Lone Peak

Summit (l) and western cliffs

As the name suggests, Lone Peak keeps somewhat to itself. While I might have been able to link it with South Thunder, it would have been a long day, and my body needed to recover. Instead, I climbed it by itself via the standard Jacob’s Ladder trail (“what to do in Draper on a weekend”), which climbs a little over a vertical mile from valley to summit. Despite the forecast, I once again enjoyed fine weather; hopefully this luck will hold for the three days I need for the rest of the Wasatch 11k peaks.

Though this was not clear from the descriptions I found online, the city of Draper has installed nice trail signs (stocked with maps), outhouses, and even some picnic tables at the various foothill trailheads along the dirt road. The gate partway up the road also appears to remain open at this time of year.

After some lame switchbacks, the trail heads up the hillside in an admirably direct fashion. The first part of the trail stays on south- and west-facing slopes, so I encountered almost no snow until the summit of Enniss Peak around 9,200′. From that point to the summit, the route was entirely snow-covered. After putting bags and crampons on my feet, I followed a few old tracks into a vaguely Sierra-like area of granite slabs and towers, with Lone Peak’s impressively vertical west face obvious to the northeast.

Knowing that the northern summit is the highest, the easiest route is obvious — simply follow the curving northwest ridge. Fortunately, the snow was still mostly hard on the way up, so I made my way to the final summit ridge easily, if not quickly. The final section of the ridge reminded me of an easier version of Gardiner, with some rock steps to negotiate and a few snow knife-edges.

From the summit, I admired the cliffy north-facing wall of the southern subpeak, and the rest of the Wasatch from Nebo in the south, to the peaks along the Great Salt Lake in the north. The ridge to South Thunder looked extremely time-consuming, making me glad I had decided not to try a link-up. I suffered some postholing on the way back, but found a bit of boot-skiing to make up for it. Even with their snowshoes, the two guys I met on their way up the trail were probably in for some suffering. Hopefully it will cool down up high Tonight; otherwise I’m in for a world of hurt tomorrow.

Sunrise over Lone Peak

Summit ridge

Tricky part of summit ridge

View south across subpeak

Sun on Oquirrh range to the west

Sierra-esque granite

Summit (l) and western cliffs

View south along Wasatch

Well-appointed, crowded trailhead

Bullion Divide (Sugarloaf to White Baldy)

View back from White Baldy

Not trusting the camping in Little Cottonwood Canyon, I spent a restless night in a Walmart parking lot, then drove up early to knock out the easier 11,000′ peaks in this area. The first two, Sugarloaf and (Just Plain) Baldy, were kind of pathetic, being surrounded by ski areas. (The peak-naming in this area is pretty bad, with no fewer than three Baldies and two Twins all within sight of each other.) After starting at almost 9,000′, I walked up some ski runs, then briefly left them to tag Sugarloaf. Returning to the ski runs, I followed a skiers’ boot-pack to the summit of Baldy, where there was a convenient ski patrol toboggan.

“Hidden Peak,” with a lift to the top, was too pathetic to bother with, so I bypassed it on the way to American Fork Twin. By now the lifts were running, ferrying the racing team and a few spring skiers to Hidden’s summit. I followed another boot-pack along the ridge, climbing through a few trees, then up the slope to the lower Twin Peak, the destination for most skiers. A short walk brought me to the summit, from which I could see the rest of the route. Red and White Baldies looked intimidatingly far away.

The snow was soft enough to stow my crampons, but still well-behaved enough that I rarely postholed. After a stroll down to the saddle, Red Baldy actually got interesting, with some fun easy 3rd class scrambling up the final summit ridge. Looking across to White Baldy, I was happy to see that it promised more of the same. On the way between the (second and third) Baldies, I met a backcountry skier out for a couple of laps to the saddle, one south toward the lake I used to access Box Elder, and the other back to the trailhead on the north side. Though it was t-shirt weather, there was still plenty of good snow in both directions.

