Date: August 24, 2021.
Objective: Kings Peak 13,528ft.
Stats: 26 miles and 4,800ft gain round trip in 11:47. Strava.
I had a trip to the Teton's scheduled for this week that ended up getting canceled. So now I was without a partner and without an objective. King's Peak had been on my list for a bit so I figured now was the time. Even though I'd read that it is ridiculously crowded, I chose to take the north side approach since I would be there early in the week. I actually had zero trouble finding a camp site. One really nice thing was that the official camp ground is right at the trailhead, so I was able to walk right out of camp and jump on the trail. While the elevation gain is fairly gradual, the trail was fairly rough and not super runnable for me. I'd also read that there are sections that could be quite muddy, but I think I dodged that bullet due to the low snow year. There were some marshy/ muddy sections, but nothing as near as bad as I'd read in other reports. Also, no mosquitoes. Three thumbs up there!
There was a full moon and a sky full of stars as I set out at 0600. The trail to Gunsight Pass was pretty easy to follow and I ran what I could. At Gunsight Pass, I decided to try and take the "shortcut" to Anderson Pass, instead of dropping down into Painter Basin. There was a decent climbers trail and cairns to follow up a cliff band and across the talus to regain the trail to Anderson Pass.
There was a bit of snow up high that had lingered from a recent storm, but not so much that it required anything special other than a little grit. From Anderson Pass to the summit the rock was pretty solid. I could see a few placed where someone had stepped in the snow and punched though in between rocks, so pretty much tried to avoid the snow as best as I could. This required a bit more scrambling than is probably normal, but it was fun and not too exposed. There was one steep section below the summit block that had become icy from all the recent traffic. I was pretty much able to climb over/ past it on exposed rock. It looked worse than it was.
The summit was pretty broad with an amazing view. I topped out at 1215 and only hung out for about 15 minutes due to the chilly wind. There were more people headed up now than I had seen up to this point. I took a couple breaks in the relative warmth down lower on the way back to Gunsight Pass. With a straight forward route down, there was nothing to do but grin and bear it and daydream of coming back.
Pictures
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| Early morning on the trail. |
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| Signage. |
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| Near Elkhorn Crossing. |
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| Elkhorn Crossing. |
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| Gunsight Pass. |
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| Looking west from Gunsight pass. |
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| Painter Basin. |
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| Looking across the plateau and the shortcut. |
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| Kings Peak from the east. |
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| King's Peak north ridge from Anderson Pass. |
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| Henry's Fork Peak. |
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| Garfield Basin to the west. |
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| False summit. |
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| Gunsight Peak to the east. |
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| Nearing the summit. |
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| Summit block. |
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| Summit pic. |
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| Painter Basin. |
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| North-south trending ridgeline containing several 13ers. |
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| Looking north from Gunsight Pass. |
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| Looking back up/ south to Gunsight Pass. |
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| Henry's Fork Peak from the north. |
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| Kings Peak in the middle. |
