kidzwonthike and I originally were hoping to do Bill's/Volcanic Neck/Devil's Head in a single day, but settled for just Bill's because of time/energy. Bill's was an awesome choice, nonetheless: a fun type 1 class 3 scramble with fantastic views :).
Road Conditions
Obviously the road to Beverly Turnpike TH still has issues: the dips that were there after turning off to the trailhead are still there. High clearance is recommended, but you can push to just before that with a low clearance vehicle, saving a mile, or just use another adjacent trailhead (Stafford Creek TH, Iron Peak TH, etc).
Trail Conditions
Beverly Turnpike
The creek crossing was a bit high, but it's still early season. You can keep your feet dry, but probably not with trail runners. Sandals or high tops are a good idea and trekking poles are wise for stability.
After this, there are probably about 20 blowdowns over the trail of various sizes. Some seem to have been around for a while, but all are before the Alpine Lake Wilderness boundary, so they can be easily dispatched with a chainsaw when chainsaw use is permitted (burn bans don't allow them right now), crosscut saw, or axe (if the user knows how to buck). The largest diameter tree was <1.5' IIRC.
We ran into 2 backpackers/scramblers on their way down; they'd spent 3 days scrambling around Volcanic Neck/Bill's/Iron Peak and were giving us plenty of summit stoke :).
The trail has a stream running across it in areas, so it's pretty muddy right now. Wearing sandals or trail runners probably isn't the best idea for this section :D.
There's a low impact camp area at the junction with Fourth Creek Trail with water nearby from Beverly Creek. There's a brown sign which says Fourth Creek Trail to looker's right going north.
The Fourth Creek Trail is a bit hard to spot, but not impossible.
Fourth Creek
This trail is blowdown free up to the Hardscrabble Creek Trail junction, but muddy in areas with a stream running down the trail :).
Bill's Peak
Disclaimer: this is a technical scramble which should be considered a beginner alpine scramble.
There isn't really a trail at all: one just needs to be careful and find low impact paths. I was paying a lot of attention to my footing because there was a lot of potentially fragile vegetation to negotiate. However, a good strategy many have used on Peakbagger.com, is to stick to the trees on the SE arête by the Fourth Creek drainage, instead of climbing up the loose scree field in the S. This seemed really good LNT wise and comfort wise on the way down.
kidzwonthike and I went separately up to the S scree field until we got to lower impact surfaces to better uphold LNT principles.
The first couple hundred feet was [generally speaking] loose scree and was a low class 3 scree scramble for us. There is an easier route to the right or various arms using stable rock, but one needs to test it before committing to it; there were some larger boulders that I thought were static, but were not stable. We put on our climbing helmets because some of the smaller boulders were getting accidentally kicked down and bouncing off other rocks and tried to avoid overlapping our ascent paths to mitigate kicking down loose scree.
Once we got off the scree, we climbed more stable rock up to some trees on the south side. We stuck to the trees as best possible, then transitioned onto snow for LNT reasons and comfort reasons (well, I did at least.. kidzwonthike stuck more to rock/scree further up).
I climbed up a steep (50°+) snow col, jumped over the moat at the summit pyramid. There were some postholing concerns in areas, as well as surface level issues with the snow (wet loose, small/localized wet slab) up the col. I then did some class 3 moves on rock to get to the summit proper by smearing with my feet on the semi-smooth granite and jamming my fingers in some cracks, but there are other final moves up that might be easier than what I did :).
From the top we could see pretty much all of the Teanaway/Stuart Range/The Enchantments, large portions of higher peaks in Salmon la Sac and Snoqualmie Pass, a peekaboo view of Dakobed (Glacier), a hazy view of Koma Kulshan (Baker), Pahto (Adams), and Tahoma (Rainier)... and also how far it was to Volcanic Neck/Devil's Head and how much snow there was between us and the ridge (hence, we called it early to avoid getting back before dark :P..).
On the way down we used microspikes and I did some light boot skiing on snow, zig zagging down and traversing to better runout to avoid uncontrolled falls, since the runout was kind of bad in areas (rocks or trees) and we were postholing later on in the day.
We stuck more to the snowy ridge (east) than scree/rock by Fourth Creek, for comfort, but also LNT and safety reasons.
Once we got off the snow, I stuck to scree and carefully watched my step because of vegetation impact concerns.
Gear Used
- Climbing helmet
- Microspikes
- Trekking poles (summer snow baskets)
An ice axe would have made my life a lot easier (at least) for the ascent/descent over snow, especially up the snow.
Other Notes
The GPS Track is attached to my Peakbagger trip report.
Please remember not to blindly follow the GPS track up Bill's, but instead use your best judgment, appropriate surfaces/skills to find a safe way up and down the peak.
There are plenty of ways where one can easily get into class 3/4+ territory if not being careful with no good way to get down.
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