Kings Peak, Highest Point in Utah (13528)

I've been wanting climb Kings Peak for some time. I just hadn't had the opportunity to do it. For those who may not know, Kings Peak is the highest point in Utah with an elevation of 13528 feet. Last night at about 9:30 I made the decision to go today. I packed up all my stuff, all ready to leave really early. I wanted to be on the trail by the time it got light. I actually got there a little earlier than planned. Since it was still dark, and not wanting to venture onto an unknown trail in the dark, I took a little nap in the car before heading out. I set my alarm to get me up.

Here is a picture of me trying to get the courage to get out of my car. The outside air temperature was 19 degrees, really cold! I did get out of the car, and once I got moving wasn't too bad.

Here I am signing my name on the trail register.

This is just a short way up the trail.
The sun started to shine through the trees and I thought it looked cool. The photo doesn't look as cool though as it really did.

And this is my destination. The one in the middle with the sun shining on it. That is Kings Peak. I was a little surprised to see all that snow on it. I knew it had snowed last week, but I figured it would have all melted. It doesn't get warm enough up there to do much melting, so there is snow. I started to wonder if I'd be able to make it all the way up. There couldn't be that much snow, could there?

About four or five miles up the trail I cam across this thing. If you know what it is, please let me know. My best guess is some weather thing. It looks like maybe a UFO landed and planted it there to run some tests.

This is from Henry's Fork Basin looking up at the ridge and you can see Kings Peak there behind the ridge.

Kings Peak looks pretty cool from this angle.

Here I am posing with the sign. Right above where my hand is, you can see the ridge that I climb over. It is Gunsight Pass.

And this is a close up of it as I am climbing up. From there it is about three miles or so to the top.

This is Kings Peak. See, it looks better from the other side. From here there was not much of a trail. It was pretty much just climbing up over the rocks.

This is a view from the top of Utah. Here we are looking North into Wyoming. The valley right below is Henry's Fork Basin and it is where I hiked/ran up through.

This view is looking towards the west. These view were definitely worth the trek.

And on the left here you can see South Kings Peak. This is looking Southward and slightly west. Somewhere down there is Moon Lake. I don't think it is actually visible because of other mountains that get in the way.

And here I am at the top. Proof that I was on the top of Kings Peak.

And another one of me. The Peak on the right of the photo is South Kings Peak. It is only about 25 feet lower in elevation than the north peak. In fact, until 1966 the south peak was believed to be the highest point in Utah.

I saw several of these zebra like rocks and had to take a picture. I thought my kids would get a kick out of it.

And here I am back at the trailhead.

I don't know why I took a photo like this, but here it is.

So, in all it took me about four hours to get up and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down, seven hours and fifteen minutes total. The mileage was about 28 round trip. And I think the elevation gain is about 5000 feet. Overall this was a very nice, runnable trail. I really liked it. It wasn't until I got up to Gunsight pass and started getting into the snow, that I had to slow down.

I got up this morning at 3:00 am, got on the trail about 7:45 am, got back to the car about 3:00, got back home about 6:30, and it is now nearly midnight. What the heck am I still doing awake?!? I hope the kids sleep in tomorrow. I'm taking the day off of running tomorrow. I need a break after a 28 miler.

Twin Peaks

So, the other day I decided to climb Twin Peaks, which is visible from where I am living. I decided to start from the Mill B trailhead. I started up the Broads Fork trail, which was really nice. It looked like this:

The fall colors were brilliant in a few places along the trail. It climbs the canyon westward before heading south up the trail. The first two and a half miles were very nice and pretty runnable. There were only a few places that were too steep for me to continue running. I crossed this creek about a mile and a half up the trail.

I think it looked awesome.

I passed through this one grove of aspens and just had to snap another photo. I love quaking aspen trees and this was just an awesome view up the trail.

