I rarely summit the same mountain twice, but this was my third attempt at hiking South Tent Mountain and only my second successful one. I first hiked it in 2004, along with its neighbor North Tent Mountain, and it was my third Utah county high point. Just a couple of weeks later somebody placed a geocache there. It often nagged at me that I’d missed the geocache by such a short period of time but it never seemed worth going back for. That is, not until nine years later when I returned with my two dogs, but with Boulder being only nine weeks old she couldn’t make it to the summit of South Tent. Eight years after that I found myself camped at Potter’s Ponds with a bunch of friends for a geocaching event, and with nothing to do on Saturday Chris, Boulder, and I drove up to Skyline Drive to finally snag that geocache.
Chris drove his truck and we parked below the saddle between North and South Tent. We started hiking northeast and aimed for a spot to the right of the saddle that looked like the easiest route. We reached a large flat spot on the ridge and turned southeast, following the ridge to the summit.
South Tent Mountain
Boulder in Beck’s Ditch
Beck’s Ditch
Saddle between North and South Tent
View toward North Tent Mountain
Boulder on the ridge
View to South Tent
Chris’ truck below
View over the head of Reeder Canyon
Black Canyon panorama
I was happy that Boulder got a do-over on her first hike ever (though she seemed indifferent 😉 ) and that I finally signed my name in the geocache log. After resting briefly at the summit we followed roughly the same route back to the truck. The entire hike was under three miles, and we probably spent about as much time driving there and back as we did hiking. It’s humorous to me now, looking back at my post from 17 years ago when I was just getting into hiking and reading how I struggled with this peak. I’m pretty confident now that this will be my last time on South Tent Mountain.
Boulder on the summit
South Tent survey marker from 1919
Heading down the mountain
Almost back to the truck
Photo Gallery: South Tent Mountain III