Vesper is one of my favorite scrambles and every time I pant my way up to Headlee Pass I'm looking over my shoulder at Morning Star towering over me. Finally this summer Luke and I got the satisfaction of getting up Morning Star and reversing that view.
Luke had attempted the climb once before and had bad memories of going up and down steep loose gullies on the lower part of the mountain. On that attempt he only got as far as the notch before running out of time. This time we kept going farther up the Stilly tributary until we could see what looked like a doable route.
It's possible that it's even easier if you kept going all the way to the head of the valley. But we found that something about this creek made any rock that was wet extremely slippery, so much so that even flat rocks were hazardous to step on. So rather than fight the creek as it narrowed we headed up the slope toward the Morning Star ridge along a prominent sloping rib.
First view of Morning Star ridge. Yellow line is our route
This turned out to be a fun scramble route with only mild bushwhacking problems. We flagged critical points with white adhesive tape and cairns to make sure we would find the same way down and not get caught in one of the many cliffy areas. (We took the tape off and scattered the cairns as we came down because this is not really a "route").
We started hiking from the road at 7 am. It took 9 hours round trip. Other pictures:
Sunrise on Morning Star (left) and Sperry (right)
Stillaquamish tributary beyond where the trail peters out - slippery when wet!
We stayed along the top of the left hand ridge which was mostly open or easy bushwhacking through blueberry bushes.
Pass to the W side. Snow is steeper than it looks. Without axes we went up the right-side moat.
Gully to the the summit ridge. Easy traverse, but the gully is loose and steep.
Once on the ridge the slopes to summit are very easy
Summit - no views during the 10 minutes I was on top.
The "summit register" was a few scraps of wet paper in a plastic film can. Note Justus' climb in '04
Vesper (left), Sperry (right) and Headlee pass in center.
The steepest part of the gully. Not so bad, but there is loose rock everywhere.
Descending the rock rib along the slanting gully.
Boulder hopping down one of the S Fork Stillaquamish tributaries
Yeah -- I had reviewed those pics before we left. I was out that same wet weekend battling soft slides on Mt Stickney and your trip report is what convinced me to try Morning Star in the summer.
Nice pics & report Puzzlr!
We did this a couple days ago (North Face Boys) on 9-9-07 Sun.
The Snow was gone from the last steep Gully.
We put a new Register and Cairn on top.
Here area few pics.
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Big difference from when we all 
