Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

December 30, 2019

170m

Bellingham, WA

King Mountain is probably the worst summit of all time that I’ve bagged to this date. This is a complete dumpster-dive with literally nothing worthwhile. The summit is occupied by a large communication tower structure and dense vegetation with absolutely no view and on top of that, this summit also suffers from the “private property” issues. A paved road goes all the way to near the summit on the south/east side but the upper end had multiple signs of “no parking”.

King Mountain is the last summit that Masayo and I bagged in 2019. Earlier in the day we had ascended Mt. Josephine in rain, and then dumpster-dived Toad Mountain and Squalicum Mountain in the vicinity of Bellingham. I let the Google Map app to direct us to as close to the summit as possible and unlike on Squalicum Mtn., the paved road on King Mountain was not gated that we were able to drive to the end. However, we had concerns about parking at the road’s end due to the aforementioned “no parking” signs. However, there appeared to have a dirt road that ran towards the highest point inside a large communication facility and there’s no gate. We did not have a clue if the “no stopping” and “no parking” sign also applied to that dirt road but I estimated that to tag the summit and back would cost no more than 2 minutes. I’m by all means not the “obeying the rules” type of person so I simply just drove to the highest point. We got out of the truck and took a couple obligatory photos and immediately drove down the hillside.