Lone Peak (June 29, 2008)
Roanne and I hadn't been on any real adventures in a while, so we decided to do a hike somewhere neither of us had been before. Lone Peak stood out as the logical candidate in my mind, as I had heard good things about the climbing in the cirque that forms the top of the mountain and I had always wanted to check it out. I had it in my mind that the approach to the climbing took about 3 hours, so I assured Roanne that the hike would be about 4-5 hours round trip. With having done my 31st birthday challenge the day before, a nice relaxing walk in the woods seemed like just what the doctor ordered. We headed south on the scootie around 10:00am, stopping enroute at the Barnes and Noble so that Roanne could acquire the next wizard book in the series that she is currently reading. We arrived at the trailhead in Draper without any problems, and started hiking at 11:00am. By this time it was already getting pretty hot, and the first part of the hike was a bit of a grind as we ascended switchbacks up a hot open slope covered in sage brush. We saw one snake on the way up, and after about 2.5 hours we came over the shoulder of the face we were ascending and entered some more pleasant terrain with larger trees and some shade. We continued along the trail, losing it in a few spots but always finding it again as there started to be some larger snow patches. After about 3 hours and 45 minutes, we saw what we thought was the peak and were heading for it, but then we met another hiker headed down who informed us that the actual peak was a lot further on. We discussed matters and elected to continue since we had already come a long way and didn't want to turn back empty handed. After coming over the crest of the ridge where we thought the summit was we were greeted with an amazing view of the Lone Peak Cirque and the actual summit on the far ridge:
It looked pretty stinkin' amazing, so of course we decided to keep going and head for the summit. Roanne wouldn't stop to pose for a photo so I had to chase after her and get action photos, here she is headed along the ridge towards the summit (the top is the highest point on the horizon):
About a half hour from the last photo we were moving along the final knife edge ridge towards the summit. This part was super fun, as the rock was amazing perfect granite, and there was lots of exposure with the ridge dropping off sharply to each side. We even had the bonus of seeing two mountain goats (a mother and a baby) on the final approach to the summit. Here is a photo of Roanne on the summit, looking down on her kingdom:
The summit was really cool, not much larger than the sheet of rock that Roanne is standing on in the picture above. Here is one of me on the summit:
And here is one of "Team Adidas" posing on the summit (special thanks to Ben for scoring us the swank Adidas outfits!):
Here is a shot of the summit survey marker, and looking down from the summit at the adjacent cliffs. From this photo, you can see why we were furious with ourselves for neglecting to bring our climbing gear! From the survey marker you can see that the summit is at 11,251 feet, and since we started in the Salt Lake valley at 4,950 feet, this made for a total of 6,300 feet of elevation gained, not bad for a casual day hike.
The way back down provided plenty of snow slopes with opportunities to practice our glissading technique. Here is an action sequence of Roanne demonstrating proper technique, complete with the rear end deployment for self arrest purposes at the bottom:
The hike down was uneventful other than that we were a bit hungry and thirsty as we ran out of food and water. And our feet were a bit wet from our glissading antics in the snowfields near the top. We arrived back at the scootie at exactly 8:00pm for a 9 hour round trip outing. It ended up being a little longer than my initial estimate of 4-5 hours, but by now Roanne knows that she needs to apply the doubler to all of my time estimates for mountain activities, so team morale remained high throughout the adventure.