Manina and I have been wanting to hike Kings Peak for a while now. We put a date on the calendar at the beginning of the summer, and have been doing lots of hikes to get ready. Here is our trip report:
Day 1: To Painter Basin
We got a later start than we wanted on Friday morning. On the way up to Henry’s Fork trailhead we stopped at REI for some last-minute gear upgrades. It was an easy drive; the roads were great until last 2 miles, but still definitely doable in a car.
In the parking lot, a hunter parked next to us and Manina asked him about bears. He laughed and said she didn’t need to worry at all about bears at all. He said he’d spent at least 100 nights in that valley and had never even seen even a sign of bear activity. That was super good news because Manina wouldn’t worry about being eaten alive all night long and could leave her heavy bear spray canister in the car. We finally started hiking at 1:30pm, a little later than we’d planned but not too bad.
The trail was great condition for first five miles alongside the beautiful Henry’s Fork river. We crossed a log bridge and headed up toward Dollar Lake.
As we pressed on, we could start to see our ultimate destination. We also came upon a big herd of sheep.
It was still plenty early when we hit Dollar Lake. So, instead of camping near there for the night, we decided to press on and head to Painters Basin. That was a big mistake.
Next few miles up Gunsight and into Painters were brutal. We were getting hungry, but couldn’t turn back. In hindsight, it would have been really nice to start from Dollar Lake the next day and go light over Gunsight pass. Plus, it would have allowed us to take a significant shortcut.
We found a nice campsite next to a little bumbling spring in Painters Basin.
We set up camp quickly, cooked some food (Skurka beans and rice) and ate hurriedly.
We were pretty exhausted and crawled in the tent by 9pm. We were both just so tired. Our shoulders and hips hurt and neither of us slept very well. Painters basin was windy and noisy and kept us up for way too many hours.
Day 2: Kings Peak summit and home
Didn’t get onto the trail until just before 9am. We left our tent and big backpacks and just took some water, a filter, and some food and headed for the summit. It was a lovely morning.
The climb got pretty tough, and we after we crossed a little snowfield, the trail disappeared entirely and we just had to scramble over rocks up the ridge to the summit.
We finally made it to the summit just after 11am. There was almost no wind at the summit and we rested, took some pictures, refueled and enjoyed the view from the top of Utah at 13,528 feet.
We were pretty tired when we made it back to our camp at 1pm. But there wasn’t any time to rest. We cold-soaked some couscous in the cold spring water and packed up our camp. We had already hiked 6 miles bagging the summit, but we still had 12 miles to get back to our car.
We set off knowing that once we got to the top of Gunsight Pass it would be downhill all from there. We stopped to take a couple pictures, but after that we pretty much kept hiking down the trail.
We just kept going until we reached the parking lot just after 7:30pm. We were so tired, but still had to face the 3 hour drive home. We stopped in Evanston for some Costa Vida and got home just after 11pm. It was a good trip, but we learned a couple things to do differently next time. Still a great time!
MightyJohnsons 