Toward the Saddle…

The most prominent peak of the Wasatch Mountains that form the eastern geographical boundary of the greater Salt Lake Valley is actually a set of peaks named “Twin Peaks.”  There is only a two-foot difference in their elevation and they lie in a somewhat east/west orientation and are often referred to with the designations of “East Twin” and “West Twin.”  Located about 100 yards apart, the peaks measure 11,330 and 11,328 feet respectively, east and west, and rise approximately 7,000 feet from the valley floor.

You might remember a photo similar to the one below in my post “It’s great to be alive in the West” from March of this year.  When I made this photo, I was located about 4-5 miles south of the front, or western face of the mountain, so we can only actually see the west peak from this view.

The peaks are often referred to as the Broads Fork Twin Peaks, as this is the most common approach to the peaks…and the below photo shows what they look like from Broads Fork.  You might remember similar photos from my two posts on the area last summer.  The saddle is located in the deepest part of the ridge-line toward the left of the image…which is still a bit of a hike from the beaver pond.

This is Sunrise Peak to the left and the southern edge of the west Twin Peak to the right…with the saddle right there in the middle.

And this photo below is right about where I ended my foray into the area last year…it should be photo #8 in the post, “Broads Fork – Part II.”  Actually, I think I was a little further up the trail last year…about where you can see the people…to the right of the left-leaning stick, just down from the mass of trees…just left of the middle of the image.

There’s a man and woman toward the bottom of the below photo…the woman is wearing the neon green shirt and turquoise shorts…we’ll see them again later….

We can still see the woman and her neon clothing in the below image…just down a little and over to the right of the huge rock that is a little ways below the horizon…if it’s hard to find her, keep the rock and where the woman should be in the center third of the photo….  She’s there….

About one-third of the way up the slope, I was wondering if I was crazy…wondering if I really needed to keep going upwards…so I found a flat stone for a seat and turned around while I had another drink and an apple…….wondering…..

If you noticed the yellow hue to the side of the highest peak toward the left of the above image, here’s a closer look at it…from miles away, literally, you can see the color of thousands (and millions?) of sunflowers that covered Mt. Raymond…some of which I have already featured here.

One can only sit on the side of a mountain for so long eating an apple and having a drink before one has to decide whether to keep climbing up or to head back down to the truck…so I turned and looked up again…and up again…and figured “What the hell,” and kept climbing…one step at a time…this isn’t a race, right…….?  And you can tell that we’re looking UP, right?  There’s a bit of a trickle of water in that darker spot…down and to the right of the big rock that is now on the horizon….

How many of you have been to a gym or fitness center and tried their “Stair Master?”  We’re still looking UP in the below photo….

Remember the man and woman from the earlier photos?  I had asked them if there was a clear trail to the top…the woman said “yes” and the man said “no.”  He said there’s no trail, but “you’ll know where to go.”  It seemed that I needed to head toward that bit of a notch in the rock between the middle and left spots of snow….

In the notch now and still moving upward…hanging-on to cracks in the side of the rock, scrambling on hands and feet….

Looking toward the right of the notch…the lighter peak is the west twin….

…and after another bit of a scramble and a climb, I’m sitting on the saddle…

Wow!  Looking toward the south, I see the southern ridges of Little Cottonwood Canyon….

…looking toward the west I can see out over the Salt Lake Valley….  Those are the Oquirrh Mountains out there, the western geographical boundary…and that lighter-colored, damnable open-pit mine is toward the right edge of the mountains.

Back south again at the Pfefferhorn on the left…

and the Lone Peak ridge….

…and now a self-portrait looking toward the east again…with that beaver pond from the earlier photo…a little bit above the tip of my boot…waaaay down there.

You can see the woman in her neon-colored clothing and her hiking companion near the top of the lower peak, down in the right-hand corner of the below image…rather tiny….  They were actually coming back DOWN from being up on Twin Peaks…already coming down and I just made it to the saddle……

After the slippery and slow climb back down from the saddle, it was nice to make it to the spring again…such clean and cold and refreshing water.  I refilled my two empty bottles and headed on my way.

One last look at Broads Fork Twin Peaks before climbing a small, final rise and then hiking down the remaining three miles of trail back to the truck.  If you’d like to read more about Twin Peaks and the various ways one can reach the summits, you can click right here to be taken to Summit Post, one of the leading web-sites for climbing and hiking enthusiasts…not just for Utah, but for all over the world….

If you’d like to see where Broads Fork and the Twin Peaks are located on the map I recently shared on the blog, click here, and then find the second yellow pin up from the bottom of the map in the first image…it’s just to the left of center in the photo…and then it happens to be the only yellow pin, also near the bottom, on the second photo.  Also, as a reminder to help with orientation/direction, the view of the map is looking eastward up the canyons…so the right side of the map is toward the south, the left is toward the north, and behind you (not on the map) is toward the west.

Thank you, yet again, for spending a bit of your time with me…for accompanying me on another hike into the Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.