Utah's Triple Crown

Last month, I headed up to Utah's Uinta Mountains to attempt the Triple Crown - Utah's three highest peaks - with good friend Scott Wesemann.  We were also there in support of our friend Craig who was going for the FKT (Fastest Known Time) on the Triple Crown, but we knew we wouldn't see much of him.  You can read about Craig's amazing accomplishment HERE.  Scott and I ran into some weather on that trip and we were only able to tag the third tallest summit: Gilbert Peak.

Every August Craig holds a fun run up to King's Peak which is known as the Quest For King's Marathon.  I decided that instead of running Quest For King's this year, I needed to redeem myself and finish the Triple Crown that I'd failed to complete last month.  Scott agreed and he decided to join me.  So on Friday, August 10th, Scott, Craig, Matt, and myself headed up to Henry's Fork where we'd set up camp, then begin our adventure the next morning.

Scott and I were on our way just before 5:00 am, with the Quest For King's runners starting about 2 hours after us.  It had rained all night so the conditions were really sloppy, so we were slow to the first major stop at Elkhorn Crossing (mile 5).  We dropped our headlamps and extra layers here and proceeded on towards our goal.  With the chance of running into afternoon showers again, we decided that we wanted to tag King's first this time since we'd already done Gilbert this year.  And let's be honest, Gilbert is a miserable, boring, worthless mountain!  We made steady progress up to King's, running into lots of hikers and also a few bull moose along the way, and finally summitting at a few minutes under 4 hours.  We were right on track.

First bull moose we saw

On the summit of King's Peak

The ridge between King's and South King's isn't too bad, although the loose boulders make for a very interesting descent going both ways.  After cursing the rocks, we decided that we'd summit King's again in order to go back down the well-traveled trail that leads up to King's Peak, rather than go down the face of it.  I think it was a good call on our part because we moved quite slow through those loose boulder sections.

On the summit of South King's Peak

Just after we came off the top of King's for the second time, we saw Craig and Matt coming up.  They were both moving really well.  The four of us ran the next several miles together until me and Scott hit our turnoff to go up to Gilbert.  The boys went on to finish Quest For King's in under 7 hours... Very impressive!

Craig and Matt running with me just off King's Peak (background)

At the bottom of the chute up to Gilbert, I had to stop to make a few adjustments and take a nature break.  Scott continued on up the chute without me.  By the time I was done, he had a few hundred yards on me so I knew I need to blast up the chute.  So that's exactly what I did!  I flew up the side of that mountain, eventually passing Scott and putting another 50 yards or so on him.  Why couldn't my legs have felt like this 2 weeks ago at Speedgoat???  I stopped at the spring and waited for Scott to catch up.  We filled our packs and bottles for the last time, then continued slowly up towards Gilbert.

Making my way up the chute towards Gilbert

Gilbert sucks!  There's something like 5 false summits which are a complete mindjob.  Ugh!  Add relentless winds and cold temperatures and this made for one helluva day to try to summit this mountain.  I got too far ahead of Scott at one point, and while I was waiting for him I had to hunker down between some boulders to get away from the wind... I was absolutely freezing!  We slowly made our way up the mountain and eventually summitted for the third and final peak of the day.  There were two other people already on the summit that were kind enough to take our picture.

Scott and I on the summit of Gilbert Peak

The descent was slow and grinding.  We were both pretty low on energy so we took our time.  The last 5 miles - known as the death march - were exactly that.  We eventually popped out onto the trailhead and completed our mission by signing the trail registry.  After spending nearly half our day grinding out the section from Gilbert to the finish, we finally made it.  Our time of 13:39:54 was absolutely pathetic, but we had a worthwhile day out there.  I only say worthwhile because while it was fun talking and bantering, and great training for Wasatch in a few weeks, I will never, EVER do that again!