Juniper Peak - 10/30/24

The sandstone slab with talus field Below

Teri climbs up through the Rabbit Hole

Starting out across the escarpment Foothills

Jerry views Juniper Canyon and Rainbow Wall

Jerry and Cheryl led a fun hike up to Juniper Peak and sent these photos and narrative. The track was the same as the one below except they did only an out and back hike through the Fire Ecology Trail route. Photos were taken by Jerry, Cheryl and Bruno. Thanks guys!

Eleven hikers met at the Pine Creek parking lot at 8 am.  It was a beautiful cloudless morning with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees.  We all had some warm clothing on which we knew we would have to remove after we got warmed up.  We started down the trail and turned left on the Fire Ecology trail.  We were going to take a seldom used trail that goes directly to Juniper Canyon.  Well, we got off track several times crossing Pine Creek and at one point we were stepping over high grass and weeds trying to get back to the trail.  We reached the south bank of the creek and some of us ditched our poles here.  The trail gets more defined here and we had no trouble hiking up to Juniper Canyon.  On the way into the canyon the leaders had to constantly consult their GPS because of all of the social trails going off of the main trail.  We reached a point just before we had to start scrambling over large boulders and some more people left their poles here.  We started up through the large boulders and into the steep small gully.  We came out of the gully onto a trail around the large mound and into the forest.  From here we scrambled up the small talus field onto the slabs.  After a short break we were ready to tackle the steep slabs.  

Climbing up the talus Field - Juniper Canyon Below

Chuck exiting the Rabbit Hole

Juniper Peak summit Photo

We made it up to the class 3 obstacle..  The leaders tried going up through the obstacle and then determined that it was too slippery for most of the rest of the group.  It’s been a few years since we were here last and this spot seems to have gotten worse over the years.  Two of the group went ahead and climbed over the obstacle while the leaders took the rest of the group on the class 1 workaround.  This worked out well and we all got together above the class 3 obstacle.  We hiked up another steep slab and into the steep chute next to the summit wall.  We reached the rabbit hole and everyone got through it without any trouble.  A short walk from there and we were at the summit.  After a break and a photo shoot we started down.  Everyone elected to take the workaround the class 3 obstacle.  After passing the obstacle we saw several groups of rock climbers on Brownstone Wall.  They looked like they were on a very popular climbing route called “Armitron”.  We descended the rest of the way without incident.  ~ Jerry and Cheryl Thomas

Hiking time 6 hours, 5.6 miles, 2372 feet elevation gain.

Descending the Rabbit Hole

Scramble descent in Chute

Slab Descent