Carly and I finally made the concrete plans to do the highest point in Utah, King’s Peak (13,528′). We’ve thought about doing it for years and with different friends, but it never moved from the concept stage to actually making plans. We’ve been running a decent amount, not as much as in some years, but still an OK amount. We’d thought about doing the 26 mile round trip, but ultimately decided against it since we hadn’t been doing that many miles. We opted to backpack and do it as a two day—still one long day of 18 miles. Since we decided a little last minute it was just the two of us.
The trail is relatively easy as far as some objectives go, only 4,400′ of gain over 13 miles. It is still a lot of miles so we planned to stay near Dollar Lake and do the peak in the morning with small packs and then strike camp and hike out. This went pretty well and I’m glad we did it this way. While much of the trail is relatively flat, it is rocky and difficult to run in many places, especially the actual summit push.
With the long weekend we headed up Friday morning past a few already claiming their spots for Fourth of July parades. We got to the end of the dirt access road and started in. When all you’re going to do is one night out and no climbing, backpacking can be pretty light. Carly’s pack was around 23 lb and mine around 26 lb.
The trail is relatively popular and the trailhead was nice. Free camping and toilets. The trail is well maintained and has a good amount of traffic. After a while in the woods you eventually start getting close to the larger meadows and basins below the high peaks. The snow was long gone from the meadows at this point in the summer and the wildflowers were in full bloom, a little bit of snow remained in spots on the peaks. The flowers were nice, but other areas have nicer blooms, Tetons and even the Cottonwoods outside of SLC.
Most of the camping spots around the Dollar Lake are in the clusters of pine trees around the lake. While there were a number of other people already there, we didn’t have trouble finding a secluded spot. Like much of the Unitas, the live versus dead ratio of pines was probably 50%. As we set up camp in the mid afternoon we could see some increasing clouds. This time of year it is pretty typical to have afternoon storms and this was day was no different.
Around 4:30pm or so we could hear the thunder rumbling. We weren’t hungry yet so we opted to wait out the storm before fixing dinner. The storm wasn’t too bad and it was kind of cool listening to the storm from the tent. A few of the bigger gusts were nerve wracking because we were feet from 5 dead pines that no doubt would have flattened us if they fell in our direction. Ultimately the storm passed and we had an awesome dinner of Thai coconut curry and a gumbo.
In the morning we donned our running packs and headed for Gunsight Pass, the first major climb of the summit section. Leading up to the pass the trailbuilders put a generous set of switchbacks through the talus. Views from the pass were nice. On the opposite side from where we came up were a couple small ponds and more meadows. There are a lot of thru trails in the Uintas and a few were visible down below and coming up to the intersection at the top of the pass.
From this point the trail turns progressively more rugged and indistinct. Despite the popularity there aren’t a lot of cairns to lead through the numerous extended sections of talus over the next 1.5 miles. A lot of people get off course, including us. Eventually we made it to Anderson Pass and got a good look at the rocky ridgeline leading to the summit of King’s Peak. This last section is scrambly, but never more than second or maybe a third class move or two.
Views from the summit were great. I still stand by that the Uintas aren’t the most photogenic mountain range. Many of the peaks are crumbling piles of rock. Nevertheless we had some food while staying out of the wind. It was sunny but the wind was a little brisk.
Reversing our steps we and even doing a little running here and there we got back to the tent. Our tent-to-tent time was considerably longer than we’d expected, 5 hrs instead of 2.5-3 hrs. The weather was fine so we refilled water and headed back to the van. The walk out was hotter than the way in, more sun and warmer temps unfortunately. Since we still had Sunday left in the weekend we opted to grab an open camp spot and lounged around for the rest of the day/evening.
A fun, quick outing to one of the classics in Utah!
