Kitsap County Highpoint Trip Report

Gold Mountain (1,761 feet)

Date: September 6, 2007
Author: Adam Helman

Simplified summit area instructions

Note: This effort was part of a larger journey collecting county highpoints in early September 2007.

Current reports will get you to the summit - yet need simplification as provided here.

After reaching this bend in the approach road continue west (the road is now paved) for some 500 horizontal feet. Here, note how the pavement veers left (south) to a communications complex, while the road leading straight suddenly turns to gravel. Remain on the gravel path and pass, within 50-100 feet, a side road bearing right (north) to another communications tower. Disregard this side road and continue for another 100-200 yards along the gravel path, still heading west, until encountering a second paved road bearing right. Take this paved road and immediately (within ten paces!) bear left (west) onto an unmaintained path that parallels the original gravel road you just abandoned.

The path is almost completely overgrown as of summer 2007, and might soon become unrecognizable as an artificial construct as Nature overtakes it.

Follow this path perhaps 200 horizontal feet west. It then turns sharply right (north), and heads steeply up a knoll with the benchmark and spongy moss atop it. As the path will eventually disappear through time, the summit NAD27 coordinates (516147 E, 5265953 N) are of value - the GPS unit being placed atop a three-foot tall tree stump when this reading was taken. Subtraction of this height yields 1,745 feet - within the estimated error range of ± 20 feet from the 1,761 foot benchmark elevation.

Conversion to latitude, longitude yields (47.54877° N, 122.78541° W), in agreement with Bob Bolton's reading of (47.54876° N, 122.78545° W) with a difference of just 4 meters in the horizontal plane.