Horse Ranch Mountain

Horse Ranch Mountain (8,726ft) – Highpoint of Zion National Park

Hiking up Horse Ranch Mountain

Eric and Matthew Gilbertson – October 28, 2015

Matthew and I started our day eating breakfast at Rainbow Point in Bryce Canyon, then drove down to hit the Zion highpoint. A few days earlier we’d driven through Zion and hiked in The Narrows, an amazing canyon in the park. Interestingly the highest point in the park looks nothing like what you see from the canyon bottom in the narrows. The highest point is a small hill called Horse Ranch Mountain that is accessed by hiking through some cow fields. It is still the highpoint of the park, though, and worth a visit for anyone working on the park highpoints list.

Matthew and I left Interstate 15 just south of Cedar City and started driving up gravel washboarded roads. The steep roads eventually flattened out and we drove south through the woods to just about the Iron/Washington county border. We passed through a gate, then hiked down a dirt road to another gate that marked the national park boundary.

Past this gate it was open grassland with a few trees. We traveled cross country making a beeline for Horse Ranch Mountain. The terrain steepened and there was a bit of scrambling at the top. From the summit we could barely see into the canyons of Zion, though most of the land around was covered by grass and trees, a much different view than down in the Narrows.

We soon headed back down, then drove to Las Vegas to fly out that night.