Signal Peak

October 16-17, 2025

Each autumn I’m usually eager for mountain season to be over so I can get back into the desert when temperatures are more tolerable, but I was stoked when conditions lined up late in the season for me to bag one final county high point for the year. Signal Peak is the last of the “easier” county high points in Utah that I had left to hike, and now that I’ve done it I only have two left to go, Gilbert Peak and King’s Peak, which I’ll tackle on separate trips next summer. I’ve been wanting to make this hike happen all summer and I barely eked it out before the seasonal winter road closure on November 1st. Due to the Forsyth wildfire that started in early June, the Forest Circus enacted closures of both the road to the Oak Grove campground and the trails within the wilderness area. The road was only closed to motor vehicles, so I could have legally done this as a backpacking trip pretty easily if it wasn’t for the trail closure. The road closure was supposed to expire on September 30th and the trail closure was supposed to expire on October 15th, unless either was rescinded sooner or even extended. By October 13th the road and trail closure orders were removed from the FS website but that didn’t specifically mean that the area was open. However, with the ongoing federal government shutdown I couldn’t contact anybody to find out anyway. It wasn’t until the morning of this trip that I got confirmation that the road was open to within half a mile of the Oak Grove campground, thanks to a log entry for a geocache there. I had been willing to make the drive even without knowing for certain the status of the closures but it was a relief knowing there were no physical barriers in my way now. The weather was looking perfect after a cold and rainy spell just a couple of days before. I left home right after work and camped near the closed gate, near a friendly fellow named Oliver who said he didn’t mind me camping by him, and went to bed early and slept fitfully that night.

Oak Grove gate closed and locked

View toward Leeds

Hurricane Mesa and the West Temple

Actually closed

I was awake early and considered trying to sleep in since sunrise wasn’t supposed to be until about 7:45 AM. But instead I got up, leisurely ate breakfast and sipped some coffee while playing and reading on my phone for a while, and started to hike at 7:15 just as it was light enough to see without a headlamp. I walked the road for half a mile to the campground where there was a sign stating the wilderness trails were closed due to wildfire. I think it’s clear why I refer to them as the Forest Circus: a sign at the locked gate to the campground says it’s open, and a sign at the open trailhead says it’s closed. The sun came up just as I crossed the wilderness boundary and I was surprised when the air seemed to warm up almost immediately.

Before sunrise

Oak Grove road before dawn

Actually open

Oak Grove trailhead sign

First light on the cliffs

Wilderness boundary

The trail initially had a relatively gently slope, ascending through a treeless section of scrub oak. Then it got very steep, climbing the face of the mountain 2,400′ in one horizontal mile, but with a lot of switchbacks. This segment went so slowly for me that Oliver, who had left the trailhead over an hour after I did, caught up and passed me. I reached the relatively flat top of the mountain around 11:00 AM and sat down for a lunch break while enjoying the views. While sitting there another group of five (one of which was a baby in a carrier!) also arrived at the ridgetop and stopped nearby.

Trail through scrub oak

View southeast

View northeast

Signal Peak ridge

Shinob Kibe in the distance

Ponderosa pines

Steep trail up some rugged terrain

The trailhead far below

Frosted treetops

A pleasant section of trail

First snow on the trail

View from the top of the ridgeline

I got moving again, and the remaining two miles to the summit were an easy hike over an inch or two of snow. The last half-mile of that was a comparatively gentle off-trail climb through the trees. One of the couples I’d seen while eating lunch passed me up in this last stretch, and the other couple with the baby had turned back (which I gleaned from their tracks in the snow later). I got to the summit and nobody was there, so somewhere in the trees I’d missed the three people who’d passed me on the ascent. There wasn’t any summit register that I could find, and the geocache near the summit also eluded me. The summit is surrounded by trees so there wasn’t much of a view from there. I took another short break in a nearby clearing before heading back down the mountain.

Snowy trail near Deer Flat

Trail sign

Blazed tree

Deer Flat

Trail between Deer Flat and Further Water

Further Water clearing

Moderate climb off-trail to Signal Peak

Signal Peak summit

I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else on the trail considering that it was after 1:00 PM. I thought I’d been the first to leave the trailhead and would be the last one to return, but I saw three more people making their way up to the summit as I descended. One was a guy wearing shorts and one of those drawstring backpacks who’d just reached the top of the plateau and was yelling out, “Hey, bear!” and the others were two women with two dogs making their way up the steep face of the mountain. My right knee and ankle had been hurting a little bit for most of the hike up (maybe still due to the tumble I took back in April?) and I expected it to get worse on the way down, but to my relief it actually didn’t bother me as much. I got back to the truck 10 hours after I’d set out that morning, having covered 12 miles and roughly 4,900′ total elevation gain. For some reason I didn’t really enjoy this hike as much as I expected to. I’ve always loved the sight of the Pine Valley Mountains from the surrounding desert over the many years I’ve been traveling to this area, but finally getting to the top of the mountain was underwhelming. It was just a box to check on a list, and only the fact that it furthered a larger goal of mine made me glad to get it done.

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