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Walk on one of Earth's largest laccoliths in a quiet part of the Pine Valley Mountains near St. George, Utah.
View of Zion National Park's Kolob Canyons from Mount Baldy's summit
Distance/elevation gain: 11.5 miles out and back. Trailhead = 5,324'. Summit = 8,890'. Cumulative gain = 3,700'.
Difficulty: moderate - hard Class 1 effort up moderately steep switchbacks; steep bushwhacking/scrambling off-trail the last mile to the summit. Considerations: there is no trail, no cairns to mark the final ascent (~ 1 mile), once you get off Anderson Valley Trail: navigation experience is necessary. Summit not visible from approach trail. Maps/Apps: AllTrails (see notes below), Topo Maps US., St. George/Pine Valley Mountains (National Geographic #715). Date hiked: Sept. 2, 2024. Geology: Pine Valley Mountain Laccolith - perhaps the largest on Earth - granite monzonite porphyry intrusion 20.5 million years ago. History: "New Harmony" comes from Harmony, Pennsylvania, where Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. The local Mormon settlers thought the name represented the united action they had during periods of trial and hardship. Quote: "You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?" - Animal Mother in the film Full Metal Jacket.
Related posts
Map of our tracks from New Harmony Trailhead (see link above).
More topo maps at end of this post.
Solitude, cool views of Zion National Park, nice pines and aspens, and unique geology are the rewards you get with this hike to Mount Baldy if you don't mind hiking through a large burn area and can handle some frustrating bushwhacking and deadfall maneuvering.
With this ascent, we conquered one of our "grudge peaks," as we gave this a try in April but faced a thick blanket of snow covering the steep mountainside that the trail traversed. We should have known when we had to ford a cold, overflowing creek with waterfalls from snow melt at the beginning of the hike. However, a few days ago, we added another peak - Mount Moriah - to our grudge peak list, so the net number remains the same! The New Harmony trailhead for Anderson Valley Trail is at a large gravel parking lot with signboards and pit toilet. This is a less-traveled trail - maybe because most Pine Valley Mountain hikers are on trails leading to Burger and Signal Peaks, 10,000-footers to the southwest looking over Mount Baldy's summit. The approach to the saddle/ridge is bare of trees and faces east, so there's minimal shade in the morning. The human-caused 2018 West Valley fire left a lot of charred tree skeletons. The last mile of bushwhacking/navigating is crawling over/hiking around lots of large pine deadfall.
Hike Summary
0 - 3.2 miles (5,324' - 7,000'): Anderson Valley Trailhead to saddle on Baldy's north ridge. 3.2 - 4.7 miles (7,000' - 8,175'): Saddle to turn-off from Anderson Valley Trail. 4.7 - 5.8 miles (8,175' - 8,890'): Cross-country to summit.
The first mile is flat, crosses over a few streams via wooden bridges, goes through private land with two gates. At the wilderness boundary, the trail begins to climb up shrubby switchbacks with loose rocks.
Reach the saddle on ridge heading due south to Mount Baldy. The trail is overgrown in a lot of places, but still discernible. Great views of Zion to the east. Anderson Valley Trail then traverses the west side of this ridge with great views of Main Canyon draining from the heights of Pine Valley Mountains. This creek was roaring with waterfalls in April. Aspens appear at 7,500 feet as the trail climbs past two water troughs and then up to the turn-off of Anderson Valley Trail. Next time we hike this we would turn left to leave the trail right after what I call "the obelisk," a solitary rock pinnacle (see photo below) next to the trail to begin the cross-country navigation southeast toward Mount Baldy. The AllTrails track for this hike goes further on Anderson Valley Trail and ends up unnecessarily mounting a steep and rocky ridge which you have to climb down anyway, so it's wasted effort. This turn-off is ~ 4.7 miles in from the trailhead. As with many other times climbing an off-trail peak, you find a more efficient track to and from the summit on the descent. Now it's a steep climb (700 feet in one mile) through brush and over deadfall to the summit. We made our way over a ridge just to the north of Baldy, then back down and up again to a saddle just north of Baldy. From there, climb south to Baldy's summit. I couldn't find a register or survey marker on the summit, but the views of the sheer orange cliffs of Zion's Kolob Canyons to the east was a contrast to this green and gray mountain. Signal Peak, the highest in the Pine Valley Mountains loomed over us to the southwest. There's a lot of Mount Baldys in the U.S. and now we can say we've climbed our local one! This northern end of the Pine Valley Mountains with its trails and peaks deserves more exploring.
