Trip report
Oct 5, 2020 — Also known as "Cedar Mountain Highpoint", Cedar Benchmark is a pleasant grassy peak in Utah's West Desert. Google will fail to navigate to the trailhead coordinates listed using the most direct route, so instead set your coordinates to 40.7326081,-112.9617379 (Cedar Mountain Road) and follow it south to this turn-off: 40.55759, -113.00264. From these coordinates, follow the road that doesn't appear on Google Maps east (as of October 2020) to the coordinates I set for the "Directions to Trailhead" button above. 2WD can make it to the turn-off, and can also likely continue for another mile. Mid-clearance will get you to the wilderness boundary, where I left my car. There seems to be tire tracks past the wilderness sign, but the road gets bad and also it's wilderness, so just don't go farther than the "Directions to Trailhead" button brings you to.
From the parking spot, I continued along the road and through a short, pretty canyon. It opened up into wide and grassy slopes, the summit of Cedar Benchmark unclear from here. I left the road when it turned north and ascended what I thought was the least steep-looking slope. It's hard to go too wrong when choosing a spot to ascend on the right since all options lead to a prominent ridge above. Once on this ridge, it's easy to follow all the way to the summit ridgeline. There were sections along the ridge that seemed well-traveled by animals, but really the slope swapped between mellow strolling through grasss and steep slope hiking. Route-finding was a no-brainer. Once I neared the top of this prominent ridge, a social trail led to the right, side-hilling on a slope up to a minor saddle on the summit ridge. I continued south to the summit of Cedar Benchmark.