Williams Peak 2018

Williams Peak is the second highest summit in the Canyon Range, west of Scipio. I'd been on top of it a couple times in the past, ascending it from 8 Mile Canyon to the south and west, but I had always wondered whether there was a route through the spectacular cliffs in John Williams Canyon on the north side. I was also looking for a chance to check out some of the last original forest in the Canyon Range, which was spared by the 107,000-acre Clay Springs fire in 2012 that burned out most of the rest of the Canyon Range.

Three intrepid explorers showed up for this adventure — Sue, Stanley and Jim. It took us 80 minutes to drive south on I-15 to Scipio, where we waited in line at the gas station bathroom as dozens of Army (or National Guard) troops from a bus took advantage of a rest stop. From there, we drove about 5 mi on increasingly rugged dirt roads up into John Williams Canyon.

We parked and walked the road up the canyon. To my surprise, the rutted and rocky lower section of the road gave way to a relatively well-maintained road winding through white-fir and Douglas-fir forest up to a spring. A water pipe followed the road and you could hear the rushing water through vents. After this first spring, the road continued as an ATV track to a higher spring that was also tapped for irrigation water. This track got us fairly high in the canyon, but it left us with about 1000 feet of elevation gain to the ridgeline, with nothing but animal trails to follow through the brush.

After first leading us astray into a side canyon, I decided to believe my GPS and we traversed into the the correct canyon. There were impressive walls on both sides, and the canyon narrowed as we got closer to the ridgeline. The brush was annoying but there was actually fairly little deadfall and the animal trails avoided the worst of the terrain. Eventually we reached the top of the canyon at a break in the cliffs; I was very pleased that the route actually worked!

From this break, I thought that we'd have a fairly straightforward 1-mi hike to the summit of Williams Peak. I was wrong about this, unfortunately — we had to endure quite a bit of ugly mountain-mahogany thrash, and we had to work through a few up-thrust cliff bands. The reward was a fantastic 360-degree summit view, with cliffs and forest in the foreground and mountains and valleys in the background. The Wasatch Plateau was a striking white stripe of snowcapped ridges to the east, while we could make out Notch Peak and Mt Moriah to the west. Mt Nebo looks really grand (and really snowy) from this angle.

The bushwhacking on the return was just about as slow as it was on the way up, and we were all grateful when we heard the splash of water in the upper spring and popped out of the forest onto the ATV track. We got back to the park-and-ride lot at about 7:30 PM. Thanks to Sue, Stanley and Jim for putting up with my ambition to tackle Williams Peak again!

go to the Williams Peak gallery