Utah with LVMC (Horse Ranch Mt and White Rock)

Harlan WS
Oct 15 & 16, 2016

We camped at Snow Canyon State Park, and I hiked solo on Oct 15 & 16. I had long wanted to go up Horse Ranch Mountain (highpoint of Zion Nat'l Park) by the west, via Taylor Creek; the shorter route from the east requires driving 6.5 miles on roads marked "NO TRESPASSING." The west involved at least 4000' of accumulated gain, 11 miles, some class 3 (worse if you go off-route), and pretty gnarly brush. There is official trail for the first mile or so, but for most of the trip the "trails" are made by animals; I saw no human footprints and lots of sign of deer, cottontails, bighorn sheep, coyotes and bobcats. The last day I headed to White Rock Peak at the N end of Snow Canyon, and started hiking before the sun rose, as the day promised to be hot.

First was Horse Ranch Mountain (HRM). I got weary of navigating the dryfalls in the dim light, and started following an animal trail through the woods, but eventually dropped back down.	View of a portion of route, as seen from W. (Google Earth synthetic)	Similar, but GE synthetic view from S. The GE digital elevation model is crude, so what looks like a reasonable slope is actually broken up by numerous cliffs.
First view of the peak. The sun had officially risen 40 minutes before, but I didn't get direct sun till 2 hours later.	This is NOT point 6810; I made the mistake of thinking it was
Near point 7792; navigation is quite convoluted in this area.		View back W to i-15 valley.
	Now we cross from 7792 via animal trail.	The top. I managed to use old cow paths to avoid most brush; the few places I hit brush were totally brutal
	That may be NGA	Signal Peak/ Pine Valley Mts
As Christina Aguilera says, I'm beautiful in every single way.	View toward easier trespass route.
Fun's over, time to head back down across 3rd class dirt.
	I guess I'll take the wash down...	...but the wash isn't really a cakewalk
	Why don't he write?
View back on HRM from Taylor Cr parking	Back at camp with LVMC. I'll hit that white peak in distance next day.
my tent.	OK, next morn I started at White Rock trail just before sunrise	This is the peak, as seen from S, the night before at camp.
I found cairns on a class 2/3 ridge on Eside of the peak. The class 2 parts were on loose crud, so I usually opted to climb straight up the rock.		We were camped down there to S.
Now I'm on peak 4887T, looking down the dark slot seen in the photo from campsite.	I tried going down this slickrock, but hit a 100' pouroff.	On way back... I went up the left (E) side of that ridge earlier.
Nice wash on way out.