I went up Lone Peak for the first time with my bro-in-law, Ed. He had had been up it several times and did his best to guide me up. We started from Suncrest at 5 a.m. in the dark and stuggled to find the right dirt roads to lead us to Jacobs Ladder. After about 20 minutes, we finally arrived. We could see some headlamps of hikers heading up Corner Canyon, so that helped us merge to the right trail.
Lone Peak summit is at 11,253 feet. We would end up climbing about 6,500 feet. Quite the workout!
Dawn arrives, about 2,000 feet up. Lone Peak to the left of me.
At the bottom of Jacob's Ladder, in the dark, we met the hikers heading up. We said hi and then started pushing very hard up the the very steep trail. Holy Cow, that thing was steep, but I knew it was great training for Wasatch in two weeks. We made very good time and reached the meadow in about 1:10. Here, our troubles started.
Ed running through the meadow
I should have read the trail description. "Many people get lost just past the meadow so pay attention to your route from this vantage point." Oh boy! We were running pretty fast at that point and saw a hiker to the left, so my eye naturally missed the important junction. The trail descriptions warns: "The fork to the north (left) leads to the Outlaw Cabin. DO NOT follow this trail."
The trail to the left was marked well so we continued a climb up to the top of a ridge. But then the trail started heading down. I knew it couldn't be right and Ed just couldn't remember. Finally I was convinced that we should head back to the meadow. We ran into the hiking dude, and he assured us that we were going the right way. We followed his directions, but again once up on the ridge it all seemed wrong. Finally the dude made his way up and he again insisted that we just weren't following his directions. He pointed the way and then it dawned on me he wasn't heading up to Lone Peak summit. I asked, "Are you going to Lone Peak?" He said yes and pointed to a small knob overlook nearby. I shook my head and said, "no that isn't Lone Peak." We quickly left, headed down toward the meadow, found some cairns heading up, tried to follow them but the trail disappeared. We bushwhacked and climbed clear up to a massive ridge to get our bearings and did plenty of bushwhacking. Finally, I insisted that this was all wrong and convinced Ed that there must be a major junction in the meadow that we missed while we were running fast. The hiker dude had misled us. After about an hour delay, we returned to the meadow and sure enough found a junction.
Finally we were on the right trail. I expressed concern that with the hour delay, I did not have enough water. I had planned on a five-hour adventure, but this would be much longer. We decided to continue. The rest of the hike to the summit was a challenge and frustrating. We just couldn't push the pace fast because there was too much route-finding. If we went too fast, we kept going off trail. Ed's memory of the route was not detailed enough to help much. So we pushed ahead at a good clip, but not blazing fast. We caught up with the hikers we had greeted below and thankfully they gave me about 16 oz. of water. I drank most of it immediately and started to feel better. But I was still dehydrated.
Me and Ed on Lone Peak Summit
The altitude was really bothering me for some reason. I kept getting very dizzy. I'm guessing that dehydration was a factor, but I was bothered that I was having so much trouble at 11,000 feet and above. Finally we reached the summit and had a nice break talking to a little family at the top. If I throw out all the time we lost going off course, I believe we made it to the top in 3:30.
Looking toward Utah Lake and my home
Down we went and I was now in good spirits again. But that didn't last long because everytime I pushed the pace faster, we would lose the trail. It was frustrating. But we descended pretty fast. After the meadow I really kicked it into gear for awhile and we lost elevation super quickly. But then I had to slow down. I only had a few drops of water left and I knew I was badly dehydrated (I think I was down about 6-7 pounds from the start). Each time we ran into hikers we asked for water. Finally, near the bottom of Jacob's Ladder a young hiker gave me about 12 oz. That would be enough to finish. We ran again, pretty fast and made our way through a maze of jeep trails back to Suncrest.
Our adventure took about 7 hours. But when we were on the right trail, it was about 3.5 hours up and less then 2 hours down.
I'm not sure if I will do it again any time soon. It is just too tough to go fast unless you really know the trail. I think it would take me 2-3 times more to learn the trail well enough to go fast. I think a 4.5 hour round trip is possible for me. If I do it again, I would need to haul up much more water and cache some half-way up.
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