Hike Johnson Mountain, Middle Johnson, Mount Allgood Zion National Park, UT

Nov 27, 2021 — Johnson Mountain is the first major peak you can see on the east side of Springdale, Utah. It's overlooked due to its proximity to The Watchman, but the route-finding and views are excellent. The peak sits at the southern end of a short ridgeline, and does not seem to be accessible from any other direction due to the sheer cliffs around its base. Our route today would summit Johnson Mountain, as well as two minor peaks to its north, Middle Johnson, and North Johnson (aka Mount Allgood). The route begins outside of Zion National Park and enters the boundary shortly after leaving town. Although Springdale is cute, it's a greedy mofo. Parking in town is expensive,  and the only way to avoid the parking fee is to park at the Zion Visitor Center within the park and take a shuttle out of the park, a time-consuming venture. So, we parked in town at a small lot and headed along a residential road. We passed a "Private Property" sign for a small neighborhood, but I imagine this is moreso for vehicles rather than hikers. We weren't too concerned about it and had no issues.

At the end of the paved road we headed to the left and up an old roadbed that started ascending toward the peaks, generally headed east. Our first objective was to reach a weakness in the cliff band above, just south of Mount Allgood. This is the same weakness used to access The Watchman, which I'd done years ago. The weakness doesn't look like much from down here, but it would ultimately go quite well. Another potential issue would be a smaller cliff band much farther down that appeared to have only one weakness, a break that would be necessary to reach since all other options would result in a cliff. The roadbed ended shortly after we started hiking on it, but a social trail continued up the progressively steepening slope. We were able to stick to one of many social trail options, usually keeping to what seemed to be the most major one. With the exception of the smaller cliff band lower down, you can't go too wrong when ascending the slope, even if you lose the social trail system altogether. Regardless of how you make it to the major cliffs below, it's hard to miss. Surrounded by pinnacles high above and a significant cliff face below, the weakness is the only viable-looking option. It also leads to a notch in the Johnson ridge above, so that low point can serve as a nice point of reference.

Getting over the cliff band requires some Class 3 scrambling on overall nice rock with minimal exposure. The ascent of this section makes an ascending traverse heading north (left). It isn't completely straightforward, but if you're finding a move to be harder than Class 3, keep moving to the left and find an easier option. A couple hundred feet of ascending brought us up to the notch separating Mount Allgood and Middle Johnson. Although we didn't know it at the time, we'd ultimately be getting all three peaks today. We would first drop down on the east side of the notch and end up in the major drainage separating Johnson Mountain from The Watchman. On our way back we ended up finding a way more or less along the ridgeline from Middle Johnson to Mount Allgood, but more on that later.

We had to do some Class 3 route-finding to get down from the notch into the drainage to the east. It's not obvious at all where to go, and we got cliffed-out a few times, requiring us to scurry around looking for other options to descend. Additionally, getting down isn't the only hassle. If you descend too far to the south you'll be cliffed out by the watercourse of the drainage, which is surrounded by cliffs. So there's sort of a sweet spot that lands you at the head of the drainage. Once within, the short hike down the drainage is mostly just a sandy wash with occassional brush, and there is one Class 3+/4 stemming move to get through a chimney with a short slot.

The trickier section yet is to get out of the drainage and start ascending to Johnson Mountain. Luke and I sort of messed this section up a bit, resulting in a few more difficult moves, but there's likely an easier way out of the drainage and up to the base of Johnson Mountain. It will be tempting to just start ascending the peak's northeastern ridge/slope system, but I can tell you it's not anything less than Class 5. I've removed all GPS jitter from my attached map, but we spent a long time trying multiple gullies and other potential routes to ascend Johnson Mountain via its northeastern/eastern face, with no luck. Instead we wrapped south down to its southeast side. Along the way we encountered some Class 3 moves, but it was mostly just a nice Class 2 traverse around the base of the peak. After a bunch more trial and error, we located a Class 2/3 slope past all the more serious-looking cliffs that entered a Class 3 weakness on solid slickrock and ascended a couple hundred feet. Finally, some progress! At the top of this weakness was a short Class 4 move up a crack to get to flat ground above.

Now headed north, we wrapped around the east face of Johnson Mountain, except now we were above the cliffs we traversed below earlier. Of course there were more severe cliffs on our left, but this created a wide ledge to walk along. The route continued quite nicely, traversing along the ledge with some Class 2/3 mixed in. Thrilled the ledge seemed to continue, we soon made it to a section of Class 3/4 on sloped sandstone, minor ledges and some brush helping to keep it not too scary. At the top of this feature was a Class 3 move with the only real exposure of the day. This brought us to another level where a ledge continued north, passing some eroded caves. Past the caves was a bit of easy Class 2/3 route-finding to reach the slopes just below the summit of Johnson Mountain. From here it was a matter of ascending pretty-looking Class 2/3 steps (sort of) to reach the summit.

We still had plenty of time in the day, and decided we'd give Middle Johnson a try. We backtracked, knowing the chances of finding another route down were slim. Once we made it to the lower reaches of the peak, rather than finish descending into the drainage separating Johnson from Watchman, we continued north/northwest, hoping to locate a viable route to the base of Middle Johnson. With some Class 3 and light brush we were able to do so. We noted a wide sloped gully leading up to basically the summit of Middle Johnson, and headed for it. This ended up being hand over foot Class 2/3 scrambling. A Class 3/4 unexposed slope move in a dihedral led to the summit. Johnson Mountain's terrifying-looking north was gorgeous. Springdale below seemed quite tiny.

Mount Allgood also looked great to the north, and we decided we had enough time to attempt a route along the ridge from Middle Johnson to Mount Allgood. We were especially excited about this because we didn't want to drop all the way down into the Johnson/Watchman drainage, and were hoping to find a more efficient and fun way back to the notch separating Middle Johnson and Allgood. The top few hundred feet of Middle Johnson was all cliffs, so we backtracked until we were sure there would be a route that wrapped around the east side of the peak. This led to the ridge crest, which was surprisingly tame. With only a few Class 3 moves, we were able to make it back to the notch, overjoyed. The one tricky spot was toward the end of the ridge where sticking to the crest wasn't possible and we had to drop to the right on a short Class 3+ move and then follow a somewhat exposed, easy ledge. Part of me wants to recommend just using this ridge to access Johnson Mountain rather than drop into the drainage, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Mount Allgood was a quick undertaking, a nice Class 2 ascent leading to the summit block. It's straightforward compared to the rest of the day. A Class 3 move brought us to the high point, where the views were delightful. We returned to the notch and descended the way we came.