Wasatch County Highpoint Trip Report
liner on west side of Murdock Mountain (10,840 ft)
Date: September 10, 2004
Author: Dean Molen
After being able to do some great Utah peaks earlier in the week, I wanted to chase down the Wasatch
CoHP as I was staying in nearby Park City. I had pre-loaded several co-ordinates for this county in my GPS
so I parked just below the Bald Mountain Overlook (roughly 28+ miles from Kamas) and started from there.
One of my goals was to try and nail the exact HP and I feel I was successful.
A little cross country effort of maybe 15 minutes found me soon in the correct area (lots of rock and talus)
and I began my search for the HP. I quickly ruled out the Topozone co-ordinate and used the directions
given by Edward Earl in his report. I saw several cairns in the area but all but two seemed off the mark (in
my opinion of course). A large one to the north was actually a bit out of the area and I GPS'd each one and
have listed them below. Two of the closest were rather interesting. One simply consisted of about 16
stones placed in an arch shape and the other was on top of a rock with a good view of a pretty lake down below.
This was the cairn put up by Gerry and Jennifer Roach along with Dave Covill and it came complete
with a small pill bottle register. In my searching for the true HP, I felt it was close to these two mentioned
cairns (see below). The closest one to the correct spot in my opinion was the large cairn put up by Gerry
and Jennifer Roach and Dave Covill. I found the small pill bottle with its register and found three entries
which were:
08-24-02 - Gerry & Jennifer Roach and Dave Covill
07-03-03 - Ken Akerman (his 18th Utah cohp)
09-29-03 - T-bone and the Sherpa (yup, I'm not making this up)
I signed in below good ole "T-Bone".
So, the spot that I felt was highest and still within Wasatch county was
here.
My GPS-derived coordinates for the HP (NAD27 datum): (40.67880° N, 110.90130° W)
I took the following GPS-derived coordinates for the cairns found there:
(40.67844° N, 110.90164° W) - the Roach / Covill cairn
(40.67883° N, 110.90165° W) - 16 Stone cairn
(40.68113° N, 110.90034° W) - large cairn to north
(40.68031° N, 110.90168° W) - small cairn
I parked my car at (40.68418° N, 110.90290° W).
I didn't take the time to climb up to the summit of Mt. Cardwell but I recommend reading Edward Earl's trip
report as well as this message.
Don't forget to take in the scenery of this area, it is varied and amazing.
Some great stuff as you head back towards Kamas.
A 3 dollar fee per day is levied on cars that park anywhere along the highway unless you have a
Golden Age Passport which gets you a freebie by just displaying it on your dash.
Time spent in the HP area, one hour.