Hard to believe we were up and back from King’s Peak about 3 weeks ago and I am just now catching up! King’s Peak is the highest peak in Utah at 13,528ft, located in the High Uintas/Wasatch Wilderness area. We decided to spend a couple nights in the area, driving to the trailhead fairly early in the morning. As it was close to Labor Day weekend, we wanted to be off the peak by Saturday, at the latest by Saturday evening. The trailhead that we used (Henry’s Fork) is accessed from the Wyoming side and then you drop down a few miles into Utah to start the trip. The roundtrip was listed as 34 miles so we wanted to knock off at least 10 the first day. With 2000ft of elevation gain over 10+ miles, we were able to finish the first segment off in a few hours.    

  We found a nice place for our “base camp” in a meadow just north of Gunsight Pass – off the beaten path, close to the next day’s summit trail and about 1 mile south of the two traditional campsites at Dollar Lake and Henry’s Fork Lake. We ended up cooking some dinner and then settled in just before a passing thunderstorm hit.  

  The next morning we got up pretty early and began our ascent to the summit. From the guidebooks and comments on an internet climbing site (SummitPost) we found out that there were a couple short cuts that could shave as much as 6 miles roundtrip from summit day – a bit steeper but we were game! The shortcuts were fairly well marked with some ginormous cairns and we found it easy to follow the less-used trail up to the next basin. Once we made it to the top of Anderson Pass, the trail to the summit was a bit less defined and entailed mostly boulder-hopping along the way.  

The views from the top were wonderful and we saw a lot of potential climbs for next time/next visit/next vacation … we considered South King’s Peak as it was probably only about another 45 minutes away however it looked like another powerful thunderstorm was on its way and we decided to begin our descent.  

      In the photo above, King’s Peak is on the left and South King’s Peak is on the right.   On our descent, Joel had a bit more energy than I did and decided to scamper off to an adjacent peak (Henry’s Fork Peak). I ate and watched!  

  Joel with Henry’s Fork Peak in the background.  

  Looking down towards Gunsight Pass.  

    After making it back to our tent minutes before the rains came, were able to hit the trail home at a decent hour the next morning. As we were hiking out the numbers of Labor Day weekend visitors increased dramatically. We were glad to have had the foresight to plan the trip a few days before the holiday!   On the way out with King’s Peak in the middle.