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Sep 16, 2016 — I figured I'd kick off my time in the Salt Lake City area with a tougher hike. I planned to meet up with a new friend Shawn who I met online. Not knowing anything about each other, we went for the tantalizing Triple Traverse (Broad Fork Twin Peaks, Sunrise Peak (aka O'Sullivan Peak), Dromedary Peak), a hike that begins on a fairly well-marked trail most of the way to Twin Peaks and its short section of 3rd class scrambling. The trail is steep, and likely changes due to scree movement each year, but it's straightforward enough. There's a short Class 3 section to gain Twin Peaks. We only did the East Twin, the taller one. After Twin Peaks, we went back to the saddle and assessed the west ridge that would eventually lead to Sunrise Peak from here. It looked like a straight drop, easily 5th class. Shawn "accidentally" scrambled up a 5th class section, but with a little extra searching around the westward-facing side, I was able to find something a bit more reasonable without much exposure. The route I found was maybe light Class 3, much more safe. The rest of the traverse just took some route-finding, most of which was on the southern face of the range (since the north face of all three peaks is basically just a sheer drop), but nothing else was quite as cryptic. One section to note, though, is the saddle between Sunrise (O'Sullivan) and Dromedary, where the inclination is to go to the right up a super-steep and dirty slope, but with a short Class 3 scramble to the left leads up more easily.
From the top of our third peak, Dromedary, we continued to the north and down to low point on the ridge, noticing Lake Blanche to the northeast. Rather than take the standard Triple Traverse route heading west from the saddle and back to the Twin Peaks Trail, we attempted a route from the east slope toward Lake Blanche. It was definitely farther than it looked, but well worth it. I can't say the route on the attached map is the best. Shawn and I were having fun and made some unnecessary Class 3 (sometimes Class 4) scramblnig choices to keep the descent interesting. I would say you can keep the descent at Class 3 with some care. A few cliffs served as obstacles, but we eventually avoided the worst of them and made it down to the lake. The fall colors and sunset were sort of overwhelming and I took about a million pictures, but going down this way to make a larger loop and add beautiful lakes really completed the hike for us.
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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!