After leaving
Strawberry Knolls (and Strawberry Point), we continued on our trek to Henrie Knolls. Not being in a particular hurry, we decided to travel some backroads that we had never been on before. Thankfully, most of them had a solid base, because we were about to experience one of those powerful monsoons rainstorms that the desert southwest is known for in the summer months. As the road turned into a river, we were thankful for 4WD and a route that's base material was lava rock!
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Heading further north we drove by a huge meadow which is part of Uinta Flat . . .
Those clouds look ominous! (And they didn't disappoint) |
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A little before 1 pm it began to rain hard . . . then the road turned into a river . . .
Thankfully, the road had a basalt base or we wouldn't have even attempted to reach Henrie Knolls |
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| The temperature quickly dropped to 53 degrees . . . it even hailed |
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After waiting out the storm for 30 minutes in our truck, the rain finally let up . . .
Even though it's possible to drive to the top, we opted for a little more exercise and
began our ascent near the bottom of the cinder cone |
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Henrie Knolls (9,192 ft) . . . straight ahead!
(It seems there was a lookout tower on this knoll until at least 1971) |
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Within 30 minutes we made it to the top in the sprinkling rain . . .
Henrie Benchmark was placed here in 1957 |
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| We continued on around the rim of the cinder cone on a road used by ATV's |
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As you can see, this cinder cone provides really good views of the pink cliffs of Bryce Canyon
(We are parked somewhere in the aspens to the left of Kent's hat) |
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| Looking south towards some more cinder cones and a lava field that was created by them |
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| Looking back at Strawberry Knolls (and Pumice Benchmark), where we were earlier in the day |
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| This big leaf lupine barely survived the downpour |
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| As the clouds continued to clear, our views eastward towards Bryce Canyon, just kept getting better! |
Once we got back to the truck, we still had a couple of hours left in our day, so we decided to travel towards Panquitch Lake and fish Bunker Creek. We've almost always had good luck on this beautiful little stream, and today was no exception!
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| Bunker Creek |
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| It didn't take long before the trout came calling! Nothing too big, but a fun way to end a wonderful day! |
While it certainly was possible to drive to the top of Henrie Knolls (in fact, this was probably the best section of the road), we chose to park and get in a 2.5 mile r/t hike with 560 ft of ascent. If you're interested in a GPS track and topo map, you can click
here for one that Tom has provided from his Peakbagger.com post. (We didn't start from he did, but came in from the paved road on the eastern most portion of his GPS track.)
