Pfeiferhorn, Wasatch Mountains, September 12, 2023

The Pfeiferhorn is one of my favorite hikes in the Wasatch. Short enough for an after work pump, but steep and exposed just enough to keep it serious. This is the view looking west towards the Pfeiferhorn (11,326 ft) from the start of the knife-edge ridge. 

Stats, from the White Pine Trailhead:
    Distance:             10.4 round trip miles
    Elevation Gain:   4,239 feet (with ups/down);
                                3,652 feet straight line (trailhead to summit without ups/downs of terrain changes)    

As technical as it gets. This 'belly-roll' move is the crux of the route, maybe a 5.6 move to get around the bulging boulder. The very positive horizontal crack (my left hand) makes it and easy move, and just ten feet and its done. All the rest is a scramble, and, like most scrambles in the Wasatch, if you get gripped, look around and there's always an easier/safer way. I like this route on the south side of the knife-edge ridge, as opposed to the top side or the north side, it’s cleaner, more direct, no dead-ends. The north side is more exposed, bigger drops and fewer positive holds. Going over the is be less exposed than either side, but it requires a number of moves up and down over pits and and small faces. This move is easy enough that I can hold the edge with my left and hold the camera pole with a fractured right wrist (see below). 

But before the knife edge, Red Pine Lake is the reward for the 2.53 mile/2,000 foot gain approach from the White Pine Trailhead. The route to the Pfief is up the string of firs seen diagonaling rightward in the middle of the photo, then up the headwall to the top of the ridge.  

After the stout run up from the trail-head, I let my guard down on the flat trail around Red Pine Lake. Futzing with a camera as I jogged around the lake, I didn’t see a wash-out on the trail, stepped off into air-space and face-planted. It really hurt, but I was more concerned about camera damage. The camera was fine, but my wrist was fractured. Required six weeks in a soft-cast. It hurt but I never considered going back, still went tho the summit. These moments don’t come often anymore, age and family requirements ever expanding, they can’t be wasted. 

View of Red Pine Lake from the top of the headwall. 

Timpanogos from the approach ridge just above the Red Pine Lake head-wall.  

Summit of Pfeiferhorn, 11,326 feet. View SW towards Utah Valley and Utah Lake.

Red Pine Lake before starting down the Red Pine Headwall. The headwall is steep and loose but not dangerous with careful foot placement. 

Some rain on the descent. This time I watched the trail around Red Pine Lake.

Red Pine Lake (9,602 ft)

Engelman’s Aster or Eucephalus Engelmannii.

Aspen Fleabane, or Erigeron Speciosus, which in latin means good-looking, handsome or beautiful. 

Glacial scars, when rocks imbedded in the glacier are dragged over the bedrock with the movement of ice. I love seeing these geologic signatures, it gives a feeling of a much greater power, whether merely glacial ice or the power of a Deity, it’s humbling and awe-inspiring to realize how small and inconsequential we really are. Nature is much larger than any human creation, especially politics/religion. Talk to the trees, talk to rocks, talk to deserts and mountains, feel the power. 

Maybird bridge collapsed under last year's deep snowpack. In all fairness, that bridge has got to be over 40 years old, it was there when I was in high-school, the late 1970’s, and I’m not aware that it has ever been rebuilt. When I was about 15, in 1977, I was hiking here in the spring with my Dad and brother Mark, the snow was about 10 feet deep and there was a deep trench due to the rushing stream eroding the snowpack from below. There were two hikers on the opposite side trying to get across, but it was a dicy, scary situation. If they fell into the trench into the rushing water they’d never get out, they’d likely drown when the water pulled them under the snow. My Dad found a dead-fall Douglas Fir and broke off the narrow top 20 feet off the trunk. My Dad yelled over to the hikers to throw their packs and gear over, which they did, and Mark and I rushed to grab it before it fell back into the watery trench. Once all their gear was safely over my Dad extended the tree trunk for them to grab, to use as a hand rail as they jumped over the trench, then use as a hand-hold while they dug into snowbank for secure purchase. Once over they said they had been camping in Hogum Fork. Three days earlier on their ascent, there was no trench and no open water, they simply hiked right over stream, hearing the rushing water deep under the snow.