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Saturday before Father's Day was one mother of a hike!... Two high peaks in the Wasatch. The Pfeifferhorn tops out at 11,326' and White Baldy at 11,321'. My GPS tracked over 8,000' elevation gain for the day. My own analog figures were closer to 6,000', but because I was unfamiliar with this route I made several false ascents/descents which either could've added up or just confused the GPS. Ultimately, I don't trust GPS accuracy. Whether 6k or 8k, it was a respectable trek.
The White Pine Trailhead begins about 5 miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The trail is a mild grade for the first mile (an old mining road). The next 2.5 miles to Red Pine Lake increase in elevation at a steady rate, but the trail is good and pleasant. Arriving at Red Pine Lake is a treat-- a beautiful deep teal colored lake. There are several places to camp around the south edge.
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The trail stops at lower Red Pine Lake. Fairly easy route finding is involved hereafter. I was fortunate enough to meet with drifts of snow, some 10 feet deep or so, that covered boulder fields and scree leading up the slope to the Pfeifferhorn ridge. This is a fairly steep and steady climb. I post-holed a couple times up to my knees. I saw a couple spots where climbers had broken through some 3-4 feet.
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Once at the summit ridge, a sub peak just shy of 11,000' forms a buttress of sorts to the summit cone. Here, I got my first glimpse of the Pfeifferhorn, a magnificent pyramid-shaped summit. It is a boulder scramble across the saddle with a few precarious drop-offs, but nothing extremely treacherous. The yellow line traces my climbing route. It was a beast, but once I let go of any notion of sprinting to the top, I was mentally prepared. Slow and steady got me there.
A closer look shows a fellow climber making her way just ahead of me up the summit cone (look for the red arrow; click on the pic and you'll see what I mean). The arrow demonstrates the scale of this ascent. In case you're wondering, it is as steep as it looks.
Once at the summit, I took a rest. This was the mark of a 3,600'+ ascent and I was making pretty good time. Up to now, routefinding was easy and much of the boulder fields and scree had been desirably covered in snow. Notice in the picture of me kicking back on the summit. Just behind my head was a drop off of nearly a thousand feet (seen in the next photo-- you can see a climber perched near the same location).
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From here I surveyed my next conquest-- White Baldy. I was still fresh with plenty of energy. White Baldy is a fair shot away, but proved to be an arduous task. The entire route was composed of cliffs, boulderfields (size of a washing machine to small car), scree (size of bowling ball to microwave) and tallus (size of golf ball to softball). The ridgeline between Pfeifferhorn and White Baldy is an impassible collection of cliffs. The rocks were nasty and presented a constant incline. This puts tremendous pressure on the calf and quad muscles to keep ankles from torquing out. The rocks shift often, quite unstable. It took me over 2 hours to traverse over to the headwall just above the saddle. That was dissapointing. I cliffed out a couple times and had to backtrack, downclimb and upclimb. From here I suveyed the summit, a jagged verticle-reaching boulder field of granite, quartzite and shale. There was no clear route, so some time was spent exploring and backtracking. Most of the climb was a Class 3, but I must admit that some of it stretched into Class 4, as a slip of one hand or foothold would have been fatal. I cliffed out (where you dead-end due to a sharp cliff) several times without navigable options. It was frustrating and tiring in the afternoon sun.
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Reaching the summit was glorious, albeit short-lived when I had to route find my way back down. I determined that given my dwindling water supply, my time, and condition, I would not pursue Red Baldy for the descent. Given the time I had spent on White Baldy, I reasoned a return via the Red Pine Basin. Upon return, I found myself using numerous rock climbing techniques including pocket grips, as reliance on the quartzite and granite was prefereable over the scrappy shale. It wasn't pretty, but it was a challenge that gripped my full attention and sharpened my mental acquity, which had been waning.
After another murderous trek across the boulders and scree (did I mention I dislike scree?) I gained the ridgeline again and descended for the next few hours. Hoorah!