The ridge up to White Baldy was a bit more involved, forcing me to backtrack in a place or two, and 4th-class my way straight up a headwall near the top. The snow was starting to become annoyingly soft, forcing me to hunt for rocky bypasses. The summit had the Utah-standard mailbox with a frozen mass of paper inside.

After a comfortably warm and windless break, I headed off down the north ridge, where I had earlier seen some chutes leading into the basin to the northeast. The ridge had a few tricky sections, and the chute was full of deep, heavy slush in which I briefly became stuck. Fortunately, most of the snow lower down in the basin was better consolidated. I followed skier and, eventually hiker tracks back to the trailhead. One nice couple gave me a short ride, but I ended up walking most of the road back to the car. This may be a ski area, but most people didn’t seem to want to pick up a grungy climber in their nice, shiny cars.

Sugarloaf and lift

Superior’s impressive south ridge

Twin Peak from Sugarloaf

Baldy and Cottonwood Ridge from Sugarloaf

Baldy and Twin

Timpanogos from Twin

Red and White Baldies from Twin

3rd class to Red Baldy

3rd class and headwall on White Baldy

View back from White Baldy

Cottonwood Ridge and White Baldy’s north ridge

View toward Salt Lake

Provo, Box Elder

(These were actually two separate days, but neither was all that interesting, and I was having camera problems. Provo and Box Elder are the 11,000′ peaks on either side of the Timpanogos group. Both are straightforward climbs by their standard routes.)

The normal west ridge route for Provo is a short hike when the road is open, but the spring closure adds 5 miles of road-hiking each way. The crust on the ridge was good for crampons, though I made my life more difficult by taking the northwest ridge on the way up, and by bringing my running-shoe crampons and no ice axe (to save weight). The gear proved barely adequate, and I had to invent a new and strange way to glissade on the way down.

The road to Granite Flat Campground was inexplicably gated down by the lake, adding a bit of dry, paved road to the hike up Box Elder. It was t-shirt weather on the snow most of the way to the summit, and I had to pick my route carefully to avoid painful postholing. The summit has excellent views of both Timpanogos to the south, and several other 11ers to the north. To descend, I glissaded the top part of the east face then, after some exploratory dithering, found a narrow couloir through the cliff band below. After more boot-skiing and glissading down the ravine below, I brute-forced my way through woods and willows back to the trail.

Dirtbag Note

While sleeping in the parking lot next to the gate on UT-92, I got the full brights-and-spotlight treatment from two Suburbans’ worth of cops — not rangers, but Joseph Smith’s Finest. I evidently looked enough like an empty sleeping bag that they didn’t pester me further, but it was still unsettling, as a degenerate such as Yours Truly would probably be little better than a Lamanite in these upstanding Nephites’ eyes (at least I have fair skin). I’ll probably look for alternate lodging when I go back for Timpanogos.

Nebo, North

Nebo from North

Nebo and North are at the southern end of Utah’s Wasatch range, with Nebo being the range high-point. In the summer, two trails lead to Nebo’s summit from the scenic road to its east. However, since this road is still blocked by snow, I had to look at other options. ‘Tis the season for snow climbs, so the northwest couloir out of Pole Creek was the natural choice, efficiently reaching the summit with a bit under 5,000′ of climbing (depending on where you park). The road is rocky and steep, requiring 4 wheel drive, but not difficult by Colorado standards; a snowbank currently blocks progress perhaps a mile or less from where one leaves the road for the couloir.

Conditioning helps, but conditions change everything. After being shut down in part by soft snow the previous day, I dispatched these two peaks in about 5.5 hours thanks to a cold front that firmed everything up overnight. It may have been a bit too cold — my fingers, toes, and eyeballs were uncomfortable at times — but it was worth it.

After testing a snowbank next to my car, I decided to leave the snowshoes behind, and started up the road a bit before 7:00. I left the road at the obvious avalanche path, following some old snowboard and ski tracks which turned west through the woods, picking up some relatively open terrain in a ravine. After awhile climbing through trees, I reached the broad bowl below Nebo, from which the northwest and Champagne couloirs are obvious. The recent warm weather had caused some decent-sized wet slides, but everything was staying firmly in place today.

