Oct 24, 2017 — The snow has held up pretty well in the Wasatch the last week, so why not hit a couple more of the Wasatch 11ers (11,000 foot peaks)? This traverse of the Red Baldy, Red Top Mountain, and Twin Peaks (American Fork) was perfect.
From the Silver Lake Trailhead, follow the well-traveled trail to Silver Lake, which is gorgeous, before heading up a faint but definitely visible trail just to the east of Silver Lake to Silver Glance Lake. From here, a grassy slope is visible leading to a low point in the ridge. Take this grassy slope until it turns into a talus field, and then head northwest toward the low point in the saddle, following a steeper grassy slope. Once on the saddle, notice the intimidating White Baldy to the west before continuing east up Class 2, and maybe easy Class 3, before hitting the Red Baldy summit where you can see the rest of your route. It's as fun and long as it looks.
From the summit of Red Baldy, head down the increasingly difficult Class 3 ridge to the saddle with Red Top Mountain, where the route becomes significantly less technical for the rest of the route, usually just inovlving Class 2 scrambling on talus. The Class 3 section is straighforward and fun, but be careful of massive rock blocks that may look solid, and are in fact not.
From the Red Top Mountain summit, follow a gorgeous ridge of easy walking to the summits of both Twin Peaks. These are the American Fork Twin Peaks, not to be confused with the Broads Fork Twin Peaks. From the eastern of the Twin Peaks, head south along the ridge on a visible trail that leads down to a dirt road. This dirt road continues for over five miles back to the trailhead. We did almost the entirety of it in the dark, but were grateful it was there since we started our day at 1pm. There is one section where the road goes down into a bowl past a cabin, but you should keep along the ridge along a trail to avoid an extra mile of road switchbacks. At other sections, it may be tempting to cut road switchbacks, but none of them really seem worth it. It's a long road slog back, but worth it for sure for the amazing Red Baldy, Red Mountain, Twin Peaks traverse.
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