The Hike of The Week series will follow myself in my quest to hike all 37 of the 11,000′+ peaks in the Wasatch Range in one summer, while providing you with beta to get yourself on top of the most spectacular and seldom visited peaks in the Wasatch.
Path to Cardiff Pass
My first hike took me to the Alta Guard Station 8.3 miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The hike to Mt. Superior is one of the more popular 11,000′ hikes but still stunning in many ways. The hike begins with taking the trail up to Cardiff Pass. There are two options to get to the top, you can either take the foot trail or you can take the more mellow abandoned mining roads. Whichever route you take please be respectful of the private property you are hiking through for the first 1/4 mile.
View from Cardiff Pass looking at Mt. Superior.
Once at the top of Cardiff Pass at the weather station, the route to Mt. Superior (11,040′) is very straight forward with great views of Alta, Snowbird, and Big Cottonwood Canyon. There is a well used trail that will take you to the top, however it tends to disappear and reappear. If you are lucky you might get to see the mountain goats hanging out on the south face.
One of the mountain goats I saw on Mt Superior.
From the top of Superior the next objective comes into view. Monte Cristo (11,132′) is next in line. Monte Cristo is hiked significantly less than Mt. Superior despite being a short ridge-line away. The ridge out is quite narrow at points and gives a great feeling of how high above the canyon floor you are. Unlike many of the surrounding peaks, Monte Cristo has a dome shaped top, beware of the west side of the peak due to 300′+ cliffs. Once atop Cristo a decision must be made to continue to the next 2 peaks, or head back down. Once you head further west than the summit, you must deal with steep down climbs, ridge-line bouldering and slabby scrambles, all above massive exposure. This section I personally won’t do again without the aid of trad climbing gear.
MASSIVE CLIFFS on the west side of Monte Cristo viewed from the first unnamed peak.
If you do decide to continue use extreme caution as you traverse the ridge about .3 miles to the 3rd peak of the trip. This peak is unnamed and tops out at 11,050′. To get down to the ridge, head south of Monte Cristo until you can see a “chute” headed down to the west ridge. As mentioned before the ridge is technical and has massive exposure to either side. If you make it to the 3rd peak you are committed the climb and ought to head .2 more miles to the 4th and final peak of the trip at 11,033 feet and it is also unnamed. This last leg is very similar to the previous ridge and requires extreme caution. Between the two peaks there is a bulge in the ridge, continue on past this until you reach the final peak.
A newly constructed cairn on top of the final peak of the hike.
At this point there are two options that will take you back to where you began. The first option is to traverse all the way back the way you came to collect any gear left in the cracks to aid in a safe ridge traverse. The second option is to down climb into the Little Pine drainage and then walk back up the road to where you began. I opted to down climb through Little Pine since I did not have climbing gear with me, but it is very steep with numerous cliffs you must navigate around. I would highly recommend that anyone attempting the two unnamed peaks bring trad gear and take the same route out as they took in.
Looking down into the Little Pine drainage.
The hike from the Alta Guard Station to the 4th peak and back following the ridge is about 8 miles round trip and a total of around 4,000 feet of vertical hiking. If you attempt the hike allow an entire afternoon to complete it. This hike falls into the category of one of my all time favorite hikes however don’t let the beauty distract you from safely completing the ridge-line traverses.
I remember my first hike. But seriously, looks dope!
Nice work man!
Good to see a writer on UN that actually writes original content. big thumbs up to you Kyler
Next week I’ll be hiking the Chimney. Not really, but something even cooler. I know that being cooler than the Chimney is not possible, but bear with me.
Great article!!! I will look forward to reading about your next climb. Be safe out there.
awesome idea, and even better to document the whole thing. do you have the list of hikes planned out yet?
to be honest, i didnt realize there were 36 peaks above 11k… this is a sick idea
I don’t really have a planned in order list. It can be hard to keep such a list as with my job I tend to only have 1 or 2 days each week to complete things and I have already been sand-bagged on peaks due to weather etc. but I will have something each week.
I need to correct this actually, as I noticed a 37th peak over 11k just south of White Baldy while studying topo maps.
Thank you. Next article will go up Monday.
good luck getting to the top of white baldy….it’s a bitch
So the east side of Monte Cristo isn’t that steep? I tried the Cottonwood ridge traverse (SL Twins, Sunrise, Dromedary, Monte Cristo, and Superior, plus unmarked peaks below 11k) last summer. We didn’t get past the Twins because a storm rolled in, but you could see the whole ridge from the top. I’m thinking if we had started at Superior instead, we could have brought a rope and rapped down the west face of Monte Cristo if it turned out to be gnarly.