I hiked up Beverly creek to the saddle between Bill’s and Mary’s peak, and climbed Mary’s peak via the northwest ridge with my parents. We descended towards Judi’s peak, then glissaded town into bean creek basin, and hiked back to the car via the bean creek trail.
The road to the trailhead was rough in places, with a substantial pothole about a quarter mile from the trailhead that a sedan driver decided not to try. The parking area was almost full when we got there at 12:30, but there is room to park along the road if need be. First mile or so of trail had a lot of blowdown, all manageable though. We hit substantial snow around a 2 1/4 miles in, at 5000 feet. There is intermittent snow from the creek trail up to the pass, which is completely covered in snow, and has your first views of the enchantments. The first section of the ridge after the saddle is pretty steep, but we didn’t need ice axes as the snow is pretty soft. After that, the ridge was snow free on one side, with the option of walking on rocks most of the way to Mary’s peak. At the summit, there were large gatherings of ladybugs, tucked into the cracks of the rocks. The ridge towards Judi’s peak was snow covered most of the way, and we were able to glissade down a couple hundred feet into the bean creek basin. The basin was covered in patchy snow and plenty of mud, but once the valley closed in we were on solid ground, with a lot less blow downs than the Beverly creek trail.
I would recommend bringing a gps or downloading a map onto your phone, mostly so you don’t miss the fork for the pass. Waterproof boots and gaiters were necessary to keep our feet dry, and microspikes helped a little on the way up. We saw about 15 people on the trail, but there weren’t many spots where it was/would be hard to step off the trail to maintain social distancing. The wildflowers are in full bloom right now, it’s a great time to visit the teanaway.
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