Colin and I decided to take advantage of the decent weather forecast for Thanksgiving weekend. After some debate we settled on Bean Creek Basin near the Teanaway, and a few peaks surrounding it. Frigid temps were expected everywhere so we left the dog behind this time. We had a few slowdowns getting over the pass and up the snow-covered North Fork Teanaway Road, finally arriving at the trailhead at 10 am on Saturday. We found a good campsite near the top of the basin and crashed early with plans for an alpine start the next day.
We woke at 2 am and quickly chose to forego the early start and went back to our cozy sleeping bags until about 6 o'clock. I was glad for the later start when my toes began to freeze as the alpenglow enveloped Judis Peak above us. There was quite a bit of exposed rock at the top of the ridge, so Colin traded his ancient snowshoes for crampons. Low clouds hung around 4000 feet over the I-90 valley but we had a clear view from Mount Adams to the Stuart Range. At Judis Peak we chose to drop down into Fourth Creek Basin towards Devils Head, which would make for an easier approach to Bean Peak.
We passed some fresh coyote tracks just below Volcanic Neck where we stopped for lunch. The scramble around the west side of The Neck looked a bit sketchy with current snow cover, and the trail on the east side crossed some steep slopes with less than ideal runout. We chose to leave the rest for another day and made our way to Bean Peak.
The summit was pretty windy, but it was nice to get back into the sun, which was finally providing noticeable warmth. I removed snowshoes for the descent , which was mostly melted out rock. We returned to camp and packed up quickly as a wall of shadow stretched across the basin toward us. Most of the small creeks we crossed on our way out were frozen over. We made it back to the truck well before sunset and slowly weaved our way home through holiday traffic.
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