Box Elder County Highpoint Trip Report
Bull Mountain (9,934 ft)
Date: July 7, 2007
Author: Joseph B. Stanford
We drove 3.5 hours from Salt Lake City to the trailhead at Clear Creek Campground.
It would have been 2.5 hours if there hadn’t been any road
construction in I-15. We hiked from the trail that starts at the end of Clear
Creek Campground, signed at the beginning for Bull Flat. The description in
High in Utah (Weibel/Miller) is accurate except that I would call it difficult,
not moderate, in comparison to the Utah county high points as a whole. This is
because of the bushwhacking and incessant deadfall-hopping. Wear long pants.
Lots of wild flowers, lots of biting flies. In the Lake Fork Canyon, we climbed
out early onto the plateau leading to the summit and missed the view of Bull Lake.
A GPS was very helpful for route finding.
Prior to the hike, I entered the GPS coordinates for the peak from Dean Molen's
description at summitpost.org .
Upon nearing the top, we found that the actual peak was 0.44 mile away from
these coordinates. The peak was otherwise as described by Dean Molen.
With our Garmin GPS, we obtained the following coordinates for the peak:
(41° 54.681' N, 113° 21.960' W).
We met some other hikers who had come up through Bull Canyon. We decided to try
going down the ridge on the northwest side of Bull Canyon but a thunderstorm
came in and, to get out of the lightning, we climbed into Bull Canyon and made
our way down that canyon. It was very slow and difficult going even after the
rain stopped, with slippery rocks, and dense forest and ubiquitous deadfall.
Bottom line: don't hike through Bull Canyon; do Lake Fork Canyon.
Climb statistics: 4.2 miles up; 4.7 miles down by GPS.