This was an intense overnighter, but it made for a great adventure!
Started at the Phelps Creek trailhead, which is at the end of a very bumpy road. There are lots of rocks and washed out ruts, so I would definitely recommend a higher clearance vehicle, but I've seen some sedans pull off some pretty impressive achievements. The Phelps Creek/Spider Meadow trail is in good condition all the way to the meadow, and there are a few stream crossings, but they are all quite easy. The meadows are beautiful, and we stopped by just on our way out from our trip, but the views were tremendous nonetheless.
We hiked in about 4 miles to the crossing of Leroy Creek, where the Leroy Creek trail branches off of the Phelps Creek trail, and starts ascending to Leroy Basin. This trail junction is signed, and is fairly obvious, so I wouldn't worry too much about missing it, if that's the way you're headed. The trail is steep, and has plenty of downed trees, that you'll have to get over and under in creative ways. The trail also has some very rooty and rocky sections, and can also be quite dusty on drier summer days. If you're planning on tagging some summits, this is a good indicator of what is to come. The trail eventually levels off after gaining lots of elevation, and you eventually emerge into Leroy Basin, which has several campsites spread around the trail. There is water access close to almost all the camps, and there is also a toilet if you need it. The basin is quite lovely and is filled with lots of various wildflowers. Above the basin Mt. Maude and Seven Finger Jack loom about 3,000 feet above your current camp.
After our hike to the basin and establishing camp, we then began our ascent of Mt. Maude. We worked our way along the trail that runs up from the camp, all the way to the rocky shoulder of Mt. Maude that allows you to see into and descend to the ice lakes basin. I believe this is the Leroy Basin High Route, but I'm not quite sure. The trail along this route is fairly well defined, if narrow and not well maintained. I would call it more of a climber's trail, and although there are lots of cairns and its pretty tracked out from the basin, It is still pretty easy to get off track, so I would be comfortable with off-trail navigation. Once we got to the shoulder of Maude at about 7,800' we began our ascent of the mountain proper. We loosely followed a GPS track from a prior ascent in August 2019, and dropped down a couple hundred feet, before again climbing up the boulder and scree fields, and following the faint trail that runs to Maude's summit (Class 2). Certainly a workout, and I would advise anyone who plans to attempt it to again be comfortable with off-trail nav, and do their research before climbing. We did get cell service on the way up, so that was nice. The views from the top of Maude were great, and make the long slog up the absurdly loose rock very worthwhile. We then returned to camp via the same route.
We woke up at about 4, then started our ascent of Seven Finger Jack (7FJ) at about 5. We followed the trail that ascends from the Leroy Basin (Same trail that we followed to the shoulder of Mt. Maude) but after about 5 minutes, we followed the left fork of a Y in the trail after it crosses a stream, and began the climb up the climber's path of 7FJ. This trail climbs quite steeply, and one can easily slip on the heather. It's a climbers' trail, so understand what you're getting into. There are lots of trails running up various routes of 7FJ, and I would advise paying very close attention to your routefinding. We didn't traverse across the boulder fields early enough, as our GPS track recommended, and we ended up having to do some class 3 scrambles to get up, in addition to some climbing up super loose rock. ROCKFALL DANGER ON BOTH ROUTES IS HIGH. WEAR A HELMET, STEP CAREFULLY, AND KEEP PARTY SIZE SMALL. We were then able to traverse back to the main trail, and follow that to the summit, which has great views. If you stay on the main trail for the ascent, it should be a class 2 climb, so if you encounter anything above that, you are probably off route. We descended via a somewhat different route, but there are trails all across this mountain, so its not too hard to find one that will eventually get you down.
We then descended the Leroy Creek route, hooked back up with the Phelps Basin trail, hiked to the meadow, and raced back out to the trailhead. Phew, what a trip!
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