Utah: King's Peak (-MT)

Utah's King's Peak was the first of 2 high western peaks to be attempted in early august. Work provided a good excuse to leave with no access to my original office due to reconstructions. So to raise productivity after this inconvenience what better way to do so than getting the batteries recharged with some high altitude training...

The Henry's fork trail follows a valley slowly uphill towards King's peak, mostly following the river Henry's fork, before it start reaching arctic tundra and rock hopping trails near the peak. The apprach to the trailhead is an extremely well maintained gravel road rivalling some highways in width and smoothness. after some 30 miles it reaches a small turnoff to henry's fork trail head, which also have a separate trail head for horse trips.

Once the terrain opens up one can catch glimpses on King's peak after some 3-4h of hiking. Here Kings peak is the smaller peak in sunshine to the right of the peak in center picture (the pass on the left is gunsight pass which the trail passes through).

I camped about 8 miles in along the trail at about 11 000ft elevation near dollar lake.  Dollar lake offer some nice secluded fishing and wonderful campsites without crowding even on this relatively poplar trail.

Dollar lake also offers some animal company mostly in the form of Uintas ground squirrels (see below), but there are also tame sheep grazing the plains and sometimes horses which people can use to travel some of the longer trails.

The next morning the thunderstorms during the night in combination with some light-headedness due to elevation made me have a very slow morning and I didn't leave camp until just before 8am. Once the hike started it soon started the uphill climb towards Gunsight pass which is where I took the photo below looking down the valley which the trail ascends.

After reaching Gunsight pass one can save quite some distance by contouring around the 13 000 ft sub peak at about 12 000 ft elevation rather than following the trail down the valley after Gunsight pass and then back up towards Anderson pass again. After that last pass the hiking turns form rock hopping to scrambling and mostly class 2. If one goes off route to the west edge of the ridge the exposure gets very intimidating quite quickly. After some effort though I safely reached the top together with about 10 others also reaching within about the same half hour.

The route down is somewhat slow especially if inclement weather rolls in which is common around midday. I had 2 hail and rain mixes hitting me on the way down, but the high thin air dried out stones quite quickly making the hiking much easier once again.

One of the main features of the valley is a very diverse mix of rocks and stones. Many looking striped just like tigers. Below is a stone which resembled wood somehow which a very intriguing break and erosion line separating it from other rocks.

Some samples of the giant tiger boulders are also shown here, the scale of them are from about 5 ft diameter (1.5m) to about 15 ft (5m) diameter below. They were all dislodged from about 1000-1500 ft higher up on the valley walls.

After making it down from the top I reached camp about 3 pm after some short cuts on the way down. So I decided to pack up camp and hike all the way out for a day of close to 20 miles of hiking and scrambling. A fresh shower and soft bed was also badly appreciated after a thunder riddled night at high elevation in the tent.

Stats:
State:  Utah
High point: King's Peak
Elevation: 13 528 ft (4 123 m)
Date: Aug 1st, 2012
Total elevation to date: 221 764 ft (67 594 m)
Access:
Difficulty rating (of 10): 4
Potential Difficulties: routefinding, inclement weather