I started out at the Salmon La Sac ranger station and headed up Jolly Mountain Trail (1307). That part was uneventful. I left the trail to join the Paris Creek trail and that's when the blowdowns began. Most of them were manageable. There were plenty of high creek crossings here that required me to just walk through them. There was also lots of snow, but it was flat so not difficult to manage. I was not punching through anywhere. There must have been a big avalanche in the west basin below Skookum Peak because the avy debris was widespread and sometimes difficult to manage. Getting through this without GPS would be difficult.
Still, there were nice meadows along the way
Including this Balsamroot meadow that had a bear in it (my first of the season!). It ran away before I could get my phone out, but it was idyllic.
The trail was also very marshy around the North Fork Paris Creek. Your shoes will not be dry at the end of this hike, just accept the marsh.
As I approached the ridge South of DeRoux peak, the snow started at 5600'. The ridgewalk to DeRoux also had some (manageable) snow, but was full of nice flowers throughout.
The views were good, the wildflowers were unique, including this "rare" Steer's head (whose image has been showing up quite a lot on the news recently?)
The ridgewalk was lovely. Sometimes there was a trail, usually not. The bit from point 6083 to The Louvre was the nastiest. I ended up doing some class 3-4 moves, but it was probably not necessary if you were a little bit more patient and worked around the West side of the Louvre more carefully or accepted the snow and dropped into the N. Basin of the Louvre with the mellow slopes.
The snow started on the way up to Jolly at about 6000' (North of Jolly) and was continuous basically to the top. I skipped the trail and just booted up the snow. And oh yeah for Beta purposes, Hawkins looks pretty much snow-free right now, matching the rest of the Teanaway peaks. Here's a shot from Jolley showing the whole ridge (DeRoux is the nice and round one middle of the shot, closer than the big peaks).
I was surprised to find 0 summit registers at any of these peaks (except two random GeoCaches)!
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