May 4, 2003, Navaho Peak and Little Navaho Peak

Erik Sanders, Stan Sovern and I headed up the Teanaway for this day.  The Stafford Creek road was snowfree to the Trailhead.  The first three miles of the Stafford Creek Trail were also snowfree.   We put the skis on and followed the trail to the creek crossing that comes from the Navaho Peak/Little Navaho saddle, due northeast of the trail at about 3.5 trail miles in.  Little Navaho Peak(6442ft.) is the unnamed peak about 1.5 miles southeast of Navaho Peak, above and right of this draw.  We skinned up the right side of the draw on firm corn snow.  This would be a great 1600 foot descent from Little Navaho in open slopes with occassional widely spaced lodgepole forests.  Arriving at the saddle it was a quick 400+ vertical up Little Navaho's broad north rib to the summit.  It was a fine ski back to the saddle where we skinned up again for the traverse to Navaho Peak(7223ft.).  The southeast ridge of Navaho is a long enjoyable ridge climb with great views of slopes east, north, and south.  No views and a bit of new snow falling greeted us at the summit.  On the descent we retraced our ascent route for a few hundred vertical feet along the southeast ridge.  Then we took a right onto a 2000 vertical foot long open blaze on Navaho's south slope.  What an awesome long and consistent run back to the valley floor.  The persistent cloud cover and some new snow made for excellent Spring conditions.  The run ended by the creek that we paralled on the original approach.  Then it was skiing and hiking down the summer trail back to the car ending a great day in the mountains.  Of note, south facing runs in the Teanaway are losing snow rapidly, probably only worth it for another week.  But in general the Teanaway will have snow for yo-yoing for some time yet.