Teanaway Traverse (Plus Three Brothers)
The Teanaway Traverse is a rugged backcountry route from Iron Peak to Miller peak on the drier side of the state. There are several options for the traverse, but we mostly followed the ridge line with a few shortcuts into the higher basins. After viewing the satellite imagery and doing some strava stalking, it looked like conditions were ripe.
We stopped at the free campground of Twentynine Pines, just before the road turns to dirt, heading into the Teanaway range. It was almost empty and we had the campground to ourselves. We had a nice campfire and practiced technical rescue techniques after an awesome day canyoneering outside of North Bend.
We woke up at 7:30AM and parked Nick’s van at the Miller-Bear trailhead. We then shuttled to Iron Peak trailhead and began our ascent from there. We skipped the quick backtrack detour to Iron peak, starting with Teanaway peak. From Teanaway peak, we hit the summit of Bills Peak, Marys Peak, Bean Peak, Earl Peak, Navaho Peak, Three Brothers, Freedom Peak and finally, Miller Peak. Whew. In total we traveled over 23 miles with approximately 11,500’ of elevation gain. It took us about 11.5 hours at a relatively fast pace with short breaks on each summit.
The route conditions were ideal, with good snow coverage on the nasty steep sections and no snow on most of the ridge. We only saw two other parties the entire day (at Navaho peak), which made the whole adventure feel remote. Most of the route was class 2-4 with a bit of low 5th class from Marys to Bean Peak. After Navaho peak, getting to the top of three brothers was a real slog. We took a sneak route to gain the ridge between Navaho and Freedom peak, which saved us a considerable amount of backtracking. By the end, our legs were cooked. I’ll spare all the extra details, the GPX track of our route and some photos are below… Get out there an enjoy!
Nick scrambling up to Teanaway Peak (3rd class)
Stuart range view from Teanaway peak. One of my favorite views of the day.
Some 4th class scrambling to Marys Peak.
5th class downclimbing to Bean Peak. The rock is fantastic.
On the summit of Bean Peak with some energy left.
A nice descent through snow from Earl Peak. We slid down the gullies of watermelon snow.
Heading up to Freedom peak, looking back at our route from the summit of Three Brothers. We descended the grassy slopes and then side-hilled across steep terrain to a nice gully, which took us to the ridge between Navaho and Freedom Peak.
Descending on a dirt bike trail from our last summit (Miller Peak).
