Started the trek to the trailhead from Salt Lake City around noon on a Friday afternoon. After a pleasant ride to the turn off to the trailhead you are presented with earth shift created by the 1980’s earthquake (very interesting). We got to the TH around 5:00 pm and decided to set up camp and eat. We spoke with a few hikers coming off the mountain, they stated their round trip time was around 12 hours. So we thought maybe a 5:00 am wake up would be needed to make it back to SLC in a reasonable time. This was also based on the trip reports we had read. We kept scratching our heads we thought the 7 miles round trip and 5200’ of vertical can’t be that hard. So after getting no sleep (others were burning a fire in the parking lot) we arose at 4:00 am, ate and hit the trail at 5:00 am. We started with head-lamps and missed most of the sights until just below Chicken-Out-Ridge. The extreme vertical gain in the first mile and a half makes for awesome views down to the valley floor. We were making good time while approaching C-O-R. With just a short section of about 200’ and an easy scramble we were back on the ridge and approaching the small down climbing section to the snow bridge saddle, we opted to approach this off to the left or west and avoided it all together. From here it’s just a grunt push to the summit. The views from the summit are wonderful, the geologic layering and the views of Leatherman make this a very memorable hike. It took 3.5 hours to make the summit and 1.5 to return. We ran most of the way back to the truck, which probably isn’t the smartest thing, a lot of vertical banging the knees will take its toll. Since we now had time to burn it was off to Craters of The Moon. The peak is like being on a stair master for four hours.
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Lost River Range
