W100: The Super Triple Traverse

Date: July 13, 2018

Distance: 16 miles

Purpose: to add a new twist to some of my favorite peaks in Big Cottonwood

Looming above Salt Lake Valley stands the perfect “M” shaped mountains, known as Twin Peaks. These peaks were first explored by me at age 15 when me, my Dad, John Adams, and Jack Buchanan hiked this peak via Broads Fork. It was a scout activity where only one scout showed up: me. Oh well…

The Triple Traverse consists of ascending up Broads Fork, heading towards East Twin Peak up Robinson Ridge Cutoff, then O’Sullivan (Sunrise Peak), then on to Dromedary Peak, then back down Broads Fork.  In reality there is another peak in between those so it should be considered a quadruple traverse. There are a few exposed sections of scrambling. Otherwise, it is a lot of boulder hopping.

I wanted to add a new element to this classic hike to get some extra elevation gain. So I decided to park my car at the Park and Ride at the mouth of Big Cottonwood, run up to Ferguson Canyon trailhead, then all the way up Ferguson Canyon, then`over to the headwall of Stairs Gulch (very steep and slick slabs of rock up here), then connect up with Robinson Ridge to do the classic Triple Traverse. I was very tempted to actually head down Stairs Gulch after doing the 5 summits up there. Stairs is one drainage I don’t know much about, other than it is very steep, not well explored, and home to a lot of glide avalanches in the winter. Nonetheless, I have always been intrigued by it. After gazing into the basin holding Lakes Blanche, Lillian, and Florence (a.k.a. The Three Sisters, which are full of dumb and hungry brook trout) coming off Drom and getting cliffed out once, I was pretty shakey and tired. So I didn’t feel like going back up Robinson to drop into Stairs for the descent back to the canyon road. I later heard Stairs is home to a lot of Search and Rescue calls as well, so it was probably the right call. Instead I descended the long way via the traditional Broads Fork down to BCC road at the S Curve (packed as usual with hordes of people heading to Lake Blanche), then ran the last 3 miles down to the mouth where my car was waiting.

It was a fun way to add some extra elevation and see some more beautiful terrain in upper Ferguson Canyon, a rarely explored and highly remote alpine treat. And it was wonderful to be able to say I did it from the valley floor, not from the S-turn.