Hike Destination Peak Zion National Park, UT

May 06, 2023 — Destination Peak serves as a nice introduction to the Zion backcountry. It's still quite an undertaking for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time route-finding through this kind of terrain. The whole hike is off-trail and requires lots of Class 2/3 scrambling and a short section of Class 4. I did Destination Peak for my first time in 2015, when I instantly in love with Zion's backcountry. Today I revisited with my friend Yoshi who has an equal love for Zion, though that's debatable ;)

We set out to the south within Gifford Canyon. To access it, a social trail leads into the Pine Creek drainage, then a slab leads up to another social trail that wraps into Gifford Canyon. The going is straightforward for a mile or so once within the canyon, some light Class 2 and sandy walking accompanied by the ever-changing detritus caused by flash floods. The west side of the canyon starts off by being unclimbable, but slowly the cliffs give way to more mellow slickrock terrain. The goal is to ascend the slickrock to a pretty bowl above, but there's some tricky route-finding. The bowl is obvious and massive once it's in view. Leaving Gifford Canyon in order to reach the bowl has always been an inconsistent endeavor for me, but after doing this approach for the millionth time, I finally think I managed to find the most efficient option.

After starting out of Gifford Canyon for the first few hundred feet on Class 2/3 pleasant slickrock, we found the lightly cairned route. I recommend ascending to the headwall far above, where a social trail leads south along the cliff face. The social trail then wraps up through a weakness in the cliffs and then around into the bowl I mentioned before. The trail becomes difficult to locate here since there's a combination of slickrock and deviating route options. Once within the slickrock bowl, we kept to the right on slabs and ascended Class 2/3 slickrock to the sandy ridge above. This sandy ridge is the same landmark used for accessing peaks like Bridge Mountain, Roof Peak, etc. From here we could clearly see Destination Peak ahead on the right.

We dropped west from the sandy ridge in order to reach the base of Destination Peak, where we immediately had to deal with Class 3 obstacles and some inconvenient work-arounds to avoid short cliffs. The most efficient option in this section still eludes me to this day, and I haven't found a consistently excellent route down. That being said, there are many options for these few hundred feet of descent, so choose your own adventure while being careful not to descend too far left where there's a major cliff.

The cliffy terrain evens out into a sandy and flat section, but rather than continue deeper into the drainage where cliffs will block progress, wrap to the north toward the base of Destination Peak. A headwall that looks unclimbable gives way via a set of switchbacks on its ledges (Class 3). The route to Bridge Mountain heads left and down a major ramp here, but Destination Peak goes to the right. The slickrock ramp has plenty of loose sandstone blocks, but doesn't exceed Class 2/3. At the top of the slab, we were now at the base of a major gully on the south side of Destination Peak. It's clear where to go here, a narrowing gully with brush within. Class 2 on boulders leads to the crux move. A short, dirty Class 3 scramble on boulders took us to a small ledge, where we located a Class 4 crack on the left. Featuerd holds on either side of the crack made this a reasonable set of moves.

Above the crux, a social trail led to the ridge crest, where we got excellent views to the west. We continued along the ridge crest when we could, wrapping around little outcroppings when they popped in. A final set of Class 3 moves brought us up a headwall, wrapping around a wide ledge, and then we were on the summit.