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Apr 17, 2019 — I've been spending a lot of time in other areas of the Zion backcountry, and thought a break from solitude to return to the main canyon amongst the crowds would be a good change of pace. Of course, I would ultimately be leaving the main trails in order to venture to some obscure peaks out there, but it was nice to kill some miles on a basically paved route for much of the way. This route covers Refrigerator Peak, Twin Peak, Sneak Peak, Little Majestic, and Majestic Spur. They're all a bunch of little peaks accessed from the West Rim Trail.
I took the shuttle (running this time of year) to the notoriously popular West Rim Trail leading to the base of Angel's Landing, before continuing deeper onto the West Rim Trail where the crowds basically disappeared. Refrigerator Peak is accessed just off the trail, and I ran into a guy nude sunbathing up there, as well as another couple. It's a nice little viewpoint of the next few peaks for the day. I dropped back down onto the West Rim Trail and followed it north as it lost some elevation and crossed a bridge over a slot. Shortly after the slot crossing, a social trail parallels the canyon and leads to a confluence of two canyons, where a crossing facilitates access to the north. Fromm here, I headed to the saddle between Twin Peak and Sneak Peak, then scrambled up a short Class 3 section to Twin Peak's summit. I went back to the saddle and continued along the ridge to Peak 6256. I dropped down to the saddle between Peak 6246 and Sneak Peak. Here, the ridgeline seems to continue seamlessly to the summit of Sneak Peak, but in fact ends in a 10-foot drop where some webbing was set up for rappeling to continue along the ridge. I removed this section on my map to avoid confusion since I had to backtrack. Instead, I dropped down the east side of the saddle on animal trails for a few hundred feet, before locating a gully filled with pine trees and Class 2 annoyance. Toward the very top of this gully, a particularly steep, sandy slope prevented easy access up. Nothing else seemed viable nearby, so I made footholds in the sand to get higher up, where I was confronted with a Class 3 move on crumbly rock. Class 2 stuff leads to the summit, but I was cautious on the awful terrain. There's a small amount of route-finding required to get to the mesatop, but nothing serious. The high point of the overall unimpressive Sneak Peak was hard to locate within the brush, and I wouldn't say it was a particularly interesting peak. I headed back to the saddle of Sneak Peak and Peak 6246. I could either just go back the way I came or drop down into a gully to the west in an attempt to check out a different route. It worked well, with some annoying Class 2, and was much better for a descent than it would be for an ascent. Some easy bushwhacking led into a creek which I followed back into the landscape just west of Twin Peak and back to the West Rim Trail. On the way back, I left the trail to check out Little Majestic and Majestic Spur. They were cute little peaks with some nice views. Overall a nice day, but none of these peaks were Zion favorites.
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