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Sep 15, 2019 — Fish Lake Hightop is a pleasant hike on a surprisingly well-maintained trail that leads to the summit. There is another route from the west that travels along an ATV road and would cut off a significant amount of work, but we were more excited to get a hike in by using the Pelican Canyon Trail. The route starts on the west side of Fish Lake off an unmarked dirt road. You can drive a bit higher to 38.57057, -111.69502 with higher clearance than I've got, but pretty much any vehicle can make it to where we started.
We set out up the Pelican Canyon Trail, which hugged a stream for the first half of the route. Parts of the trail have steep sections that appear to be the remains of an old forest road, but the majority is singletrack, and pretty. We missed the aspens changing by a couple of weeks, but the forest was still nice. Roughly haflway up the trail opens up into a meadow, where the official trail heads west toward a small pond. Our route to gain Fish Lake Hightop instead follows an unmarked social trail that headed north. It was easy to follow.
Eventually, we made it to the plateau rim and continued cross-country (mostly following cairns) until we were a few hundred feet from the rocky bluff marking the summit. Just before starting up, we ran into an ATV road and an information panel with info about the plateau. We continued up the Class 2 rocky stuff to gain the summit and took in the nice plateau views.
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