Twin Peaks

So, the other day I decided to climb Twin Peaks, which is visible from where I am living. I decided to start from the Mill B trailhead. I started up the Broads Fork trail, which was really nice. It looked like this:

The fall colors were brilliant in a few places along the trail. It climbs the canyon westward before heading south up the trail. The first two and a half miles were very nice and pretty runnable. There were only a few places that were too steep for me to continue running. I crossed this creek about a mile and a half up the trail.

I think it looked awesome.

I passed through this one grove of aspens and just had to snap another photo. I love quaking aspen trees and this was just an awesome view up the trail.

Up the trail a little bit more, I passed this meadow and there were several dear along the side of it. I didn't get any good pictures of the dear, but here is the best one. You can see one off to the left side of the photo here and one in the middle.

This next one was the first glimpse of the peak I was heading for. I climbed up to the right of the photo. The point on the far right that you can see is where I climbed up to first, but the next one over is the one that I was actually aiming for.

Here is a view looking back the opposite direction to the north. The farther peaks you can see are on the north side of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

This was the first view that I had of the Valley. You can see Salt Lake City there in the center of the photo and the lake beyond.

This view is looking north over the Wasatch Mountain range. I love the views in these mountains.

I hiked passed that lake. The trail ended right about where that lake is and I had to stop running at that point and climb up some pretty steep rock slides. You can see at the bottom of the picture where I climbed up.

This was the little point that I climbed up to first. According to my map it is 10,530 feet elevation. From there I had a better view of the valley.

See...

That's me from the point there.

Now this is the view from the higher of the two Twin Peaks. At an elevation of 11,330 feet. The second peak there is in the way of the view, so I climbed over to the other peak there which stands at 11,328 feet a whole two feet lower in elevation that this taller one.

Great views of the valley. You can see the dark clouds hovering over my head. I was a little concerned about thunderstorms rolling in, so I didn't stay up there very long at all. I never heard any thunder, and there was only a little rain/snow mix when I started heading back down.

Here is a close up of where I live. I can see our church, but it is hard to see our house because the road is going north/south and the houses/trees across the street kinda block the view of our house from here.

You can barely see the mountains over there, so I knew I had to get down quickly. The rain didn't actually hit until after I got home. That was nice.

Even though I was only able to run the first two and the last two miles, it was a very tough outing. I think that because of the lack of trail this is the most difficult ascent that I have done in the Wasatch Mountains. Everything else I have been up has had a trail at least most of the way up. This one the trail only came up not even half way. It was really steep coming up the last little bit. I almost felt like I was rock climbing in a couple of places. I think it is a category three climb according to some other stuff that I have read about it. Well, enjoy!