Jack and I planed a trip up Big Baldy and undertook the trip just an hour and a half later. We left the vehicle a little after noon and headed up the road to the trailhead. The Dry Canyon trailhead is closed in winter so we departed from the gate in Lindon and headed up the road which was snow packed in hiking boots. We greeted several groups coming down the road.
As we started up the hiking trail (049) in Dry Canyon the surface continued to be snow packed with a few bare spots and a little bit of mud. The air temperature was fairly warm, I was hiking in only a long sleeve exercise shirt. We continued in hiking boots up past the Curley Springs Trail (051) junction.
We put our snowshoes on at the turn off of 049 onto the Big Blady south ridge trail. At the turn the trail had was untracked snow. Near the bottom there were a few rocky spots in sunny exposures where the snow had melted through but was mostly snow covered. As we climbed the snow became deeper, we picked up several tracks on the way, a few boots and a few snowshoes. At times the snow was heavy and wet and a short distance away, around to the east was light and powdery. This is a very steep trail, Jack and I took turns breaking the trail keeping up a good pace. Existing snowshoe tracks were often but not always the best line up the ridge. The sun was making the exposed areas of snow wet and soft, Jack had problems with snow sticking to bottom of his snowshoes.
We reached the flag pole at front peak in about two and a half hours. We took a few photos and decided to continue on to the snowy summit. We shoed along the snowy ridge and made it to the summit in another 15 minutes.
We spent about 25 minutes at the summit before heading down. The steep parts of the decent we quite unpleasant. The footing was unpredictable between sliding and stopping on buried rocks or brush. The less step sections were quite a bit easier but the existing packed trail we came up was usually not the best footing. One of Jack's snowshoes had an equipment malfunction near the bottom of the south ridge and he was forced to hike the rest of the way in his boots. When the trail turned to as much rock as snow I took my snowshoes off and wished I had my Yak Tracks. The footing in boots was very poor.
The mile on 049 was very muddy, a noticeable amount of the trail had melted since our way up and we kept out of the mud as much as possible walking on the side of the trail in grass or snow. The trip down took us about an hour and 45 minutes.
To front peak (flag pole): 2:30 hrs:min
Front peak to summit: 15 min
Vertical: 3500ft
GPS Tracks: kml gpx
Google Maps: Terrain
