A Mid-Summer Dream

The Lisa Cottonwood Traverse By Lead Guide Tyson Bradley 

Ten minutes after leaving the trailhead we start climbing. Water-polished granite in a steep-sided gorge requires our full attention. Scanning for hand and footholds with headlamps, our bodies and minds must wake up, although it’s only 4 am! Most big mountain scrambles require a long, boring slog up a trail before the fun begins, but not Lisa Falls. It’s one of the many great attributes that sets this class 4 scramble route at the top of my Wasatch summer fun list. 

It’s also cool and shady here, and we’re wearing extra layers, in spite of a forecast high of 100 in SLC. An hour into the odyssey the friction moves on smooth, white granite gets even more committing. To avoid the beautiful pour-offs along the watercourse, we must climb up and right, away from the creek and stem up a flaring chimney feature. Pulling out of it onto easier ground I traverse back left then up again, catching a glimpse of the stream, now 100’ below.

Enclosure Start

I’d rather be up here than trying to stay close to it where the sloping stone is more slippery from eons of water flow. I once tried that line and found it was like a 5.6 friction traverse with no positive holds, and no protection to be had. A slip into the creek would not be deadly, but getting out again would be akin to scaling the walls of a giant bathtub with wet soles. Not an easy task, regardless of how sticky your shoe rubber is.

Instead, we contour along a narrowing ledge far above the flow, looking for a way down. Once I used a rope and rappelled here, but this time I discover a weakness. By struggling between a tiny evergreen tree and the steep wall above, I find the ledge descends and in a few more feet I can downclimb a 10’ vertical step to the grassy gully bottom.

Minimizing the use of a rope is key to efficiency on long scrambles, just as using one to protect exposed moves is essential to avoid a nasty fall. By keeping it in the pack here, we’ve saved time, and we keep scrambling along the creek. Now our gully opens up and tributaries come in from both east and west. It’s important to avoid making a wrong turn. Staying left takes you on a line west of the West Salt Lake Twin Peak.

Veering right takes you toward O’Sullivan (aka Sunrise Peak,) which I’ve also erroneously done. The west line results in more difficult climbing moves, and the east line involves a long traverse back west before entering the enclosure of upper Lisa Falls Couloir. We ascend directly up, away from both gorges, following moderate, gravelly friction that leads to grassy ledges. Moving up and right we’re soon in the “heart” of the Lisa Falls drainage. The pink glow of sunrise sheds a spectacular light on the rugged ramparts of the Lone Peak Wilderness across Little Cottonwood Canyon to the south. The Pfeifferhorn, Maybird and Hogum Gulches, the Y-Couloir and Coalpit are lit up. We applaud the dawn light on our favorite ski terrain as we pause for a snack and rest.

Lone Peak Wilderness

Pushing on, we travel on wide-open grassy slopes dodging thickets of scrubby spruce and clambering over small cliff “steps.” Staying left of the main gully we avoid several deep shady ravines where snow lingers long. In September of a big winter, you could ski 500’ of bulletproof summer “firn” snow here.

We can see the narrow slot couloir above, and we move up into its cozy confines. Between the overhanging wall of solid, reddish quartzite on our left and the smooth, whiter, lower-angle stone on our right, there is an odd purple-ish strip of rock. It has a coarser-grained structure and is stickier to our soles than the quartzite. We follow the “Purple Path” as it leads ever upward; a friendly weakness between two immense walls of steep, technical stone. 

Climbing Purple Rock

Purple Rock

This time we encounter slow going due to the hard summer snow choking the gully in places. “Moats” have formed along the snow’s edges where it has melted away from the rock. Mostly we can squeeze our bodies through and we feel pretty secure pushing off the solid snow with one hand and “stemming” off the rock wall with the other. Although it's tricky in spots, we save time by not transitioning to crampons our pulling out our ice axes. Come to think of it, we haven’t all brought such sharpies, so it’s a good thing we can get by without!

Mixed Climbing

Route descriptions refer to a 5.7 crux in this area, and indeed there is some difficult ground. The actual rating depends on exactly what line you take. It’s essential to move away from some dangerously loose rock on the left, and so we cross to the right. A few steeper moves lead to a place we can traverse and descend slightly back into the couloir proper. As usual on this route, the hardest moves are horizontal and nearly impossible to protect with a rope. I spot the holds for my follower, and soon we’re back on mellower climbing.

It soon becomes a hands-free hike, as the upper couloir widens out and easier lines present themselves on the right. We take this option and are relieved to be out of a now rubble-filled gully bottom. The only challenge here, as the stone changes to brown slate/shale, is staying clear of the dense, low evergreens. These thickets make great dens for the mountain goats, but they’re abrasive on exposed human skin.

