Upon a Royal Throne (Day 3)

It has been a long and crazy day. At last I am in my tent, although not completely dry.
 
The first half of our goal today was to hike King's Peak, the highest peak in Utah at 13,528 feet. I have been there once before, although we accessed it from Henry's Fork on the north side near the Wyoming border. That was nineteen years ago. I was obliged to go with my friend, Russ, and his father, who was a seasoned cowboy from Uri, Wyoming. We brought four horses in, which included one for each of us. The fourth was a pack horse and we loaded him up with panniers, three sleeping bags, a tent, a fold-up chair, and an ax. We covered all this with a tarp and cinched it tight with rope. We camped the night at Dollar Lake in an large canvas tent. We knew the temperature dipped below freezing that night because we found ice in our water bucket. Russ and I woke up before dawn and hiked over Gunsight Pass to the southern slopes of the Uinta Mountains. Not knowing the best way to the top, we tackled the peak head-on. On that day we saw no other hikers near the peak, and since I arrived before Russ, for twenty minutes I was the highest person in all of Utah.
 

But that was nineteen years ago and things were different today. As we approached Anderson Pass we began to see the hikers filing in. Until today, we had scarcely seen any other people. I guess that the tallest peaks tend to attract the crowds. Everyone we met was coming from the north side.
 
I was surprised how almost nothing looked familiar. Even though it had been nineteen years, I should still have remembered something.
 
Just before reaching the Pass we left the trail and began to scale upward. For the most part it was boulder-hopping. Even the ascent didn't feel familiar.
 

Looking west during our ascent.

One of the false summits.

After a few false summits, we finally arrived at the true one. To my complete surprise, there was a young couple already there with their three-year-old daughter! They carried her up in a baby backpack carrier.
 
A complete panoramic view is uninhibited from the summit. Tall rocky ridges seem to crawl in every direction, each flanked by its own basin filled with thick timber and lakes. Mount Gilbert and Mount Emmons are seen from here, each being among the tallest peaks in the range. We could see Painter Basin directly below us and Atwood Basin in the distance, which is our destination tomorrow. The High Uintas are buffered by so much wilderness that I couldn't see any sign of modern development, even from our high vantage point.
 

An amazing father that carried his 3-year-old daughter to the summit!

View from King's Peak. In the distance you can see Mount Emmons and Atwood Lake.

I was impressed with the amount of people doing day trips from Henry's Fork—a round-trip distance of 28 miles. One couple ran most of it. Another man left at 4 am. The ridge to the summit seemed to be one continual train of hikers coming and going.
 
I was happy to get down the peak when we did. Storms were moving in. A lot of people were still on their way up. Streams seemed to flow everywhere and short, stubby flowers grew all around.
 

King's Peak.

By the time we returned to Painter Basin, the storms had caught up to us. I first felt solid pellets of hail hitting my face, blowing in from the north. Then it turned into an all-out assault. Luckily, Devin ran ahead of us and arrived at camp just in time to cover a few essential items.
 
We spent the next hour hunkered down inside our tents, waiting out the storm. (I calculated that our round-trip to King's Peak of 6.4 miles took us 5 ½ hours.) Once the storm passed we cleaned up camp and set out again.
 
At this point we had 22 miles left on our hike. Whatever we didn't do today would have to be done tomorrow. And tomorrow we also have to drive five hours to home.
 

Stream in Painter Basin.  South King's Peak in background.

From all the rain, the entire basin was one large marshland. Rivulets of water flowed from all directions. As we crossed the basin toward Trail Rider Pass I realized that the streams we now crossed were the headwaters of the Uinta River. In the last three days we have crossed dozens of streams. It was now becoming an old routine.
 
The pass into Atwood Basin is a rocky hill that is exposed. Another round of storms were now moving in and it was my goal to be up and over the pass before they met us. We didn't make it.
 
Just after cresting, the lightning and rain came together. We moved faster, but it was all around us. In desperation we chucked our trekking poles and crouched low next to a boulder. The entire experience was very nerve-racking. Lightning struck all around us, including many places on the path ahead. For forty-five minutes we sat crouched near the boulder. Some bolts struck in front of us, while others reverberated from behind. We kept light humor between the three of us, but we all knew that if just one strip of lightning decided to come our way, we would become toast.
 

Atop Trail Rider Pass waiting out a thunderstorm and doing a lot of praying!

Once the storm slowed down, we moved with haste into the basin. Even though the rain had stopped, everything was wet. Trees were saturated in moisture and the trail was nearly one continuous puddle of water. In spite of our miserable condition, I found beauty in the columbines and other wildflowers that grew along the trail.
 
We had hoped to make it down to Chain Lakes today, but that wasn't going to happen. We arrived at Atwood Lake, a massive reservoir of water, and found a cleared area near the dam on the east side. We decided to set up camp here.
 

Atwood Lake.

Columbine.

We are all exhausted and miserably cold. I am trying to warm up inside my sleeping bag, but even that is slightly damp. All my clothing is moist and cold. I am glad that tonight is our final night. Now if we can survive it!
 
Total distance today: 12.5 miles. Total on trip: 39.6 miles. Elevation at camp: 11,039 feet.
 

Sunset on Atwood Lake.

[As a side-note, after returning home from our backpacking trip, it bothered me that very little of our summit to King's Peak had looked familiar. Could it be that we hiked the wrong peak in 2000? A prominent, but less lofty peak rose to the northwest. Could we have accidentally hiked this peak instead? In my journal I recorded the view from the top: “Mount Emmons to the southeast, however, appeared to be taller.” Could the peak that I thought was Mount Emmons, really have been King's Peak? I had almost completely convinced myself that we had hiked the wrong peak until I examined a single picture that I had taken from the top. To my relief, it matched exactly with a picture that I took on this most recent trip, with objects in the foreground that could not have been seen from any other location except King's Peak.
 
In the year 2000, our trip to King's Peak occurred in October. By the time we returned to camp, loaded up the horses and rode back to the trail-head, we noticed dark storm clouds just behind us. After we arrived at the vehicles and were driving out, we observed fresh powder on the peaks. Shortly thereafter we learned that the mighty Uintas received over two feet of new snow. We were lucky to have made it out!] 

King's Peak from the north side in 2000.