For the last day of the Zion Rendezvous, we settled on Mountain of the Sun as something we could all do together that was a bit shorter. Since we had to drive out to Las Vegas that night, and we wanted to partake in all you can eat sushi, it was a great option. :) Plus, who could say no to a peak with a name like that?
After a quick breakfast stop at Deep Creek Coffee in Springdale, we (Ephrat, Luca, CP, Dangerous Dan, and I) again headed out to the east entrance of the park together in the morning. Mountain of the Sun is one of the peaks that lines the east side of Zion Canyon. It can be accessed via a 5th class route from the canyon itself, or you can scramble up the back side, as we had planned to do.
First view of Mountain of the Sun.
The approach again involved hiking down a wash and then up some slip rock, again, conveniently expedited in terms of route-finding by having our guide CP with us. The conversation consisted mostly of other peaks and routes in the area, and which everyone wanted to try on subsequent trips. There were some challenging bits of scrambling here or there, and some fairly steep slip rock faces at some points, but nothing crazy. We got spit out into another canyon (Lodge Canyon), that had clearly been affected by some severe flash floods, with tons of debris everywhere. This made the going somewhat slow as we traversed down the canyon, looking for the ramp on the west side that would allow us to start climbing Mountain of the Sun itself.
The ramp system was very nice to navigate after maneuvering around all of the debris in the canyon. Once at the top of the ramp system, we took a short break to have a snack before heading up to the summit itself. CP guided us to a column on the south east corner of the peak that involved the most challenging scrambling of the day, but was still reasonable. Before long, we were all at the summit.
This was the first peak I had done this trip that actually had views of Zion Canyon (well, except Angel’s Landing, but eh). Even though I’ve seen it a number of times now, it’s still quite a sight to be seen. We all snacked and enjoyed the summit for a good half hour. This is definitely a popular peak, as the register was quite full, and someone had even taken the time to type up previous entries and place them back in the register box.
Luca looking at the register entries.
The group hanging out on the summit.
After an SS (summit selfie), we retraced our steps and started the hike out. CP decided that we should take turns telling stories inspired by a word that someone gave them as a prompt. Some were more successful (CP’s story prompted by the word “disgusting”), while others were less so (Luca’s tales of his past romantic life). The most exciting thing we learned though was definitely about Dangerous Dan’s chance to study with *the* Donovan. Such a story and crazy opportunity that was amazing to hear about.
Super flattering summit selfie.
Amazing selfie of Dangerous and CP later found on my camera.
In the last section of the hike out, as we headed back down that same wash, we saw a family of big nine (!) bighorn sheep up on the walls framing the wash. We watched them for several minutes, marveling at their abilities to so easily make the jumps from ledge to ledge. It was a really special way to end the trip. After a few more minutes of hiking, we were back at the cars, ready to make the drive back to Vegas and go back to work the next day.
