We awoke to a beautiful day. No clouds anywhere in sight. Sunny and warm. Time to summit!

After some light breakfast and a little packing of our day packs, we left camp and headed off for the summit. We initially hoped to get started at 6am, but our actual departure from camp was 8:35am. Oh well.

We headed off up the trail, which traverses this ridge.

This section of the trail was entirely above tree line. There were lots of rocks and boulders, and a decent amount of snow. The wind also kicked up a notch coming over Anderson Pass.

Our route took us along the base of King’s Peak and up to the saddle where Anderson Pass joined in. King’s has splotches of snow but nothing too significant this early in the winter.

This picture is deceiving and makes the mountain look like a hill. As you will see shortly, that was not the case.

The approach wasn’t extremely difficult. We did have to regain a lot of elevation that we lost when we descended from Gunsight into Painter’s. The trail was pretty easy to follow through the rocks and occasional field of snow.

Once we reached the saddle, we had the choice to turn left and go to the top of King’s, or go right down into the basin below. Initially we missed the trail and I started down into the basin, assuming the mountain pictured here was King’s. Fortunately, Blee’s google map skills saved us a lot of trouble, and turned back and found the proper trail to ascent King’s.

Ah, there it is. The actual summit. We took a left through the snow and headed towards the top. King’s Peak does have a false summit, so when you think you are there… you aren’t.

If you have read my past posts, you may know I have a propensity for losing trails. I was able to successfully repeat that here. Rather than take the clear and obvious trail that takes you to the summit, we traversed back and forth in a sort of switchback form, creating our own trail across a lot of loose and unstable rocks. Wasting precious energy and time. However, I did eventually spot the trail. Right where you would expect it to be!

To put it in perspective, we spent about 40 minutes traversing back and forth across the face of the mountain. When we finally found the trail, a guy started coming up from the pass. He reached the spot where I stopped to wait for Blee in about 5 minutes.

Finally on the right trail, we got a look at the true summit. Between it and us lay thousands of rocks and boulders. Boulder hopping would be a better description than “hiking” from here on out.

I also discarded by trekking poles for the final push as there was a fair amount of light scrambling that was necessary.

And we made it! 13,528 foot King’s Peak of Utah. In the bag for #26.

Interestingly the summit register was in this pipe. When I opened it, the first thing I saw was a small airplane sized bottle of Woodford Reserve. Nice!

Now for the return trip home… we were running a few hours behind schedule after a late start and slow climb. We picked up a decent sunburn as well.

We made it back to camp, got some rest, re-filled on water, and set back out. At this point, it was roughly 2:30pm. We had around 12 miles to cover, including a moderately difficult climb (made actually difficult with packs) over Gunsight pass.

We trudged out way up, enjoying the beautiful views in both directions.

By the time we actually got down from Gunsight, it was good riddance. We had reached mostly flat ground for the remainder of the hike and just had to slog our way out.

And slog we did. We hiked. And hiked. And hiked. It seemed like forever. I started to develop some blisters and my feet and toes got uncomfortable. My legs got achy and tired.

Still we kept on.

Once we passed the field where we first got a peak at the mountains, the remaining 5 miles were pretty uneventful, which made them feel loooooong.

Sunset was at 7:30. Around 7pm, I started to see the familiar aspen trees that marked the early part of our hike.

At 7:15, still no parking lot.

At 7:30, it started to get darker.

At 7:45, I finally emerged from the woods and saw our car! I downed the gatorade I had saved for this moment. We climbed into the car and drove back to Salt Lake City, where we slept in normal beds and woke up to breakfast and coffee.

Overall we ascended nearly 5,000 feet over 28 miles with 30+ pound packs. The hike in was easy, but the hike out (a 17 mile day) was one of the more difficult hikes I’ve ever done.

I hope to return to the area and camp at Dollar Lake (perhaps forgoing the summit). That area sitting at the base of the snow-capped mountains is riddled with lakes, streams, and colorful foliage and is astonishingly beautiful.

Utah in the bag! Of course, the required victory beer on Sunday while relaxing and catching some NFL games. And hey, the Falcons even won. It was a great weekend, and I was grateful to have had Blee with me.