- My buddy and I decided to try for Joker, Jester and Iron Bear on Teanaway Ridge with the hope to see some snow and have a slightly better weather.
- Started before 8 AM and parked the car at the bottom of Iron Creek Road. Walked the road and used spikes rightaway as road was very icy. Transitioned to snowshoes about halfway down the road as we started to punch through. There were multiple blowdowns blocking the road. One blowdown was pretty big to step over with snowshoes but you could also go around it.
- At Iron Creek TH, we crossed the creek and gained the south ridge to Joker. Creek crossing wasn't the best but doable and there's a fair amount of bushwhacking. We kept our snowshoes on the entire time even though the snow coverage was rather patchy at this point.
- Views of surrounding peaks and valley started to open up above 4,500 ft and they got better and better (no view of Rainier though!). It didn't take long until we reach Joker. The summit was a bit forested but not too bad. There's also a mini orange summit register, that I thought was a piece of trash 🙃.
- We continued on the ridge to Jester. There were some ups and downs as expected but there's very little bushwhacking and the 'ridgewalk' was pretty straightforward. I think the views from Jester were better as the summit was more open.
- From Jester to Iron Bear, there's just one section that was very tricky to do in snowshoes. We stayed too high and traversed a few feet below point 5360. Tempted to tag the peak too but didn't feel great in snowshoes. So, we just kept on going and continued to tag Iron Bear.
- Iron Bear had the best view compared to the other two peaks in my opinion. We got a great view of Stuart and the Enchantments range. It's our first time to Iron Bear and it's nice to visit this in the snow.
- After a short break, we went straight down the ridge. The idea was to save some distance, but there's a lot of bushwhacking and it was pretty steep with mixed snow conditions. So we decided to ditch our snowshoes, put spikes on and pivot to the summer trail. It was soo much better, albeit a little longer with patchy snow (and some postholing grrr!)
- Made it back to the road and put the snowshoes back on as we couldn't take any more postholing. After what feels like an eternity of a road walk, we were back in the car before 5 PM.
- Overall, not a bad trip for a moody weather! Stats: 10.9 mi loop, around 2,900ft gain total, less than 9 hours total time and moderate pace and plenty small breaks.
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