Red Pine Lake Alpine Trad Climbing Film | Little Cottonwood Canyon

Some fun facts about this video:

The hike in was brutal.
We were quite out of backpacking shape and have spent the week since hobbling and waddling around from our sore muscles. I also had a new pack and it dug in at the waist pretty badly due to the weight we were packing.

The rock looks solid but was mostly a tower of hollow granite blocks and flakes.
The protection was solid at the beginning, but after the finger crack the rock quality became very hollow and fractured, making some of the placements somewhat questionable.

I got assaulted by a wasp.
At the bottom of the cliff, while I was flaking our rope out right before starting the climb, my ankle started burning and I glanced down to the glorious sight of a ground wasp writhing, its stinger kindly inserted into my skin just below one of my ankle surgery scars. After flicking it off with a gasp and shifting away from the group of suddenly swarming wasps, we realized I had laid the rope right on top of their ground nest. I was pissed at the little bandit, but luckily we had Benadryl cream in our first aid bag so I smeared it on immediately and the pain subsided. Though it itches like the dickens the last few days.

It was not backcountry solitude.
Though this video makes Red Pine Lake appear like a dreamy alpine solitude a short drive from Salt Lake, this is far from the truth:
The scale-tipping population of Salt Lake citizens who spent the night up at Red Pine lake on Friday night was only overshadowed by the Saturday night multitude of refugees from the smoke-ridden valley floor seeking alpine solitude (or in the case of the large college group that trickled in: clamorous mountain socializing). On the hike out Sunday morning, we counted upwards of 70 hikers who passed us on our way out.

Little Cottonwood Canyon has much to look forward to.
Luckily, Little Cottonwood Canyon will soon be rescued from this curse of beauty and tranquility, enjoyed by so many Utahns, by the blessing of an undoubtedly unintrusive and graceful construction project aiming to erect the most massive gondola ever built in the history of the world. I'm sure it will look quite elegant from every hiking trail and climbing route in the whole canyon (but probably not from some of your favorite boulders, sorry guys :/).

Thank you to our unbiased heroes at Gondolaworks, who fearlessly stand for the people who call LCC home and have nothing to gain from this project:
Snowbird
Alta Ski Area
POWDR
Ski Utah
UCAIR
Utah Clean Cities
Love Communications
Exoro Group
CW Management