Hands-Free!

The views across Little Cottonwood Canyon open up again and the wind picks up as we take the final steps to the East Summit of the SL Twin Peaks. Now we finally see signs of other humans. There is a much easier line of ascent, even a trail in places, coming up Broads Fork from Big Cottonwood Canyon. Most Cottonwood Crest scramblers or Triple Crown (Twins, Sully, and Dromedary) summit-baggers come this way. After celebrating the summit and view of SL Valley, we hustle down the well-trodden climbers trail toward O’Sullivan Peak.

O'top East Twin

A welcome strip of soft grass pads our sore feet as we move horizontally east onto a knife-edge crest of slate/shale. A 30’ long, 5.4-rated, fist-sized crack provides a down-climbing crux, and I do a quick hip-belay. Soon we’re scrambling together again and we reach the base of Sully’s steep western buttress. We link ledges and chimneys past patches of brilliant yellow Cinquefoil flowers through terrain that can be safely protected by means of a belay from above.

Twins Meadow

Passing one false summit, we carry on to a wide sidewalk in the sky that leads to the top of O’Sully. Big views east to Snowbird and beyond greet our eyes. A photo and snack and we’re off again, descending the easy, but wildly exposed east ridge. In places, we look down the slabby north face for a sheer thousand feet into upper Broads Fk. Snow lingers on the lee side of aprons and at the base of the cliffs. Otherwise, it’s a massive glacial-carved cirque of dry talus cones. 

Fractured rock on the south side of the crest is the “weakness,” but we accidentally send a few rocks crashing down into Tanners Gulch. We shout “rock!” and hope no one is unlucky enough to be ascending that way this morning. Tanner’s Col itself requires a few more steep, loose chimneys to get to. Like most mountain passes, it’s windy here, so we continue toward the 3rd jewel of the Broads Fork Triple Crown, Dromedary Peak. It’s one of 6 points over 11,000’ we’ll set foot on today.

  The Cottonwood Crestʼs steepest chimney pitch is just around the corner from the col. Fortunately, it belays securely with good anchoring. Sadly, it marks the end of the Wasatchʼ incredibly fine quartzite until you get to the Monte Cristo massif. Soft, friable slate/shale composes the rim rock all across the top of Mill B. South, a massive drainage. It has 3 cirques, headed by the impressive eleven-thousanders, Dromedary, Monte Cristo, and Superior.

The Crest Boulder

Luckily, the slate is mostly solid if you stick as much as possible to the crest. This class 4 scramble in the sky has exposed down-climbing moves and spectacular gendarmes with incredible views to SL Valley. The high airy ridge never gets too hot, even on the warmest days. One triple-digit July day we encountered a huge rattlesnake lying right on the crest! 

Places you can bail off the divide in this terrain are many, once you get east of the prominent coxcomb feature that forms Dromʼs east ridge. But escape options disappear, and the mission becomes committing again in the Monte Cristo Cirque.  The final crux is the hugely exposed quartzite of Monte Cristoʼs intimidating SW Ridge. By working various chimney features, with mostly poor anchors, the steepest continuous class 4 portion of the route succumbs easily. Far more difficult, and even deadly, is the alternative challenge of down climbing this portion; a feat required by the popular east-to-west Cottonwood Traverse. It starts with an ascent of Superior’s classic South Ridge, which our user-friendly, west-to-east route doesn’t include.

Summit Smile

Monte Cristo is soon attained and we jump for joy. Our legs are rubbery and our nerves are shot from thousands of climbing moves over the past 14 hours! We’re sick of bars, cliff-shots, jerky, and gorp. But its OK, because weʼre on the home stretch now: relatively easy, downhill ground, and only 2400 feet of it, the latter portion on a trail!

The Lisa Cottonwood Traverse is a rare gem: a quality scrambling line that gains far more altitude than it loses. Using a low start trailhead: Lisa Falls (6300ʼ,) and high finish in Alta (8,600’,) means you enjoy the art of climbing and/or the aerobic pleasure of rising in the mountains for most of the day, and donʼt crush your knees on the descent. It's also an excellent primer for the Cathedral and Grand Traverses in the Tetons. 

At the finish, we trot down as the light fades, and I get a lesson in toe-striking, a Kenyan runners’ technique Iʼm quickly convinced is the enlightened way. Iʼm equally certain Iʼll be a life-long heel-striker. I’ve simply been doing that too long, and it’s hard to teach an old goat new tricks.