Had an incredible day hiking up Broads Fork and on the Cottonwood Ridge. We had planned on hiking across the entire Cottonwood Ridge, but after we reached the first summit (Broads Fork East Twin) thick black storm clouds started to roll in, so we decided the entire ridge traverse was probably out. We ascended via the Robinsons Variation, which was a fun alternative to the standard route up the Twins. It was quite challenging with a lot of loose wet scree and we had to climb through some sketchy cliffs to get onto the ridge. I think I found a cougar or bobcat den, although the cat was nowhere to be found. It did smell horribly like animal urine though.
The ridge heading up to the first twin is exposed in places and required some fun scrambling with only a few difficult sections. The ridge from the West twin back to the saddle does have one section of cliffs that we had to descent and although the climbing was easy it was severely exposed.
After arriving at the base of Sunrise Peak the clouds had not blown off at all, so we decided to have a nice glissade that cut off about 1000 feet of the descent. It was a fun day with over 5,000 feet of elevation gain and took us just over 9 hours. | 