The Trailwrights organization offers a patch for those who summit the 72 peaks over 4000-feet on their list. You may wonder at this point how they came up with 72 when what most folks know are the forty-eight 4000-footers. This is a 24-peak disparity. Well, one big difference is that the Trailwrights only require a 100-foot prominence minimum instead of the 200-feet required for the AMC’s 4000-footers list. Another difference is that only one peak may be claimed per hike. So, the Adams Family, for instance, requires one to make five trips, one for each peak. Lastly, with the name “Trailwrights,” as is to be expected, some trail work is required.
A recent guest had us out there helping once again. Last trip’s objective was to grab Northwest Hancock. This time it was Southwest Twin Mountain. You might have heard a number of years ago that SW Twin actually had 200 feet of prominence and was going to become the 49th 4000-footer, but that was published on April 1st (boy we had some fun with that one).
This trip brought our guest up to 71 peaks completed, leaving only one to go: Mt Abigail Adams (one of those Adams Family peaks). Leading this trip was Redline Guide Eric Hansen. What follows is his summary along with some photos.
We had a really nice day for making the trek out to Southwest Twin, via Twinway followed by approximately three miles of true bushwhacking to the trailless summit. I met our guest after breakfast at Galehead Hut (where he stayed the night prior) and we left directly. Cooler and dry weather prevalied, albeit with some haze from the wildfires. The ‘shwack was similar to my previous trips, we zigged and zagged, bobbed and weaved, and managed to make a fairly direct approach. We hit a few sections of thick spruce, but rather minimal in length, and our guest was a real trooper and demonstrated his experience and skill with off-trail travel. We attained the summit, took a break for photos, then returned via a similar route, for a total of approximately 4.5 hours of bushwhacking for the out/back from Twinway. Took another nice break on South Twin, then the final descent back to the hut and return to Gale River Trailhead. Mission accomplished, and now he’s poised for his Trailwrights 72 finisher in the next few months. —Eric