Up the trail a little bit more, I passed this meadow and there were several dear along the side of it. I didn't get any good pictures of the dear, but here is the best one. You can see one off to the left side of the photo here and one in the middle.

This next one was the first glimpse of the peak I was heading for. I climbed up to the right of the photo. The point on the far right that you can see is where I climbed up to first, but the next one over is the one that I was actually aiming for.

Here is a view looking back the opposite direction to the north. The farther peaks you can see are on the north side of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

This was the first view that I had of the Valley. You can see Salt Lake City there in the center of the photo and the lake beyond.

This view is looking north over the Wasatch Mountain range. I love the views in these mountains.

I hiked passed that lake. The trail ended right about where that lake is and I had to stop running at that point and climb up some pretty steep rock slides. You can see at the bottom of the picture where I climbed up.

This was the little point that I climbed up to first. According to my map it is 10,530 feet elevation. From there I had a better view of the valley.

See...

That's me from the point there.

Now this is the view from the higher of the two Twin Peaks. At an elevation of 11,330 feet. The second peak there is in the way of the view, so I climbed over to the other peak there which stands at 11,328 feet a whole two feet lower in elevation that this taller one.

Great views of the valley. You can see the dark clouds hovering over my head. I was a little concerned about thunderstorms rolling in, so I didn't stay up there very long at all. I never heard any thunder, and there was only a little rain/snow mix when I started heading back down.

Here is a close up of where I live. I can see our church, but it is hard to see our house because the road is going north/south and the houses/trees across the street kinda block the view of our house from here.

You can barely see the mountains over there, so I knew I had to get down quickly. The rain didn't actually hit until after I got home. That was nice.

Even though I was only able to run the first two and the last two miles, it was a very tough outing. I think that because of the lack of trail this is the most difficult ascent that I have done in the Wasatch Mountains. Everything else I have been up has had a trail at least most of the way up. This one the trail only came up not even half way. It was really steep coming up the last little bit. I almost felt like I was rock climbing in a couple of places. I think it is a category three climb according to some other stuff that I have read about it. Well, enjoy!

Little Cottonwood Trail

So a friend asked the other day about this trail. I had only attempted this trail once and it was closed. That was about a month after the flooding earlier this year. I was a little surprised to see this sign at the trail head indicating that the trail was still closed. Since I didn't see any damage or trail blocks, I decided to go up to see where it was actually closed. I passed several people and then I didn't feel as bad about being on a trail that was supposedly closed. On this lower part of the trail I passed to places where the trail was actually closed. It looked like they had been doing some work to fix it up a bit. One section was closed for 200-300 yards and then another section was closed for about 50-100 yards. There was no one working on the trail, and I saw others going up, so I continued up the trail. I felt bad about this and so when I reached the top (Tanner Flat Campground) I went out onto the road so that I didn't have to run on the closed trail.

That's me on the lower section of the trail.

It was actually a very nice runnable trail for most of the way.

Like I said, most of the way. This was a short section towards the top before I got to Tanner Flat.

I love the fall colors that are now very prevalent in the canyon.

This is as I was leaving Tanner Flat Campground. The trail came into the camp on one of the loops. The upper portion of the trail looked a bit newer than the rest of the trail, but it was still a well developed trail. Even though the trail was closed in a couple places, it still seems like a popular trail. I saw many mountain bike tracks and foot prints. I saw a couple of people hiking, and a couple of mountain bikes too.

I like getting pictures of me as proof that I've actually been somewhere. This is where I came off the trail and down the road. I drove this portion to measure how far it was and my car said 4.1 miles down the road. I'm guessing it was a little more, like 4.5, on the trail, I'm not really sure, but that seems about right.

I thought that this run on the road down the canyon would prepare me a bit for the Halloween Half marathon that comes down Provo Canyon. My pace coming down was about 7:20, my pace going up was about 11:30 if it was only 4.5 miles. I guess that is about right.

I like the view down the canyon into the Salt Lake Valley.

