Summer Trail Series: The Triple Traverse

Summit Monkey on Dromedary, O' Sullivan on the left, Twins on the right.

One of the more rugged areas of the Wasatch Mountains is found on what's known as The Triple Traverse. This includes some of the highest peaks on the Cottonwood Ridge, Twins, O' Sullivan, and Dromedary. It is an exposed class 3 scramble, which means lots of shale to traverse on steep slopes, including knife edges, and some minor rock climbing. This is not for the faint of heart.

Chris takes a picture of the raspberry bushes.

We started at the Broads Fork trail and then took the Robinson Variation up to the Twins. The Twins are the most prominent peaks seen from the valley towering in between Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. They are the easiest to summit of the Triple Traverse. Broads Fork is a steep trail but mostly runnable for the first three miles. From there, several routes are possible to choose from up to the Twins, but all are incredibly steep, traversing scree, often falling back two steps for every one you take. Unfortunately, the many raspberry bushes were not quite in bloom yet, unless Mr. Bear has come along and eaten all of them already. Instead, this morning we were attacked by man eating mosquitoes. I had to sacrifice my left arm to them to escape.



Steve Huff only had enough time to summit the twins and looped around going down the standard route. The rest of us carried on scrambling, quad burning, surfing, crashing, slipping, hanging on for dear life. Around, up, over, down, repeat. By the time we summitted O' Sullivan, the middle peak, we were tired and refueled, only resting a moment before setting off for the steepest section. Surprisingly, the descent from O' Sullivan was not as hard as we expected. Don't think for a minute that it was easy or not life threatening. Just afterward, it seemed quicker and easier than expected.

Steve descending from the Twins in the background.

Summit Monkey on West Twin, Salt Lake Valley down below.

Knife edge ridge in between the Twins and O' Sullivan. Chris, Steve Ball, and Sam.

With Dromedary summitted and The Triple Traverse completed Chris Pope and I celebrated by drinking Mt. Dew. Then we started down toward Lake Blanche, ultimately looping around the next drainage. It looked easier than what we had just completed, and it was...mostly. It was not as steep and the rock slides were fun to traverse down. However, we got cliffed out several times. All but a few times we were able to go around, but some of them we had to climb down. Chris was amazing. He seemed to scurry down the rock faces like he had spiderman's power of sticky hands.

Chris, surfing down the scree.

Steve Ball, in a tight spot.

Sam rock climbing down.

Chris and I were planning on being done a half hour sooner so we left Steve Ball alone. Every man for himself! Finally down to Lake Blanche we emptied our shoes and hurried down the last three miles running strong around 10:30 min miles.

Map and Stats of The Triple Traverse.

Summit Monkey on O' Sullivan.