Cardiff Peak Quick Overnight - Little Cottonwood Canyon

So I decided to do a quick overnight camp up on Cardiff Peak. A buddy of mine works and lives at Alta so we parked at his place and hiked straight up on an old trail above Peruvian Lodge. From there we caught the pole-line pass trail and headed up. We started around 8:30pm, took photos of the wildflowers and just took our time on the way up.

The plan was to sleep on top of Cardiff Peak but it had been a few years since I was at the top in the summer so I didn't remember that it wasn't flat up there. We found a 12x12 ledge below the summit and made it our home for the night. Pads and sleeping bags under the stars and had perfect weather to do so. The sunset was great and the sunrise was marginal but lit up the Wasatch nicely. The wildflowers were good but maybe this week will be better.

We started the hike at 8:30pm on Saturday and took off early on Sunday so were down by 9:00am. Living on Salt Lake City gives us many options to do a super short trip like this and I am happy we did. I'm making plans to do more easy over nighters and even on work nights.

Our friends during the night were a decent sized owl, a few bats, the occasional ground squirrel and a few mosquitos.

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:2thumbs:
awesome trip report
nothing is worse than getting skunked on a sunrise

Sweet little adventure. So how long did it take you to summit? Was it still light??? The color Pano is fantastic!!!!!!

Nice view from your sleeping bags. :2thumbs: :lol8:

It took about 90 minutes to summit but we went pretty slow. Normally most can make it in 45 minutes quickly, an hour standard. It was pretty close to fully dark by the time we got to our spot. We actually cut left from the East ridge and headed up the South ridge which was mainly loose rock to get to our spot. The moon was just over half so it actually lit up the area a little.

Thanks, the color pano is 3 photos stitched. I just brought my Canon G10 point and shoot for ease, but got some decent shots nonetheless.