The weather wasn’t supposed to be great, so Eric and I set off to the Teanaway in search of some sun breaks and melted out ridgelines. We ended up completing a fun traverse between Earl and Bean Peaks that I would highly recommend for an early season outing.
Our journey started at the Beverly Turnpike trailhead, and we quickly turned right to follow the well-maintained trail up Bean Creek. The only difficulty was a semi-precarious log crossing over the rushing creek, but the worst that would happen if you slipped would be getting your feet wet. After 1.8 total miles we hit another trail intersection and hung another right towards the saddle below Earl Peak. There were some easily crossed patches of snow in the basin here before the trail started climbing towards the ridge.
At this point, the official trail crosses a small creek and onto the more wooded side of the slope. Because it is slightly more north facing and is covered in trees, it was still holding a lot of snow. The trail quickly disappeared on the other side of the creek, so we opted to not cross it and instead head straight up the open slopes to the saddle above. This proved to be the right call – it was easy cross-country travel with some loose rubble all the way to the saddle.
From here we followed a faint boot path and picked our way up the ridgeline to the summit of Earl, which treated us to great views of the Stuart Range. The weather was moody, with some swirling sunbreaks, clouds, and hail (graupel?).
After a nice break on the summit, we pressed on towards Bean Peak, following the obvious ridge between the two peaks. There was some switching between snow and rock on the class 2 descent from Earl, including a time or two where we put on our microspikes, but nothing was too difficult.
The rest of the ridgeline was fun and rocky with some light scrambling mixed in before the ascent to Bean. I thought the final section up to Bean Peak was quite enjoyable. We took a slightly harder route than necessary, but it was still solid class 3 on some distinctive reddish-orange rock. This summit had an even better view of Stuart and the Ingalls Creek valley, and we enjoyed looking back at the ridgeline from Earl we had just traversed. There are so many ridgelines in the Teanaway it was tempting to just continue on and tag some more peaks if we had the time.
When it was time to leave, we reversed the scramble and dropped down into Bean Creek Basin. This is a lovely area, but it was still a bit early in the season, so there were still patches of snow and the grass was quite brown still. I’m sure in a few weeks it will be exploding with flowers and greenery.
The rest of the hike out was uneventful, and we cruised into the trailhead (6 hours total from when we left) very content with our day out.
Final Stats: 7.6 miles / 3747 feet of gain
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