Klickitat County High Point Trip Report

Indian Rock (5,823 ft)

Date: July 6, 2000
Author: Edward Earl

This is a broad summit west of Satus Pass on US-97 between Toppenish and Goldendale. A high- clearance dirt road approaches the summit from the pass. It was not too inconvenient to Earlize this one, so I parked my truck at the appropriate point on the approach and continued on foot.

As I walked, I had trouble correlating the road I was walking on with the road on the topo. A few places appeared to match, but then later went astray. This was rather disconcerting as I am normally VERY good at this. Finally my road topped out at a marshy meadow with a lake. My topo showed no such feature anywhere near where I was supposed to be. So, as on Mount Adams, I whipped out my GPS, which showed that I was a whopping 2 km west and 3 km north of the summit. I had actually gone past the summit and had passed well north of it.

I found my marshy meadow on the topo (I was actually beyond a point where the meadow ran off the topo) and backtracked southeast toward the summit. The area is mostly coniferous forest, but the BM is on the crest of an open rounded knoll with a panoramic view to the south. It wasn't cloudy, but because of the haze I was only barely able to see Mount Hood. A cluster of rocks about 500' ENE partially hidden in trees appears to be a few feet higher. I climbed that, from which the BM knoll appears higher! It is likely that the rocks are higher.

I made my way back to my truck, carefully noting my position along the way. The route was different than the way up. Finally I found the reason for my earlier navigation troubles. About 2 miles W of Simcoes Butte there had been a fork in the road not shown on the map. I had parked my truck soon after that -- so soon, in fact, that I had not checked the map since the fork and hence started off "on the wrong foot". Future highpointers to Klickitat WA beware of this fork.