I’d been up this route several times before, but it had been a few years.
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This really is one of the best moderate climbs around. It’s nearly 2,000 feet of climbing with a tame hour-long approach just minutes from downtown Salt Lake. Pretty rad.
As best as I can remember, here are my other ascents of the route:
- 2004 with Eric
- 2005 with Matt
- 2007 with Trevor
I brought my ice axe and aluminium crampons for the several hundred vertical feet of moderate snow climbing in the approach gully.
- 0:00 – Started hiking
- 1:00 – Arrived at the base of the route (I got lost on the approach and that wasted about 10 minutes)
- 1:10 – Started climbing
- 2:10 – Topped out, hiked around a bit, nearly stepped on a rattlesnake, had some food
- 2:35 – Started hiking/scrambling down
- 3:10 – Was back at the base of the slabs
- 4:10 – Back at the car
The trailhead is at about 5,475′ and the route tops out at about 8,250′, making for an elevation gain of about 2,775′.
Mt. Olympus is probably my favorite mountain in Utah, and it was great to do this climb again, especially since I can see it from my front door and it’s been taunting me for several months now.
I brought my good camera with me but had left the memory card in my computer, so the pictures were taken with the crappy camera on my iPod Touch.
Mt. Olympus. The route goes straight up from the little bit of snow you can see in the pic.
Looking up the snowy gully.
Looking down the snowy gully.
A wonderful picture of me a few hundred feet up.
Looking down the slab.
The angle halfway up.
Me again.
Looking out at the city and the lake.
The angle near the top.
Looking over to Geurt's Ridge and Big Cottonwood Canyon.
A rattlesnake that I nearly stepped on on the summit ridge.
Looking down the slab to the snow gully and suburbia.
Looking south from the top.
You can see Geurt's Ridge (which I climbed a week or two ago) nicely here in profile.
Looking back up the slabs that you have to downclimb (or rappel down) on the descent.