It was cold enough in the open that I was climbing in my shell with the hood up, occasionally turning around to thaw my left eyeball. After a long climb across the basin, I reached the base of the couloir, where I soon picked up a perfect boot-pack. Where it was interrupted by the recent slides, the snow in the couloir was almost perfect for crampons; when I punched through, it was easy to find a more solid line nearby.

I got a brief taste of sun exiting the couloir, then made my way around some bare talus on my way to the nearby summit. There was a surprisingly well-preserved register in a sturdy canister, though no one had signed it in a couple of weeks. The increased sun and wind more-or-less canceled each other out, so I huddled in my down jacket on the summit for a few minutes while putting away my crampons, then took off down the trail toward North. The east side of the ridge was mostly scoured bare and dry, and where it wasn’t, it was easy to kick steps in the snow.

I spent hour or so of straightforward walking reaching North, watching the clouds and snow showers to the north. I found a ledge on the east (lee) side of the ridge, and shoveled down my summit fish as a few snow flakes started to fall. The avalanche path just south of the summit dropped me, with a mixture of plunge-steps and boot-skiing, to the road a couple hundred yards above where I had left it in the morning. Two Wasatch 11,000′ peaks done, and back to the car for a late lunch.

Even the poor bear postholed

Nebo from the valley

Avy path leaving road

Nebo from clearing

Base of couloir

Top of couloir

South from Nebo

Nebo from North

North from North, Bald and clouds

Descent from North

North and South Tent

Tent peaks at their most tent-ish

After the previous suffer-fest, I was both chastened enough to carry snowshoes and interested in something a bit more straightforward. North and South Tent mountains are the high-points of a high plateau in the Manti-La Sal Forest, east of the Sevier valley. From the proper angle, they vaguely resemble a sagging A-frame tent.

As usual of late, the peaks are practically drive-ups in the summer, with easy access from the 10,000′ Skyline Drive, but snow stopped me around 7800′. I snowshoed up the road, following a snowmobile track, until I reached a meadow with a partly-visible stream, then took off cross-country to reach Skyline. I had expected the peaks to be obvious from the plateau, but they were not, so I headed generally south over rolling terrain, headed for what I thought was the highest point.

I ended up on the ridge northwest of North Tent, which was soft snow on one side and near-vertical dirt on the other. I meandered near the long ridge to South Tent, looking for areas where the crust was strong enough to support me. Even with snowshoes, it was impossible to completely avoid punching through sometimes. I quickly learned to avoid crossing any even vaguely wet dirt, since the area features some of the slimiest, stickiest mud anywhere.

After enjoying the season’s first summit fish, I took a more direct line back, crossing a couple of low ridges before dropping into the meadow with the road. Once again, I had the place to myself.

Nebo to the northwest

Tent peaks at their most tent-ish

North ridge and high plateau

North Tent and Wasatch from South Tent

Shortcut back

Twin “snow roses”

Glenwood/Signal (“Sporting Couloir”)

Signal from Richland McDonalds, showing couloir

Signal Peak (or Glenwood, depending on who you ask), at 11,226′ stands a fairly impressive 6,000′ above the Sevier River valley, with an interesting, cliffy upper face. In the summer it is an easy hike from one of the dirt roads on the high plain to its north and east. With these roads still closed for the winter, one must look at other options, the easiest probably being a hike from somewhere on the Monroe Mountain road.

However, there is an obvious and more “sporting” alternative: two couloirs stand out from the northwest face, the right-hand one leading nearly to the highpoint of the ridge (the actual summit being farther back). The base of both couloirs is best reached from somewhere along Thompson Basin Road. In retrospect, one should cross the ravine leading from the couloirs fairly low down and follow the bench to its north to reach the base of the face.

