[ragman and rodman]

This was a 3 day/2 night backpack trip... really only 48 hours... from noon on Saturday till noon on Monday. Valuable beta for this trip was provided by Tim Hagan's GPS track at peakbagger.com... and the nwhikers trip report from "some names". Day 1: Started at the trailhead (~2900') for Tatoosh Trail #161 and hiked it for 2.7 miles to a junction (~5520') with Tatoosh Lakes Trail #161B... which we used to hike up to a saddle (~5680') above Tatoosh Lakes... then gave up 160 feet of elevation on the lake side of the saddle and set up our base camp (~5520') on a bench 500 feet above the lakes. Stats to base camp... 3 miles, gaining 3175 feet of elevation. Day 2: Up early and on the trail by 7:00am as we traced our steps back to the junction with Tatoosh Trail #161... then traced more steps down to ~5390 feet where we found the obvious (but unsigned) path after hiking a total of .4 miles from camp... where we left the main trail and started following the path north in the direction of Boundary Peak. After hiking a total of 2.3 miles we found ourselves on top of Point 6240+... then down, over to and around an impressive pinnacle to reach the saddle (~6080') between the pinnacle and Boundary Peak after hiking a total of 2.8 miles... where we found it necessary to give back ~160 feet of elevation... first dealing with 75 feet of steep, loose terrain to reach a small bench before following the bench a very short distance to a 30-40 foot Class 2/3 chute that led down to the permanent snow field on the east side of Boundary Peak. We continued north across the fairly flat snow field and reached the Boundary/Stevens saddle (~5760') after hiking a total of 3.4 miles... where we more or less followed the 5800 foot contour line on the map for awhile in order to get around a huge buttress... then headed up steep terrain to reach Steven's SW ridge (~6280') after hiking a total of 4 miles... leaving an easy quarter-mile ridge walk to the summit (6560+). For the most part we traced our steps back to camp... with a couple changes... (1) found a slightly different route to get from the permanent snow field on the east side of Boundary Peak up to the Boundary/pinnacle saddle and (2) traversed on good path around Point (6240+) saving some needless elevation gain. Stats from camp to summit and back to camp... 8.6 miles, gaining 3764 feet of elevation... which is a lot of elevation gain considering that our low point for the day was 5200 feet... with the high point being 6560 feet... confirming what my knees were saying about there being a lot of ups and downs. Day 3: Make the 3 mile hike back down the trailhead... perhaps 200 feet of elevation gain with most of it at the beginning of the day... getting from camp up to the saddle above Tatoosh Lakes. Photos, trailhead directions and downloadable GPS track of our trip to Stevens Peak. ..

[BarbE]

Two more peaks on my Rainier 100 list. Hard to get Stevens and a quick jaunt for three of us to beautiful Tatoosh Peak on our way out. Rugged scenery, good company, relatively few bugs and a dramatic thunderstorm made for a fun, exciting trip.

Thunder and lightening storm heading our way

Camp above Tatoosh Lake

Surveying the route to Stevens-far right

Early morning start

Scouting a route

Short lived flat stretch

Welcome water source

Near Stevens summit

Ragman nearing Stevens summit

Look back at Stevens from Boundary shoulder

Happy hour after long day hike

Sunrise

Detour to Tatoosh Peak

Fower fields on the way to Tatoosh Peak

Ridge walk to Tatoosh Peak

Tatoosh Peak selfie

Tatoosh Peak views