Timp: a spur of the moment adventure

Sometimes, things done on the spur of the moment can be the best kind of adventures.

On Saturday we (Landon, Bryce, my cousin Jake, and I) hiked up Mount Timpanogos, which is the second highest mountain in the Wasatch Range, down by Provo. It's one that I wanted to climb before the snows came. I don't think we even really decided to do the hike until Thursday, maybe even Friday morning. I had to be convinced, and then I had to make sure the weather was good because I had heard that Timp was quite the climb.

We headed down to Orem on Friday night to stay at my cousins Melissa and Jake's apartment for the night. It was then that I convinced the boys that we should start hiking up the mountain at midnight or so. Honestly, this could have been in part because a cute boy and his party of friends just coincidently were planning on hiking up then. ;-) But, I also really don't like hiking in the heat, especially if the hike is going to be strenuous. I just get hot way too easily.

We were able to get a few hours of napping in, well the boys did anyways but I don't really nap, before we headed out from Orem a little past midnight. We left the trailhead at about 1:30 in the morning. Totally crazy. I know. But, look how chipper we are. haha. :)

We decided to take the Timpooneke Trail up, which is on the back side of the mountain. This is the trail that my friend said that he was planning on heading up, but apparently they changed their plans and didn't tell me. The turd. lol. The trail actually started out fairly easy. It was nice grade up, on a nice trail. I'm glad that my cousin Jake came along on the hike with us, however, because in the dark there was one particular turn off that I think we would have been lost on.

This part of the hike was really interesting -- because of the dark. It was insane just how many other people were hiking up in the middle of the night. Pretty much everyone had headlights on, and there was this string of little glowing lights all over the mountain. We could see where the trail above us was because of all the other people on the switchbacks. It was like someone had laid out a string of white Christmas lights to mark our path. I wish that I had taken a picture of it, but I don't think it would have turned out.

I also discovered that I really liked hiking at night. I couldn't see how high the mountain was, so I couldn't psych myself out about the distance left to go. Plus, it was nice and cool. I was still hot, hiking in just my t-shirt. Bryce on the other hand was freezing. I guess it was probably 40 degrees or so.

I had to keep reminding the boys to slow down and go my pace. If I go too fast, I wear myself out. But, if I go slightly slower, I can keep going at a fairly steady pace. I know that they just wanted to move faster, but they knew what they were getting into by bringing me. ;-)

About half way up, the trail started to leave the trees, and we started up a rocky slope towards the ridge. I was never really sure where the actual trail was here. There were lights and little paths everywhere. So, we just headed up whatever course was closest and looked like it headed in the right direction. It was quite the scramble in some places, though. We also managed to lose Bryce once. But, that's his own fault for leaving us for a "rest" and then not coming back directly to where we were. He left us standing around getting cold waiting for him.

We made it to the saddle at a little before six in the morning. Check out how cool "Happy" valley looks in the dark from up high.

The last little section of the trek to the top was pretty fun really. There were a lot of switchbacks and a lot of big rocks to scramble around. I think there were also some steep drops along the trail, but being in the dark, I hardly noticed. We did have to speed our pace up a little so that we could reach the top by sunrise.

And, let me tell you what, that was totally worth it. The sun came up around 7:00, and we were there at the top to watch it crest over the mountains.

We sat at the top and ate some breakfast, along with the herd of other people that were up there. My friend and his group had even packed up a stove, pancake mix, eggs, bacon, and hot chocolate. I guess it was somebody's birthday. Then we started the trek back down.

This was the ridge line looking down from the top. To the right of the saddle you can make out some of the paths that lead back down.

It was almost a completely different trip going down. Since it was dark going up, we hadn't seen much of the scenery. We saw little waterfalls, lots of pretty alpine flowers, and even some moose.

A couple hours into the descent and I was already baking in the sun. I was so glad that we had went up in the cool hours before dawn.

We reached the trailhead at the bottom around 11:30 -- ten hours and what we figured was fifteen miles after we started.

We had some lunch with Jake and Melissa and then headed back to Logan for Michelle's birthday party. I think that I went over 40 hours straight without sleep that weekend. But, all in all, I think that it was a worthwhile adventure, and it's one more mountain checked off my list. :)