I hiked on the Mineral Basin Range Run this weekend. It's a grueling slog, up and down beautiful, daunting hills, strewn with huge truck-, bus-, and skyscraper-sized boulders and fins, as well as perilous scree slopes, and blinding steep snow fields that you can choose to climb in a day or two with a back pack, as I did. This climb is famous! It’s not as famous as the Ragnar Run, the Turkey Run, or the Boston Marathon, but it should be.
Having completed this climb, I now have met the lesser-known twins of the many Wasatch Front Twins and the American Fork Twins. I know what a class-three scramble is (this climb is rated a class-three scramble). I know what a Red Top, a Red Baldy, and a White Baldy look like--and I'm not talking about Donald Trump and his two top advisers and his high-profile supporters. I know what it's like to see the Pfiefferhorn within grasp, but still too far away. I know what it’s like to feel the spirit and personality of an inanimate force that demands your attention. I know what unsurpassed natural beauty looks like, and I know what coyotes sound like and feel like when you are pitching your tent at dusk and haven't seen or heard any humans in miles and do not see or hear them thereafter for many more miles.
The American Fork Twins command the skyline right behind Snowbird's tram destination on Hidden Peak. A Class 3 scramble is a climb up a mountain with towering boulder fields and slab walls. It will demand that you're in good shape and that you don't mind the realization and sensation that if you get careless and slip, you will die. So, you better come ready to grind it out!
A Red Top, a Red Baldy, and a White Baldy (like “American” Twins), are among the elite few mountain tops in Utah, towering at over 11,000 feet, and made of quartzite and granite (generally).
The Pfiefferhorn was the next mountain on my list to climb on the run, but I decided it would not be within my ability to do in the time allotted for it, and because I had taken too hard of a line off of White Baldy and it wiped me out.
If you climb these mountains, you will feel their spirit and personality and see and sense their unsurpassed natural beauty. (Don’t worry about coyotes that howl when you haven't seen or heard any humans in miles and are pitching your tent in the closing dark. Even if you know you are not on their menu, remember to smugly tell yourself that coyotes are just a fun footnote, because you know they only eat people that are dead or about to die. Just try to look very alive. You do not want to be a news story for the coyotes’ benefit.)
The best part of climbing these mountains is that there is no entrance fee, and you don’t have to wear a T-shirt about it (like in a Ragnar race). Just write about it, after.
Loren M. Lambert © June 27, 2016
Having completed this climb, I now have met the lesser-known twins of the many Wasatch Front Twins and the American Fork Twins. I know what a class-three scramble is (this climb is rated a class-three scramble). I know what a Red Top, a Red Baldy, and a White Baldy look like--and I'm not talking about Donald Trump and his two top advisers and his high-profile supporters. I know what it's like to see the Pfiefferhorn within grasp, but still too far away. I know what it’s like to feel the spirit and personality of an inanimate force that demands your attention. I know what unsurpassed natural beauty looks like, and I know what coyotes sound like and feel like when you are pitching your tent at dusk and haven't seen or heard any humans in miles and do not see or hear them thereafter for many more miles.
The American Fork Twins command the skyline right behind Snowbird's tram destination on Hidden Peak. A Class 3 scramble is a climb up a mountain with towering boulder fields and slab walls. It will demand that you're in good shape and that you don't mind the realization and sensation that if you get careless and slip, you will die. So, you better come ready to grind it out!
A Red Top, a Red Baldy, and a White Baldy (like “American” Twins), are among the elite few mountain tops in Utah, towering at over 11,000 feet, and made of quartzite and granite (generally).
The Pfiefferhorn was the next mountain on my list to climb on the run, but I decided it would not be within my ability to do in the time allotted for it, and because I had taken too hard of a line off of White Baldy and it wiped me out.
If you climb these mountains, you will feel their spirit and personality and see and sense their unsurpassed natural beauty. (Don’t worry about coyotes that howl when you haven't seen or heard any humans in miles and are pitching your tent in the closing dark. Even if you know you are not on their menu, remember to smugly tell yourself that coyotes are just a fun footnote, because you know they only eat people that are dead or about to die. Just try to look very alive. You do not want to be a news story for the coyotes’ benefit.)
The best part of climbing these mountains is that there is no entrance fee, and you don’t have to wear a T-shirt about it (like in a Ragnar race). Just write about it, after.
Loren M. Lambert © June 27, 2016
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