Trailhead to saddle/ridge (0 - 3.2 miles)
Saddle to turn-off of Anderson Valley Trail (3.2 - ~4.7 miles)
Cross-Country to Summit (~4.7 - 5.8 miles)
Looking at the west rim of Zion National Park. The last peak on the right with the small "bump" is Mount Kinesava.
Looking south toward Hurricane, Utah with the Pine Valley Mountains on right horizon.
Hiking back: Kolob Canyon in Zion to the east.
For the Geocurious: Geology of the Pine Valley Laccolith
Geology:
The Land of the Laccolith
The "unique geology" appears once you've completed the first set of switchbacks to arrive at a saddle on Mount Baldy's northern ridge. The rest of the hike to the summit is on perhaps the largest laccolith in the world. The rock is a common igneous intrusive; it's the geomorphology (geo = earth, morphology = form/structure) and the size of this laccolith that make it unique. Twenty million years ago, magma from a heat source deep within Earth's crust rose up through cracks in the rock until it found a layer with less resistance, causing it to spread horizontally and create a "lake" of molten magma (lakkos = pond or lake, lith = stone). The molten rock formed a dome underneath the more resistant rock layer above it which prevented the magma from escaping. The magma cools and forms a laccolith. Over the millions of years afterward, the overlying rock eroded, exposing the Pine Valley Laccolith. The heat sources still underlie this area as evidenced by the basaltic lava flows and cones in the area that are less than two million years old. 
Cross-section of the rock units underlying the Pine Valley Mountain Laccolith.
Bottom orange unit = Cambrian (500 Ma). Blue units = Permian (280 Ma). Jn unit = Navajo Sandstone - famous cliffs found throughout southern Utah - the main rock of Zion NP (190 Ma.) Geologic Map of the St. George area 
Our GPS tracks from New Harmony Trailhead (north and top of map) to Mount Baldy (south).
Our GPS tracks from the saddle/ridge heading south toward Mount Baldy, and overall elevation profile (Caltopo maps). North at top of map.
References
Biek, R.F., et al. 2010. Geologic Map of the St. George and East Part of the Clover Mountains 30' x 60' Quadrangles, Washington and Iron Counties, Utah. Map 242DM, Utah Geological Survey. Miller, R. 2/25/2018. Our Geological Wonderland: The Pine Valley Mountain Laccolith. The Independent. Utah State University Fire History Tracker. https://fht.wildfirerisk.utah.gov/ Washington County Historical Society. New Harmony, Utah.
2 Comments
9/15/2024 03:44:59 pm
Clambering over, under, and around all that charred deadfall sounds pretty awful. Glad you persevered, as you always do. 9/15/2024 07:12:49 pm
It certainly tests ones patience but fortunately it wasn't as bad as other hikes we've done and the distance was not too long. The semi-maintained trail on the way up before we had to get off of it helped. I don't know - stubborn perseverance will have a harder job of getting me up to some of these summits as I get older! Leave a Reply. |
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Sue and Fred
About this blogExploration documentaries – "explorumentaries" list trip stats and highlights of each hike or bike ride, often with some interesting history or geology. Years ago, I wrote these for friends and family to let them know what my husband, Fred and I were up to on weekends, and also to showcase the incredible land of the west.
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