Everything For The Outdoors: Trip Report: West Slabs of Mt. Olympus

Mt. Olympus, West Slabs and both Summits on July 4, 2017

Location: Wasatch Mountain Range, Salt Lake City, Utah

Trip Report by Liberty Mountain Employee Paul Larkin

My good friend Braden Jenkins and I got off to an early 4:21am start in the darkness. After hiking in headlamps for 1.5 hours, we arrived at the start of the climb at dawn. The wall was intimidating, around 500 feet wide with endless variations. We decided to free solo (no rope) the 1,500 or so vertical feet of climbing. It's rated at 5.5 and for more comfort people should consider roping up on this exposed climb as falling would have serious consequences. We enjoyed the freedom and speed of climbing ropeless. The first rays of sunlight hit us about three quarters way up the climb, a great way to watch a sunrise!

The West Slabs climb goes up the rock face shown in the right side of this photo

After achieving the ridge of the north summit, we scrambled east up the ridge and made it to the proper north summit of Mount Olympus. From there we did some route finding and down climbed to the saddle between the north and south summits. We then climbed up a gulley up to the ridge of the south summit where we met up with the trail that originates at Pete's rock and followed it up to the true north summit at 9,026 feet. We took a rest break in the shade and snapped some summit photos. From there we took the trail down 4,100 vertical feet in the 100 degree Fahrenheit weather. It was a great way to spend America's Independence Day.