Need to try this one again….on a clear sunny day!! We thought the week + of rain was thoroughly done with nothing in the forecast after very early am showers. Sadly you can never tell in the mountains!! We had a few sprinkles initially but mostly just overcast with wet brush. First two miles generally enjoyable although creek crossings required some caution and we definitely had to do some trail finding even early on. The boulder fields were much easier to manage than we expected with some route finding but the rain had started and after a long slog up with unrelenting rain, we turned back before the pass. The whole way down was wet and increasingly muddy. On the plus side, there were plentiful but slightly unripe blueberries and the access road was pretty decent with just a few major pot holes..

It feels as though the trail doesn’t want you there, and does everything in its power to make you turn around. Slippery logs, an impossibly steep pass, and mischievous talus make up this trail. Yes, the views are beautiful at the top, but I don’t recommend this hike. There are plenty of other hikes in the area you should consider instead. Save your knees and check one of them out. 

This is near my capability level (or at least, comfort level), but was so very fun.

As other reports say, it starts off fine, but goes up very soon.  And then just more up.  There's a flattish spot or two for a bit, but mostly just up.  Up some dirt tread.  Up some mixed rocks/tread.  Up some mixed roots/tread.  Up some mixed roots/rocks.  Up some rocks.  Up and across more rocks.  Up more rocks.  And eventually, when there's no more trail, it's just up more rocks.  

This means you also have to come back down all of these parts.

Fortunately, even at this point, there was water in convenient locations - 1.5mi from the TH and just at the base before the scramble.  So I only carried 1.5L of water, even though I drank more than 3.

Starting off in the early morning (before sunrise) and before the hot temps was well worth it.

Finally, imo, the route up the last portion has an interesting choice - large, curving slabs on climbers right or more jagged rock with foot holds/handhold but water and moss on climbers left.  I made it up the large slabs, but got a bit nervous at one point.  I was happy to go down the other route.  Choose whatever you're more comfortable with!

Trail was what you would expect – some rocks, some roots, but almost all of the overgrowth was removed. And the trail came with the expected steepness. An unrelenting steepness actually. That is until the trail ended about an hour from the peak. Then you just climb and climb and climb until you get there. But make sure you know where the trail ends so you can climb back down when you’re ready to leave.

Today was overcast and cloudy. The foliage was wet and so were we due to the narrow sections of trail. Of course, we were wet because of the wet foliage AND all of the sweat. Like I said, the steepness was unrelenting.

We couldn’t see some of the best views due to the cloud cover. But we could see some of the silhouettes. This has to be a beautiful hike when the skies are clear.

This was a hard hike. I would compare it to Asgard Pass only longer. Asgard pass took us two hours to climb, but Vesper Peak took us four hours. Did I mention that the steepness was unrelenting? In all fairness, I had an AVR three months ago and I’m still getting back into shape.

There were blueberries along the path and we were able to eat some while we hiked.

I did this as a traverse from Vesper Peak to Sperry Peak with a summit of tiny Wolf Peak on the way. The road to the trailhead had some hefty potholes, but I was able to get through in my mid-clearance CR-V with some careful driving. I think most cars would be able to get through but I saw a couple sedans that stopped and parked before the worst ones and walked the extra distance.

It was a cloudy day for the first time in what felt like months so I was excited to get some hiking done in cooler weather for once. Unfortunately, this also meant that the entire trail was very socked in above Headlee Pass. The trail was easy to navigate and in great condition all the way to Headlee, but once the fog closed in, it made navigation a nightmare for me. Climbing Vesper Peak was pretty straightforward, as it was popular even on a Monday, and the granite makes an easy path to the top.

Once I started the traverse to Wolf Peak however, the visibility got even worse and I basically had to rely on GPS entirely and hope I didn't cliff myself out. Due to the thick fog, I had a hard time finding the most efficient route, so I ended up doing quite a bit of moderate scrambling. With slow GPS navigation and cairns for validation, I eventually found my way through the ridge to Wolf Peak, which was a pretty straightforward scramble until the end, which is incredibly exposed. The last couple of moves to the true summit involves squeezing past a small tree and stepping onto a narrow ledge with hundreds if not thousands of feet of vertical drop on either side (I couldn't tell since the fog was so thick). Thankfully, the rock was completely dry despite everything else being incredibly wet, and the actual technicality of the moves was quite straightforward (probably class 3).

Afterwards, I did some heather and rock traversing until I luckily stumbled upon the faint dirt path that leads to the summit block of Sperry. It's a bit rough and involves a fair amount of class 2 scrambling and bushwhacking, which was super wet in the fog. Once I got to the talus field under Sperry's summit block, I came across the first large snowfields on the hike. Thankfully, they're mostly melted out and quite easy to avoid. Finding the easiest path to Sperry's summit is not very simple, and I had a hard time even after reading multiple trip reports. The best way I could describe it is look for the ramp that goes up toward climber's right, and look for cairns and a dirt path into the trees to the climber's left of it. That's the easiest path, and consists of an extremely steep class 3 scramble and plenty of tree belays and bushwhacking. It's pretty fun and unique compared to most scrambles I've done, and none of it felt exposed at all due to the heavy tree cover. The scrambling definitely involved some committing moves though and I'd say it was the hardest climb out of the three summits in the traverse. Once you climb out of the trees and into the rocks it should be easy going from there, but it's easy to go the wrong way as I did and get yourself into a very exposed class 4 area. At no point on the easiest path should you be anywhere exposed or involving difficult moves. If you find yourself in this position, you need to turn back and find an easier route (unless you're looking for a challenge I guess). 

After descending Sperry, the fog somehow got even worse, and it started misting. With the low visibility, I followed the dirt path toward Wolf a bit before descending towards Lake Elan. I assumed there was a route leading from the lake to Sperry, but I never found it. I had planned on going around the east side of Lake Elan to rejoin the Vesper Peak trail, but as I got close to the shore, I realized there was a huge snowfield where the trail back should have been. I didn't want to cross the late season snow, and while I could have traversed above it I didn't know what the terrain looked like above and if there was a clear path back to the Vesper Peak trail, so I decided to stick with the area I already knew and circumnavigated Lake Elan until I hit the west side to rejoin the summit trail to Vesper. This involved a lot of boulder climbing and steep sidehilling as well as climbing up to avoid some large snowfields. This was definitely the low point of my trip, as I had to backtrack a lot and everything was incredibly wet. I was lucky to have dry rock on all the scrambles, but closer to the lake a lot of the rocks were quite wet (I'm assuming from recent snowmelt). But eventually I was able to rejoin the Vesper Peak trail close to Vesper Creek, and the rest of the trip back was an uneventful slog back to the car.

Notes:

-The entire trip took me around 7 hours car to car. I imagine it would take closer to 5-6 hours on a clearer day as I spent most of the time stumbling around and checking my map.

-This would definitely be much more straightforward to navigate on a clear day, but it was a nightmare in low visibility. Bring a GPS device if there's a chance of low visibility.

-I didn't deal with any rockfall thankfully, but there is plenty of rockfall danger on the entire trail once you're past Vesper Peak. Bring a helmet, I was glad to have mine.

-There are still some large snowfields, but I didn't have to cross a single one in the entire traverse and I found them easily avoidable. The ones that gave me trouble by the lake would probably be easy to bypass on a clear day.

-Plenty of ripe huckleberry in the section before Headlee Pass!