Thunder on Mount Peale, the Colorado Plateau’s highest point

I heard one thunderclap on Mount Peale’s final ridge, then another, then a third close enough to end any discussion about lingering. I ran the last metres to the summit and started back down only seconds later. That extremely brief visit happened on the highest point of the Colorado Plateau: a green alpine Ultra rising above a region better known for desert arches, canyons and bare rock.

I came from the Green River petrol-station car park on the US trip, where I had spent the night after an unsuccessful attempt on Mount Ellen and a much better visit to Capitol Reef National Park. On paper Peale looked like a relatively short outing. That part was true. The weather eventually made the rest less relaxed.

A longer drive than planned

The drive into the La Sal Mountains was mostly straightforward, although one or two stream crossings needed more attention. One deeper crossing was muddy enough to have the useful side effect of washing some dirt off the wheels. I also managed to drive farther along small forest tracks than I expected, until a steep, rooty section finally persuaded me to reverse. The result was only about ten extra minutes on foot. There are worse penalties on a hiking day.

The green La Sal Mountains look almost misplaced above the desert country around Moab. Their geology is equally distinctive: magma intruded beneath sedimentary rocks and pushed the overlying layers upward, with erosion later exposing the harder igneous cores. The Mount Peale Research Natural Area, established in 1988, protects representative alpine and subalpine habitat around these peaks. One of the range's botanical specialties is the La Sal daisy (Erigeron mancus), a species endemic to timberline and alpine habitats of the La Sal Mountains.

At the start I met a camper with an angry dog near the road map, as well as a couple already walking down. Once moving, the trail was pleasant and gradual through the forest, never particularly steep.

Scree, a ravine and a bad shortcut

Above the forest the character changed. The trail reached the open slopes and continued beside a stream through loose scree. In places it was quite steep, with sliding gravel that made balance harder than the gradient alone suggested.

A few times I lost the trail and tried to go more directly uphill. That was a mistake. The loose slope was slower and less comfortable, and I soon worked my way back into the bottom of the ravine, where the "kind of" trail continued towards the saddle.

By then I had started watching the sky. Small but reasonably dark clouds were building near the mountain. They became thicker, although for a while they stayed to the left of the summit. I heard a few distant rumbles of thunder, but they still seemed far enough away.

A very short summit visit

That changed on the final ridge. As I approached the summit, I heard one thunderclap, then another, then a third. The last one sounded close enough to end any discussion about whether this was a place to linger.

I ran the final metres to the summit and, only seconds later, started running back down even faster. It was an efficient summit visit, if not a particularly enjoyable one.

Before I reached the forest I turned around to see what was happening behind me. The sky above Mount Peale had become completely dark, and the thunder continued repeatedly. Once I was back near the tree line I felt somewhat better, although not exactly relaxed. Given how quickly the weather deteriorated, leaving the exposed summit ridge immediately was clearly the right decision for me.

The route itself had not been especially difficult apart from the steep scree section. In different weather I think it would have been a very pleasant hike. Instead, it became one of those outings where timing mattered much more than technical difficulty.

Still seeing Mount Peale

I still had enough afternoon left to drive to Arches National Park. The contrast was absurdly neat: Arches was in full sunshine and very hot, while Mount Peale was still sitting under dark cloud. In some of my photographs from the park, the storm clouds are visibly concentrated above the La Sal massif.

Eventually I continued towards Parachute, Colorado, with Pikes Peak as the next major objective.

Later, as I drove away from Arches, the mountain appeared again, and I saw it once more from the north. By the time I finally drove east, I had spent hours orbiting the Colorado Plateau's highest point: approaching from the south-east, climbing it, seeing it under storm from Arches, then catching the same massif again from the surrounding country. For a summit visit measured in seconds, Mount Peale occupied an impressive amount of the day.