sense of security. I myself was able to climb without the ice axe. We also donned harness just in case the scrambling was harder than expected. Lower down we went a bit too far on climber’s left and to correct the mistake we had to do a thin and exposed traverse around a gendarme. We then scrambled along some mildly exposed ledges but one 3rd class stretch to gain the upper ridge felt particularly exposed and down-sloping. The top part also had some unexpected prickly plants. Lulu was fine to do all of these sans protection but I had already decided to pull the rope out at least for the descent. The rest of the traverse to the true summit was straightforward but exposed.

We gingerly descended to the top of that crux zone and then I used a natural rock horn to belay Lulu down-climbing the pitch. It turned out to be not too bad. I then down-climbed without protection and then I led us down the ledges. Lower down we found an snowier but easier alternative to bypass that thin and exposed traverse and the rest of the descent was down-climbing some 40-degree snow. This ascent turned out to be more involved than I thought and I was glad to have brought the rope. Lulu had fair amount of rock climbing experience but she’s still new to mountaineering. I was glad that she thoroughly enjoyed this objective.

We decided to carry on towards “Devils Head” in the light-and-fast style by leaving a bunch of stuffs at the base of “Volcanic Neck”. There was still fair amount of post-holing to deal with since all of the north facing aspects were holding deeper snow. The final stretch up the south ridge of “Devils Head” felt like a drag but at least the views were great. The summit was unfortunately windy and cold so we couldn’t linger too long up there. The time’s also ticking as we weren’t too keen descending in the dark.

I then led us traversing back to where we ditched the gear and then shouldered the heavy packs again. We followed our own steps back to Bean/Volcanic Neck saddle. There are a few ways to get back to the trail-head and we picked the ridge direct option by traversing up and over “Bean Peak” again. In summer conditions I’m sure the other options would be faster but I wasn’t too keen on route-finding nor post-holing. Following our own steps was the most no-brainer option in this kind of scenario. To descend “Bean Peak” we down-scrambled the SE Ridge and the rest of the descent was fast and uneventful. To my surprise we managed to finish the descent without having to use the head-lamps and our round trip time was 7 hours 45 minutes and that included all of the breaks. The drive back home was a bit exhausting but wasn’t too bad. We also stopped in Bellevue for a well deserved dinner.