Vesper Peak — Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2025

The gravel Road wasn’t too bad, except for a couple of patches of really deep potholes near the top. Got to the trailhead about 9:45. The parking lot was full, but there were spots to park on the side of the road. There’s a funky old outhouse that looks like it’s ready to fall apart, but it really wasn’t much worse than the one at the Mount Dickerman trailhead. The 1st mile and a half or two of the trail is rooty, then we picked our way through the talus field. We were glad that we downloaded the map of the recommended route before we left home because there’s no cell service up there. That helped us find the right approach to the correct gully that leads up to Headlee pass. There are type switchbacks in the scree field up the gully, now renamed by us as Headlee’s sweaty squiggles. Vesper Lake is beautiful and the stream runoff is a good place to filter water if needed. Then there was another talus field leading up to the scramble over granite slabs. We found through trial and error that sticking to the left up to the ridge below the summit was a far better approach than trying to go up to the right where we found ourselves in a lot of dead ends. The weather was great, but there was a lot of haziness in the air due to the various fires around. However, the views were incredible. I could make out the Brothers in the Olympics. Very sad to see how little snow there is left on Glacier Peak. The way down was nearly as slow as the way up as we had to pick our way down the granite slabs, then through talus, the scree the gully, the talus field at the bottom, then the rooty trail. Poles were helpful through some of it, but not so much through the talus nor the granite slabs. But overall, an incredible day out in the mountains.