Finally! The Wellsvilles

This mountain has been on my list ever since I moved to Logan six years ago. I see it looming over Cache Valley every day, and I just wanted to be on the top of it. I kept telling my friends every summer that we should do the hike, and no one was very receptive to the idea. Once, a few years ago, I even managed to get two of my friends to decide to go on the hike with me. We got in the car and even found the trailhead on a bumpy dirt road thirty minutes from town, and then the driver decided he didn't want to go anymore. So, we turned around. Huh?! Weird.

So, now that the boys are in Logan I can finally bug someone to hike with me. :)

We (Landon, Bryce, my cousin Michelle, Heather, and I) decided to hike up the Wellsvilles on Saturday, starting at eight in the morning, or so. There are several trails up to the highest peak, a couple near Mendon I think and one starting from Sardine Canyon. We decided to start in Sardine, since that road would be easiest on my car. Plus someone had told me it was the easiest/shortest way up. They lied.

The trail starts the first mile or so following a jeep road. Really easy grade. Very deceptive. Then the trail just takes off the main road and into the forest. We actually had some difficulty finding the turn off point. It was so well hidden that we continued up the road for a while and then had to backtrack to find the right trail. It followed up a stream bed, and the trail got very steep very quickly. And, I mean, like really steep.

The steepness of the trail wasn't so bad until the tree cover thinned out. It was late Septmber, early in the morning. Why in the world was it so dang hot?! Hiking in the heat makes me move pretty slow. Luckily, I'm not the only one the sun effects that way. The trail kept meandering up and around the mountain, still just as steep.

It was about here that Bryce caught up with rest of us. He hadn't really been planning on coming, since he'd had a big wipe out on his mountain bike a few days earlier.

We'd already been hiking for a couple hours, and the trail was becoming more and more overgrown. Bryce's wounds were being stabbed, so he stopped to take a nap. Heather stopped, too, since it was getting hotter by the minute.

I was determined to keep on going. I was not going to make it that far just to quit. I could see the ridge above us, where I knew that you could look out over Cache Valley. I had to make it to that ridge. By then, we had completely lost the trail, so we just bushwacked our way up to the top. I had tons of little burrs attached all over my legs.

We didn't quite make it to the top of the peak. But, it was already 12:30 and just getting hotter, so we decided that the ridge line was a good place to stop. We saw the view that we went to see. The peak was another half hour or so along the ridge. We'll just save that for another day.... :)

We made it back to the cars around 2:30, which made for a much longer day than planned. But, I am also convinced that the hike was longer than the trail maps lead me to believe -- just in case you ever want to try that trail. ;-)

I also got the worse sunburn of my life on this hike. Note to self: always, always, always bring sunscreen, even if the weather calls for cloud cover.