wasatch and beyond: Dromedary to Sunrise Traverse

June 27, 2010

Dromedary to Sunrise Traverse

Andrea on the summit of Dromedary Peak

Date: June 25-26, 2010
Distance: ~10-11 miles
Vertical: ~6500 feet
Time: Overnight
Peaks: Dromedary Peak (11,107 feet), Sunrise Peak (11,275 feet)
Route: Mill B South trail to high camp above Lake Blanche, Snow climb and mixed scramble up NE face of Dromedary Peak, ridgeline traverse to Sunrise Peak, traverse W ridge to Sunrise-Twin Peaks saddle, glissade into Broads Fork, snow climb back up to gain N ridge of Dromedary, glissade the morning ascent route on NE face.
Crew: Andrea and Jake

With the temperature in the valley pushing high 90s, and a trip to Colorado coming up next week, we decided a high camp and some snow climbing / scrambling was in order for this weekend. We headed up the Mill B South / Lake Blanche trail on Friday afternoon, setting up camp above Lake Lillian and Lake Florence in an absolutely perfect location.

The plan for Saturday was the attempt the "triple traverse," a classic Wasatch ridgerun. After a great snow climb up Dromedary's NE face, we ran into lots of loose rock on the scramble below the summit (Maroon Bells broken dinnerplate type rock). The traverse from Dromedary to Sunrise Peak offered lots of very exposed class 3 scrambling, with the occasional class 4 move when we got off-route. After summiting Sunrise Peak, we started to make our way towards Broads Fork Twin Peaks, but only got as far as the saddle before making the decision to bail on the rest of the route. The scrambling was difficult on the loose rocks, and therefore was taking a long time. Rather than repeat our route back to Dromedary, we glissaded down into Broads Fork, then climbed the snowfields back to Dromedary's North ridge, where we were able to glissade our ascent route from the morning. After packing up camp, it was back down the Lake Blanche trail (much more pleasant than the Bells Canyon trail) to the trailhead in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

This was Andrea's first snow climb (she's hooked, now!), and doing a camping gear shakedown was a great exercise for our upcoming (bigger and longer) trips this summer.