From the boys' WTA report:
We are the Mountain Goats, Nathan (14) and Terrence (12), and we spent Father's Day with our dad climbing Vesper Peak. We had been wanting to do this one for awhile and wanted to go before too much snow melted. The South Fork of The Stillaguamish is raging! Thanks to a couple of slippery logs put across it's not too bad, but definitely a bit of a challenge getting over. The open area & switchbacks afterwards were already toasty hot at 8:30 in the morning and we were happy to get back into the trees right before Wirtz Basin.

Fortunately, there is still a good amount of snow in the basin and the valley, which we prefer to trying to scramble over the rocks and boulders of late summer. Headlee Pass is steep and it was a bit slippery (we decided to put on our spikes), but with so much snow we were just able to go straight up. And since there were several people ahead of us, we did have some steps to follow. After the pass, there are only a couple of spots where the trail and boulders poke through the snow. In a couple more weeks it will be slower going through here with holes opening up, but today it was easy going. The lake is nearly completely frozen, and luckily there was a nice breeze for the final straight up slog from the lake to the summit, so it didn't get too hot.

The views from the top were stunning! 360 views with Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Glacier Peak, Morningstar, and Del Campo looking fantastic. We could see The Olympics and Seattle, too. It took us nearly 4 hours to reach the top, and we enjoyed nearly an hour on the summit. It was so nice it was hard to leave! But we knew we had some glissading too do. We got down to the lake in less than 15 minutes, sliding or "snow running" all the way down. Headlee Pass was too steep to glissade up top, but lower down there were still some good spots to slide down the valley. We got back down to the car in just over 2 hours.

We saw several people with skis (they said the skiing was "okay") and some people were camping at the lake. For today we used gaiters, axes, poles, sunglasses, lots of sun screen, and spikes just for going up Headlee Pass. The road is rough and might be trouble for a small car or sedan. We also saw people were ticketed for not having their forest passes out.

Overall, we really enjoyed this hike. A great workout and really great views! We suggest (if you like snow) to do this one sooner rather than later and avoid the rocks and boulders. Thanks for reading and happy hiking!