Last week, as we were enjoying the views from atop Little Black Mountain, Tom mentioned that this unnamed mountain looked intriguing. We had thought that, too, as we often observe it when we travel I-15 to St. George. When we got home and did some research, on this nondescript mountain, we were pleased to find it had Butte Benchmark on its top (Makes you wonder why they didn't just call this Butte Mountain rather than leaving it unnamed?). All of a sudden it seemed that Butte Mountain was a little more important than we had given it credit for and quickly formulated a plan to go recover the benchmark. As you can see from the pictures below, the hike not only offered us amazing views of Arizona & Utah, but a recovered 1953 benchmark!  |
| Using the Temple Trail road, we traveled south from Hurricane for approximately eighteen miles Once we reached Black Rock Canyon, the road took a turn for the worse and we chose to stop and begin our hike from the northeast side. |
 |
| Looking northwest toward the Pine Valley Mountains . . . We are standing in Arizona about eight miles south of the Utah state line |
 |
| Kent & Tom discussed where we will begin our ascent . . . We ended up going pretty much up the center of the mountain |
 |
| Whew . . . it was a little more steep than it looked from down below! |
 |
| We could all take life lessons from Lola . . . At 12 years of age, she continues to put one paw in front of the other, no matter the obstacles that lie ahead! |
 |
| We're almost there or at least we think we are! Once we reached the rocky top, up ahead, we still had two more bumps to ascend . . . When we arrived at the benchmark, we were at 5,104 ft . . . almost an 1,800 ft ascent! |
 |
| Butte Benchmark was easy to locate, along with its two reference markers |
 |
| Butte BM was placed here in 1953 |
 |
| We all agreed that the scenery on this hike was spectacular in every direction The sides of this lava covered mesa, to our west, have eroded to expose some Bryce like formations |
 |
| Looking south we could see Mount Trumbull in the distance (It's actually the bump in the middle of the horizon, not the one, off by itself, to the right) |
 |
| What a beautiful afternoon! (Late fall through early spring make for an ideal time to hike this area . . . The summers are too hot and there is practically no shade) |
 |
| We could see St. George, which was no surprise . . . Last week Kent noticed he could see Butte Mountain from Utah Tech University, while he was at work |
 |
| On our descent, we enjoyed the spectacular views of the Hurricane Cliffs off to our east (The Hurricane Cliffs are a geographic feature formed by the Hurricane fault . . . This fault stretches about 150 miles from north of Cedar City to the Grand Canyon) |
 |
| Almost back to our trucks! Now we no longer will have to "wonder what's on top" of Butte Mountain, when we travel to St. George . . . We've been to the top and the views and hike were well worth the effort! |
Our friend, Tom, made a short video with his GoPro and we've included it here so you could get a better (different) perspective as to what our hike entailed:
