Uinta Mountains, Take One – Day Seven

Uintas, UT – When a climb becomes a hike.

What a beautiful morning; fresh air in the mountains and beautiful fall colors. I look to my left to find my zombie-climbing partner and outside we have “Dick”, our lovely campsite host, hastling us about the authenticity of our annual interagency national parks pass. Having pacified “Dick” with all the change remaining in our ash tray and pumping my zombie climbing partner full of DayQuil, I grabbed my Uinta Rock guide with a mission to send some epic routes.

An hour later and 7.2 miles up a rather bumpy 4×4 road, I realized the erroneous left turn I made 6.8 miles back. After successfully executing a 9-point turn to place the car in the opposing direction, I decided a more accessible crag from the main thoroughfare would be a great alternative.

So here we are at the Bald Mountain trailhead (success according to the guidebook), 2 miles later and 1,500 feet higher I am perched atop the summit of Bald Mountain (11,943′) with no climbing in sight besides the obvious crag 4 miles in the distance. Who would think a trailhead could have two directions?!

At this very moment, all guidebook “interpretations” were relinquished back to the formerly neutralized control freak. Satisfied with our 4-mile roundtrip summit assault and four-wheel driving extravaganza, we decided to get dinner and think positively about tomorrow.

NOTE: A how-to lesson will be written in the very near future to help all of you with reading guidebooks properly. It is a very valuable lesson when climbing new and unfamiliar areas.