American Fork Twin Peaks & Red Top, elev 11489' & 11400'

We move to St. George in only 3 weeks, so I knew I needed to get all the hikes in that I could. I decided to get the highpoint of Salt Lake County – American Fork Twin Peaks in before we left.

To get to the trail head, I drove up little cottonwood canyon to the second snowbird entrance and parked just to the west of the Snowbird Resort Center. From here, I read that I was supposed to take a small footbridge, but I couldn’t find one so I crossed a large bridge even more west of where I parked and started up the hill.

I crossed a paved walking trail, I believe called the Dick Bass Highway Trail and crossed under the Wilbere Ski lift. Eventually the road/trail petered out into a large grassy slope with a very faint sign of a road continuing upwards to a noticeable road ahead. I continued climbing until I got to the road.

Here was my first adventure. The book I had told me to take a right when the trail split and to continue climbing. If I took a right, though, I would have to loose elevation. But I did see another break-off trail about 100 yards down the right fork, so I thought I’d try it. I walked up that trail and it dead-ended into a ski lift support. So I backtracked down that trail and continued down hill. I saw signs for west 2nd south skil lift and little tiger and something like thunder bowl. If you happen to see these signs, you are heading the wrong way!

To make a short story longer, I should have taken a left at the first fork and gone up hill, not a right. After I had gone about a mile off course and added about 500 feet of elevation gain and loss to my hike, I was back on course.

Soon after the trail forked the first time, it forked again. This time there was a sign, though. It said the Gad valley trail was to the right and the Peruvian Gulch trail was to the left. The book said that I wanted to take a right, so I followed the Gad valley trail. I believe the Peruvian Gulch trail goes up to hidden peak and engages the knife ridge to get to the AF Twin Peaks. I decided that I wanted something a little more tame, and also wanted to climb Red Top on the way.

Not too long after the second fork, I made it to Mid-Gad Restaurant, which was closed, and tried to figure out what to do from there. I could basically see that I needed to gain the ridge to the right of the peak, which was now visible. I started from the restaurant by hiking under the ski lift up a grassy ski run (it started out being a little swampy because of all the snow run off). From here, I just followed what I believe is the Election ski run up hill until I came to the top of the Gad 2 ski lift and a ski patrol hut.

Just past the hut, I saw a service road and took it down hill for about 50 yards until I came to a break in the trees. I then left the service road and started boulder hopping over loose rocks. My target was a small break in the trees/brush quite a bit up the hill. The left over snow pockets made me have to choose my route extremely carefully because I didn’t have the equipment to climb up the snow. This part of the hike was perhaps the most unpleasant.

I could see AF Twin Peak in front of me the whole way, but knew I had to go around to the right before I could get to it. Once to the ridge, my first goal was Red Top. I turned left and headed for the summit. The smoke in the air from the many wild fires in California and Nevada made me loose my breath faster than normal and I found my self needing more rest stops than normal on the steep ascent.

Once to Red Top, I looked over at the north ridge to Red Baldy (a class 4 ridge) and was happy I didn’t have to go that way. But the view over to AF Twin Peaks looked like it would take all the remaining energy I had to reach. I started over by dropping down about 170 feet to the saddle and then started climbing all over again to the summit.

The views of the peaks to the south west were amazing – and they are my favorite peaks in the wasatch to date – especially Pheifferhorn. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Uintas since I’m planning a trip there in a couple of weeks, but the smoke didn’t allow me to see them.

I stayed on the top for a while taking pictures and eating a quick lunch. Then, as it was about 5:00pm (I got a late start), I thought I better head back down. The only wild life I saw was on the way down and they were little Marmot looking animals that were not very afraid of me.

Overall, it took me about 6 hours and was about 9 miles, even though I don’t know for sure because my GPS had trouble keeping an accurate log of my trip. This was one of the more physically demanding hikes I have been on, but I’m glad to have two more eleveners down!