I camped somewhere above 8,000′, below the final switchbacks leading to the radio towers, near a fire ring and a trough of nasty greenish water. With only 3,200′ of gain on the menu, it sounded like an easy day, even for a slow early-season Dirtbag. Foolish me! Snow climbs always punish a lack of fitness, and 2,000′ spent punching shin- to knee-deep through crust was perhaps a bit more pain than I wanted. At least the crust helped me start my usual summer collection of shin damage…

Expecting plenty of cross-country travel, I was initially elated to find some nice game trails leading in the right direction. However, nearing the base, I discovered that I was on the south rim of a deep, loose ravine leading to the base, and that the snow in the forest on the rim was unholy posthole-y.

For some reason I decided to contour into the ravine, dodging intermittent cliffs and looking longingly at the easy, dry terrain on the other side. After much side-hill postholing, including some crawling to increase my surface area, I reached the stream at the bottom, and had an easier time reaching the split between the couloirs. The left-hand one looked steeper and perhaps more consolidated, but it led well left of the summit, so I stuck to my original plan.

Then the misery began. It had not been especially cold overnight, and while the snow in the couloir had a decent crust, it was not well consolidated. I wandered back and forth trying to find a more solid path — in the center, near either wall, in old slide paths — but eventually gave up and settled for the tiring double-stomp technique. I amused myself by launching a large snowball, which gained incredible speed, and by climbing two short and avoidable steps — a 6-foot patch of ice and a 10-foot vertical mixed section.

Reaching the top, I was disappointed to see a long, undulating ridge covered with posthole-prone snow between me and the summit. The crust was softening, but I managed to plot a careful course that avoided the worst. Further softening on the way back made it less pleasant, but I had little choice.

My plan for the descent was to take the long ridge back to the radio towers and pick up the road. This turned out to be fairly long, with many ups and downs, and often a choice between soft snow and loose side-hilling, but a network of elk trails made it bearable. With snowshoes, it might have been faster to glissade one of the chutes on the north side of the ridge and return through the woods.

On the drive out, I met a cool older couple with an ATV who had been living on the road for 30 years. After wintering in Richfield, they were spending time camping and exploring in the many surrounding National Forests. In the past, they had backpacked all over the United States, even using pack goats for awhile.

Sidehill into ravine

Easier going along stream

Left and right couloirs

Giant snowball I really wanted to push

Mixed step

Large, low-flying military jet toward Monroe

Tushar range

Long slog to the summit

View back across Sevier valley

Towers and Sevier grid

Toward Signal across elk sleeping area

Signal from Richland McDonalds, showing couloir

Delano

Summit mailbox, looking south

After a warmer night a bit farther up out of the valley, I got an earlier start for Delano, this time with snowshoes. Though the side-trail to Delano was completely covered with snow, and had seen no recent traffic, I could easily follow it by looking for cut deadfall — it seems like this trail is still maintained. I finally lost it in the “Pothole,” a glacier cirque near treeline, but it had served its purpose. Admiring the cliffs to the north, I just kept heading for the highest thing I could see, climbing a snow-filled gully until I eventually reached Delano’s unimpressive summit.

There was a standard mailbox on top, but the register(s) were just a half-frozen mass of damp paper. In one of the outside entries, I was amused to find a party who had summited by snowmobile in March. The summit had a good view of the several glacial cirques on the east side of this part of the range, as well as a ski area and many large meadows to the southwest.

I went ahead and tagged the next two bumps to the east, finding a cairn on the second and highest. The next peak east was a lower, ugly thing with a road up it and radio towers on the summit so. Mistakenly thinking I was on Mount Brigham, and not wanting to walk the long, winding road from the next peak to the trailhead, I dropped down a chute to the base of the Pothole, where I picked up the approach trail. The return featured the standard unpleasantness below treeline, with much side-hilling (painful in snowshoes) and postholing.

Snow-covered stream near “trail”

The “Pothole”

Summit mailbox, looking south

Baldy (l) and Belknap (c) from Delano

View SW to ski area