Jenkins Mountain (13,432) by Brian Schultz Sunday August 29, 2021

Roundtrip mileage: 6.1 miles from Pieplant townsite
Elevation gain: 3,650'
Start to finish: 7 hours 30 minutes

From the Taylor Reservoir, I drove the Taylor Reservoir road (742) to the Pieplant Mill road (742.3D). This road is signed and a nice view of Jenkins Mountain drew my attention while driving it. Lots of dispersed camping is available along the road and plenty of sites were taken but my destination was at the end of the road at the Pieplant townsite.

The road becomes rougher near the townsite (still 2 wheel drive) and reaches a junction at its terminus. The left fork ends at a gate, which is the trailhead, and it's where I parked for the night. There was only one other vehicle at the townsite. I expected to see more considering it was a weekend.

I began at 6:25 AM and hiked the excellent trail a half mile to a second gate. I turned right on the Timberline trail and departed the trail a half mile later (just before the creek crossing) and began a bushwhack to Jenkins. It didn't take long to get mixed up in the woods. I should have set a waypoint to the basin southeast of Jenkins' summit but followed a bearing to Jenkins itself.

This entailed up and down climbing over drainages and brought me to Jenkins' southwest ridge at a point just above the Pieplant Mine. When I intercepted a road I thought- great, I'll follow the road up. This was fine until it ended before the cliffs below Jenkins with no good options to go straight ahead.

I decided to cut up left to get on top of the ridge. This was extremely steep on grass and talus (photo 1, photo 2) but it worked and once on top of the ridge I followed it towards the summit. The ridge was gnarly and required lots of scrambling to get around obstacles on it.

It was very slow going, but at long last I reached the small saddle southwest of the summit. That left nearly 400' of elevation gain yet to reach the summit but I made it to the top at 11:15.

I'm glad the weather was as nice as it was but I only stayed 15 minutes. No way I was going to return the way I came so I headed down the east ridge and departed it shortly when I saw a straightforward route down into the basin. This is how I should've come up but at least the downclimb would be easy.

I found a game trail that lasted for a while but it didn't matter as I continued down the basin. Lower down I bushwhacked through the woods to intercept the Timberline trail and once back on the trail, it was smooth sailing. I was back at my truck at 1:55.