Mountaineering

Sundial Peak and Lake Blanche are a classic hiking destination for many people in the Salt Lake Valley. It’s a short, 20 minute drive and a rewarding 2 hour hike to the lake, but the views are spectacular. It is easily in the top 3 most esthetic hiking destinations in the Wasatch. Having said that, Sundial […]

We began hiking up Jacob’s Ladder trail just as the sun started lighting the horizon and the stars faded into the dull grey. The low-light, black and white landscape slowly filled with color as the brightness of the day began to warm the cool fall air. Step by step, Kirk and I lugged our climbing gear, food, and water […]

I find it interesting how intense the alpine world is. I have spent the last few years gradually climbing harder and harder mountains. It never ceases to amaze me how insignificant I feel when I commit to a big climb. The CMC Route on Mount Moran is an Alpine grade II and the face is […]

This has to be one of the most intense all-around adventures I have ever done, and it happened in my own backyard of Little Cottonwood Canyon. I got the crazy idea to climb a classic winter alpine route and ski a classic winter descent. Here’s how it went down: We got to the base of […]

We pulled into the Antelope Flats National Forest camping area at 7:30pm. Running a bit behind schedule, we’d still have about 3 hours of sleep if we set up camp and fell asleep immediately. The sky was clear despite the torrential downpour that occurred about an hour earlier as Wes and I sat eating breakfast […]

Some people call this the Triple Traverse, but since Wes and I had done Broad’s Fork Twins a few weeks earlier via Ferguson canyon and the Storm Mountain ridge, and also because Wes had to work til noon, we skipped the Twins and just did Sunrise and Dromedary Peaks this time. So, I’ll call it […]

I don’t get excited about shoes very often and this might be because I don’t find an amazing pair very often. However, the Salewa Firetail GTX approach shoe is honestly the best shoe I have ever had. I am an avid runner, hiker, backpacker, mountaineer and rock climber living in Salt Lake City and for […]

A lot of the time, organizing the details and coordinating the people involved with a mountaineering trip can be the most difficult part. In this case, it felt a bit last minute, but it was definitely more organized than other trips Brent and I have thrown together. I feel like most of the organization came […]

The South Ridge of Superior is a fairly iconic ridge line in Little Cottonwood Canyon across from Snowbird and Alta Resorts. Since moving to Salt Lake I have been slowly ticking away at a number of peaks in the Wasatch, Mount Superior being one of them. The more peaks I have bagged and the more […]

This winter has gone by pretty quickly, thanks to my new interest in indoor climbing that luckily happens to be next door to my work, basically. The ski touring season that I was planning on taking advantage of seems to keep slipping out of my reach, but because I have had much more luck finding […]