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July 10, 2001
Leaving from the
Henry's Fork trailhead at about 9am we arrived at the log bridge
at Elk Horn crossing in the picture above. The first 10 miles of
the hike are relatively flat only gaining about 1800 feet up to
Dollar Lake. This is where we decided to set up camp arriving at
about 2 pm. We set up camp on a ridge where the tent was
protected from the wind by rocks and some juniper bushes.
It rained most of the afternoon finally stopping
around 7 pm that evening. In the picture above Linda is near our
tent located in the valley north of King's Peak. The valley
provides some nice views of surrounding mountains including
King's Peak located in the far background of the picture below
just right of center.
July 11, 2001
We were up early to get to the summit and off the
mountain before the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in. We were on
the trail at 6 am and over Gunsight Pass by 7 am. Gunsight Pass
in the picture below climbs about 700 feet from the valley and
then you lose most of that elevation going down the other side
into the Painter Basin.
The trail splits at the bottom of Gunsight Pass
and we took the path to the right which is a shortcut to Anderson
Pass. After an hour or so we were on top of Anderson Pass and was
at the base of the rock pile known as King's Peak. The last 1500
feet or so up the mountain is a real chore. The trail is
non-existent so you just scramble up the boulders wherever you
chose until you finally reach the summit of King's Peak at 13528
feet. Towards the top Linda started feeling the effects of the
altitude since she lives close to sea-level most of the year
whereas living in Wyoming the altitude didn't affect me much.
In the picture above I'm sitting on the summit
ledge which overlooks another basin to the northwest.
We made the summit at 10:30 am and the views are
pretty awesome. The clouds to the south were turning dark so we decided not to stay very long on
top. Since there isn't much of a trail from the summit we decide
we would take a shorter route than the way up and decend straight
down the south side of the mountain. The way down takes just as
long as the way up since you are crawling back down the large
pile of rocks and boulders.
About halfway down the south side of the mountain
we came to a large snow field we decided to glissade down and
save our bodies some jarring on the rocks. This saved us some
valuable time as when got off the mountain the storms began to
appear. We finally made it back to the tent at around 3 pm pretty
spent from all the boulder hopping and scrambling and completely
soaked from the rain. It stormed the rest of the day until about
6 pm that evening. We had some dinner and slept well from the
long summit day.
July 12, 2001
This was a pretty non-eventful day. We awoke
around 8 am, broke up camp and hit the trail around 9:30. The 10
miles out seemed much longer than the 10 miles in but we arrived
back at the trailhead at 1:30 pm. We passed about 9 different
parties consisting of 30 people or more heading in. The whole 3
days we were there we only seen 3 people so we were getting out
just in time to beat the crowds.
