Obscure Trail Monkeys: Willow Peak and The Devil's Eye

The Devil's Eye in American Fork Canyon.

by Sam

On a whim, Aaron Williams and I decided to throw our luck at summitting Willow Peak. It's located on the north ridge in American Fork Canyon and if you take the route we did you will most definitely need luck. AF Canyon is crowned by spectacular rock formations, resulting in cliffs, scree fields, boulders, steep pitchs and sudden death on every corner. That was our trail. Getting up that stuff is challenging but fun, getting down was another story. Let's just say this is the one and only run that has ever taken me longer to get down than up.

Map and stats of Willow peak and The Devil's Eye.

We received some beta from our buddy Kendall Wimmer. He has done it a few times but only in snow. It was nice not to have snow today but in some cases it would have been easier and safer (when the snow is compacted and settled). It was a somewhat stormy day, but we were lucky enough to miss the rain until the last five minutes. As a last minute suggestion Kendall told us not to miss the Devil's Eye. We'd actually never heard of it and were only planning on Willow Peak. After looking into it we most definitely planned on scoping it out. Luckily we were able to find it.

As Aaron and I first hit the ridge in the dawning muted light we made bets on where it would be. He pointed at the first rocky point and staked his lot. I was sure it was farther along and that we couldn't even see it yet so I took his bet and staked my own lot. Turns out I knew exactly where it was, even though we missed it on the way up. After summitting Willow peak I decided to go around some rocks to the south side instead of the north, as we did on the way up, and sure enough we found it.

Photo stolen from here.

The Devil's Eye can be seen from the Timpanogos Cave parking lot. There are several approaches you could take to get to it. Once you're on the ridge it's not easy to find unless you know where it is. Basically, it's the last peaky point on the ridge before you start the final ascent to Willow peak. It's also a bend in the ridge, which turns the approach to a northern direction. It's a rocky outcropping of crags and cliffs. On either side there are no immediate rocks on the slope. The trick is that it can't be seen from the ground level. Our first approach was on the north side and when we looked up we only saw rock. On our return approach we circled around to the south and were able to see just enough of it to know where it was.

We decided to go up a fun rock climbing route from the south side and afterward went down the north side which is easier and safer. Now that I know where it is I could easily return to it, but like I said, when standing on the ground on the north side you look up and don't see anything. It's only after climbing the rock a bit that you are able to see it, and it's literally right there.

It started to snow and blow on the summit so we didn't stay there long. During the ridge traverse Aaron and I discussed many times what constitutes being "cliffed out". We concluded that it's subjective. To the regular hiker, most of what we did on this route would probably be considered cliffed out. We traversed through scree, boulder fields and knife-edge rocks. A few times we had to rock climb up, over and around certain sections. Once, we chose to downclimb instead of finding a way around. It took a lot of time and effort but was fun and challenging. Basically, we never got cliffed out, at our skill level. However, if you aren't the type to enjoy walking knife-edges and rock climb there are plenty of other routes to get you to the same spots safely.