Good As Gold - Bullion Divide

Until recently, I hadn’t thought much about the peaks on the Bullion Divide because they weren’t as well-known and didn’t seem as impressive as some of the other peaks in the Wasatch. Due to a lack of research on my part, I assumed that the Bullion Divide was mostly a boring ridge walk over really mellow summits.  We’d already done Sugarloaf Peak and Mount Baldy above Albion Basin, two of the five ranked 11ers on this route which seemed to corroborate this theory, so on this day we chose to take the Snowbird tram up to Hidden Peak to skip ahead to the section of the route we hadn’t done yet (check out my Devils Castle / Sugarloaf Peak trip report to find out more about the Albion Basin portion of the Bullion Divide).  The plan was to go over American Fork Twin Peaks, Red Baldy, and White Baldy, descending down the White Pine trail, since we had both already been up Red Pine before and were interested in seeing a new area.

 

 

 

 

 

The white granite boulders started getting bigger as we made our way down to the saddle between Red Baldy and White Baldy, and we now had to deal with pesky shrubs and trees in between the boulders.

 

 

 

 

 

The views were nice though, so every now and then we’d stop to admire our surroundings.

Descent from White Baldy

I’d heard that the west ridge leading down to Red Pine was a little easier for descending, but since we still wanted to check out White Pine Lake, we decided that we’d go back down that way instead.  Since retracing our path along the last part of the east ridge appeared difficult on the descent, we instead chose to start down the west ridge and then cut underneath the main summit to the south, losing some elevation but hopefully getting back to the east summit via a longer, albeit easier way.  Sean, a friend from work whom I’d often talk with about various Wasatch hikes and climbs who has since moved to Seattle, saw a bear below this exact same spot when he climbed White Baldy back in June of ‘07.  I’ve never seen a bear in the Wasatch and likely never will, but it was cool knowing that one had been spotted here (it may have been the same one that was killed a week later for dragging a kid out of his tent in American Fork Canyon, though).

 

 

 

 

 

We started our loop south of the summit of White Baldy, and ran into another short class 4 section as we descended down from the west ridge.  I went first down a steep little chimney and then directed David over to it, since it seemed like the easiest way down.

From above it looked like we’d have a clear path on dirt and be able to avoid those nasty patches of trees if we descended low enough, but a couple times I started along a line only to find an impassible nest of trees, forcing me to change directions a few times.  David descended a little lower and seemed to find a better alternative, so to avoid going back up towards the west ridge again, I went straight through some bushes/trees in an attempt to meet up with him.  I got a little scraped up, and at one point had to do a little mini-rappel while holding onto the branches of one of those trees to descend a steep granite slab (I tested my weight on it beforehand, but wouldn’t recommend this).  A couple hundred feet below the east ridge we finally started regaining the elevation we had lost and made it back up near the east summit.

Looking down on the east ridge and comparing it to the more direct north-facing slopes leading down to White Pine Lake, we chose to descend the loose northeast slopes of White Baldy instead of going back down the steep east ridge.

 

 

 

 

 

There was a lot of loose scree and talus, but we were able to carefully make our way back down.  Since the slope was at an angle, we had to scree-ski leaning to the left (west) in order to keep our balance, which after a while made me feel like I was going to be stuck walking lopsided the rest of the way down.  The loose rocks became bigger on the way down, and soon we were hopping through a seemingly never-ending boulder field.  After what seemed like a long time, we finally made it down to stable ground, where my leg muscles thanked me.  We made it to a wide trail along the eastern side of White Pine Lake, which I assumed would lead us all the way back to my car.

 

Before we could get into a trail-walking groove, what we thought was the path abruptly ended at the northern end of the lake.  To the east we could see what looked like the dirt road we’d seen from up on Red Baldy, so after some deliberation we figured that must be where we needed to go (the map I printed from Pellucidwombat showed a trail leading right up to the northeast corner of the lake, but later I found that this trail does not exist).  When seeing that we’d need to bushwhack through more boulders to get there, David instead opted to go to the south side of the lake to meet up with what he figured was the start of that trail higher up.  I was more in the mood to just take the shortest path through the boulders though, so we split and agreed to meet on the trail to the east a few minutes later.

 

 

I went down some monotonous terrain to the northeast of the lake to get down to some more boulder fields, and in about fifteen minutes made it onto the trail/road.  Looking back up at where the trail lead, it looked like David would have to regain quite a bit of elevation to meet up with that part of the trail, as it did not lead to the southeast corner of the lake like he thought it would.  I kept my eyes on the trail above me to the south, looking for any sign of him, but half an hour after splitting up I still didn’t see him, so I started calling out to him, hoping he’d hear me.  I heard a reply, but due to the constant wind (which had now blown in clouds for the impending storm) I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.  I walked back up the trail to a more elevated and visible section and then stayed put, hoping eventually he’d find his way to me.  I wasn’t totally sure yet if I was on the right trail, but was pretty sure it would at least lead us somewhere down to the bottom of White Pine Canyon.

After a few more minutes I spotted David coming down from the lake near the same spot where I had been.  Upon reaching me, he explained that once he figured how much farther away the upper part of the trail was from White Pine Lake, he decided to come back down to where we had split up.  There he met two other hikers who said they’d seen me back on the trail from a distance, so David then made his way back to where I was.  I shouldn’t have split up from him, but there was no harm done since we were close to the trail and no longer scrambling across difficult terrain.  Just a word of warning to those going up White Pine Canyon though: there is no trail leading to the lake, which seems to be standard procedure almost everywhere else in the Wasatch.  We hiked quickly down the wide trail/road, which in fact did turn out to be the right way to get down, and made it back to the trailhead just as it was getting dark.  It was light enough that we didn’t need to bust out the flashlights, though.

I drove David back to his car at the Snowbird Tram parking lot and we talked about how it was nice to end our hiking season on a high note, and that the Bullion Divide was an awesome way to go out (it snowed a lot up in the mountains the very next day).  The route had probably the most sustained scrambling that either of us had done in a single day, with awesome views of the Alpine Ridge throughout.  Although we missed out on scenic Albion Basin by taking the tram up, I’d highly recommend doing what we did and forking out the $17 if you’re short on time and want to cut straight to the fun scrambling.  I felt the scrambling became a little more difficult with each peak (AF Twins, Red Baldy, and then White Baldy), but besides a very short class 4 section on each peak it was class 3 and under the entire way (maybe with better route-finding we could have kept it at class 3 the entire time, but where’s the fun in that?), and being above tree line for such an extended period of time made it feel like we were hiking 14ers in Colorado.  White Baldy also turned out to be a much more challenging and rewarding peak than I had anticipated.  This was hopefully the first of many multi-peak ridge scrambles I’d like to do (next summer we might try the more difficult Beatout and Triple Traverse routes), and definitely ranks up there as one of my favorite days in the mountains.

Bullion Divide Stats

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