That was a pretty good run overall. I won't be back thought until they fix that trail. It seems like they are taking there time getting it fixed up. It seems like it would be a good trail for snowshoeing in the winter. They just need to get it fixed. I wonder if the trail continues up the canyon on the other side of Tanner Flat Campground. I was a little surprised to see that it was still open. There was a sign that said the campground is open until October 11th. Maybe I'll come up here with my family before it closes. Probably not though.

Last night I was reading about this crazy run that people do in the Grand Canyon. They call it a R2R2R, which means rim to rim to rim. It is about fifty miles and they start from one rim of the Grand Canyon, go down to the Colorado River and back up the other side, then they turn around and do it again the other direction. I really want to do it. I think it would be a good training run for the Moab 100. I am still planning on running that in March. I just hope I am still here to run it. I might actually be gone and if that is the case, I just might go down there and run it on my own. I got so excited that I could hardly sleep. I just kept thinking about getting out of bed and going for a run. I could have ran all night. I finally fell asleep about two hours after lying down in bed. I plan to run either the R2R2R run or a Zion traverse (from one end to the other in Zion National Park, also about 50 miles) in November with a running friend of mine.

Timp Run

Last Friday evening I decided I wanted to go for a good trail run. Since I had yet to climb Mount Timpanogos this summer, I decided it was about time. I figured that if I got up at five I could get to the trailhead by six and be up and down by nine, be home by ten and Amanda wouldn't get upset at me for being gone all day. It started out as planned, but then when I got to the trailhead it was packed. There were tons of people and I ended up having to park about three quarters of a mile from the trailhead. That added a bit to my time. There were also so many people on the trail that I kept having to slow down and ask to pass them. I'm not complaining, but if there weren't so many people I surely would have been home by ten. As it was, I didn't get home until eleven thirty.

This is the first picture that I took. It is a couple of miles up the trail, looking out to the east. The sun was just coming up and this is the spot where I put away my headlamp.

That's me and the uphill part of the trail behind me.

Not a very good picture, but that is looking up toward Timp. I think Timp itself is actually to the left side out of this picture.

Even with all the people I managed to reach the summit in almost exactly two hours. I always enjoy the view from up there. It was cold because the last little bit of the climb from the saddle is on the west side of the mountain which is still in the shade at this time of day. In this picture you can see Deer Creek Reservoir and Heber City.

This is looking down from the top to Emerald Lake. If you hike up from Aspen Grove, that is where the trail will take you. If you look closely, you can see some tents.

This is looking down into Pleasant Grove. I just thought that all of these cool fall colors were awesome.

This next one is looking to the north. The highest point that you can see towards the left side of the picture is the Pfiefferhorn. I did that one earlier in the summer one Saturday morning. It was also a fun one, and much much less crowded.

I had someone take my picture, so for once here is a picture where I am not holding the camera.

And here is another one.

On the way back down I almost missed these mountain goats. There was a guy with his video camera and I just thought that he was filming the mountains. After I passed him, I turned around and these four or five mountain goats were only about 20-30 feet off the trail. They are very, very common to see up here. I don't think I have ever been up here without seeing at least one. You just have to look for them sometimes. They are not usually this close to the trail.

After I got back down and started driving down the mountain, I noticed more awesome fall colors so I stopped the car and took this photo of the mountain. Have I mentioned that I love the mountains?

And that was my run. It was lots of fun. Oh, yeah, half way up I ran into a guy I'd run with a couple of times before. He was on his way back down. He talked about doing a 50 mile run in Zions National Park, or at the Grand Canyon. I have been wanting to do a R2R2R run for a while (Rim to Rim to Rim). I've heard a lot about people doing that where they start at one rim of the grand canyon, run down to the Colorado River then back up to the other rim, then turn around and come back to where they started. It is about a 50 mile run. I think it would be a perfect training run for the Moab 100. I think I will really try to do that with him some time in November.