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We took a quick family trip (6/30-7/1) up over the Beverly-Turnpike trail to Ingalls Creek to enjoy the flowers, views, and scramble up Mt Stuart. The Beverly Creek trail was its usual dusty self, with several blowdowns (which were cleared by the time we returned Sunday – thanks!) and impressive washouts from last fall & winter’s storms.
  
The pass over on the Turnpike Creek side has snow covering the trail for the first few hundred yards (melting fast), but if you simply follow the drainage line down and watch for the trail exiting to the right across the hillslope it’s easy to catch it. We discovered that finding the trail was a mixed blessing, as the tread was very cobbly and rough – an unwelcome surface for our already heavily-loaded shaky ankles. Fortunately this lasted only a mile and things improved as the trail neared Turnpike Creek.     
There are several nice campsites where the Turnpike Creek trail comes down to Ingalls Creek and a selection of excellent logs for crossing the creek. 
The trail up to from Ingalls Creek to the Ingalls Creek trail is easy to find. Just 20 yards west of where we came to Ingalls Creek trail is an excellent shaded campsite in the trees complete with meadow view and refreshing breezes. We arrived in time for a late lunch and plenty of exploring. 
 
The next morning just before first light, Aidan and I set out to scramble up Mt Stuart. As Aidan put it, “I want to see the view over the entire Teanaway”. The route is well described in a number of popular climbing guidebooks. 
A well trodden climber’s boot path heads up through the meadow where the Turnpike Creek trail meets the Ingalls Creek trail (on the west edge of the meadow). The path is steep and soon turns sharply left into the forest (easy to miss that turn). The path gains 1000 – 1200 feet below angling over into the Cascadian Couloir proper.  
Midway up the lower couloir one encounters a granite headwall. We found this easiest to bypass by leaving the gully to the east about 200 feet below the headwall and following a boot path up to a rib east of the gully (although we only found this on our way down – on the way up we put together a creative and entertaining scramble up the western wall of the couloir to bypass the headwall, passing old weathered rappel slings from others who had made the same mistakes as us). 
There is a snug little camping site on the rib (at around 6800 feet). The rib leads to the upper couloir which is much broader and currently mostly in snowfields. The early morning snow was very hard and crampons proved necessary. The rest of the route to the false summit was a pleasant snow climb, with plenty of ohs and ahs over the views (as well as an interrupting rockfield that provided for the ever-pleasant sound of crampons on rocks).     
The scramble from the false summit included a squeeze tunnel between rocks that prevents wider folks access to the summit (I know – I barely scraped through). 
   
The view from the top were exquisite. Just as Stuart is visible from so many other places, the expected opposite is true – from Baker to Adams and all in between. The climb took us about 5.5 hours from Ingalls Creek and the descent about 3 hours. For some reason we had the route all to ourselves. It would have been nice to stay another night, but the weekday work siren called, so we saddled up and huffed and puffed our way up Turnpike Creek, over the pass, and out Beverly Creek as the evening glow settled on Bill, Mary, and Iron Peaks.  
 
Strangely, we saw many cars in the parking lot but nobody in Beverly Creek (perhaps they were in the Bean Creek basin?). Bugs (mostly biting flies and stealthy ticks) were present and pesky but never a real problem.  Posted By: Arete In: Beverly - Turnpike trail, Ingalls Creek and Mount Stuart |