TR: San Rafael Knob (April 2006)

[Udink]

It snowed again last night, adding to the 1'+ we've got on the ground here in Price and around the San Rafael Swell, and instead of playing in the snow today I stayed in and spent some time looking at old photos and dreaming about when it was warmer. Here's a trip report from April 2006, when some friends and I camped at Justensen Flats and hiked the San Rafael Knob, which is the highest point in the San Rafael Swell at 7,921'.

We reached our parking spot at the base of the Knob at around 9:30am and were on top of the Knob by 10:30am. The first part of the hike was up a steep and loose slope on the west side of the Knob. Once we reached the flat ridge about halfway up, we followed it around to the north side of the Knob and skirted the bottom of some steep cliffs that still had some snow at their base.

View from near where we parked


Atop the first ridge halfway up the Knob


Traversing the north slope of the Knob


Base of cliffs along the north side (with dirty snow at the very bottom)


At the northeast side of the San Rafael Knob, there's a route to the top that requires some serious scrambling, and we used a hand line in a couple of spots for the less experienced hikers (myself included).

A couple of meat anchors


Handlining up a small cliff


Once past the worst part, it was an easy walk west to the highest point. We spent about an hour on top, taking in the view and finding the geocache on the far west side (which, since then, nobody else has found). It took about an hour to get back down to the vehicles, so it was a three-hour trip, and the total hiking distance was only 1.2 miles.

Survey marker on top


Cort at the highest point


View off the west end of the Knob (our parking spot visible near the bottom)


View southeast toward Family Butte


View south


Back at our parking spot


San Rafael Knob viewed from Justensen Flats



There are some more photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Dennis.Udink/SanRafaelKnob#

Google Earth .KML file including GPS tracklog and waypoints with embedded photos:
http://castlecountry.org/geo/SanRafaelKnob.kml

[asdf]

thanks for pulling this one out of the archives for us

[kkemp]

Thanks for the report and pix. My wife and I did that last year. We camped at the base of the knob and hiked up the next morning. It was fantastic up there. I was expecting a much more difficult hike for some reason, it was actually real short and easy. Unfortunately my camera got switched to some weird mode and all the photos came out blue. It's nice seeing your's.

[tmartenst]

Nice. A few friends and I did this in May of 2005. It is funny that it was such a quick hike for you because we drove a corolla as far as we could without damage and hiked the complete wrong direction which put us a few miles east of the Knob. We eventually said 'f' it and started climbing through decent size canyons to get to it and by the time we were up and down the Knob and back to the car it was somewhat an epic day. We had run out of water and were saying Almond Rocha my ass (that is what one of the guidebooks calls the hike). It was a decent area and I do remember some pretty exposed steep sections.

I believe your road can be seen in the one photo below. We took that way out to the car.

Saw some wild horses on the way out.

[kkemp]

We drove to the knob in our Jeep. Apparently the poster of the report did the same. I don't think a Corolla would have much of a chance doing that drive, it's really pretty rough in spots.