Hiking up Mt. Timp

Karl and Angela convinced us to climb up Mt. Timpanogos today. I don't know how we got talked into this, but since we didn't have set plans for Labor Day, we decided we would hike a little ways up the mountain with them. Our original goal was to only go as far as the waterfalls, which was about 2 miles up. Only a four mile hike. Not too bad. Things didn't work that way.

Instead, we went almost to the top.

We started the day early. Karl had us up at 5:30 and we met them at Wal-Mart in Pleasant Grove at 6:30. We carpooled up to the park, on the east side of the mountain and had a difficult time finding parking. Everyone was forced onto a dirt road and parallel parked along the side. Then we hiked back down to the trail and started up for the top. Along the way, I tried doing some artwork. There were wonderful waterfalls which became larger as the day went on and the snows at the top of the mountain continued to melt. Normally at this time of the year, there isn't any snow up at the top, but Utah Valley had more than usual snow, especially late in the season. But we didn't get to the snow until much later on the hike.

Once we finally got to the snow, several hours later, Rebecca and I were starting to feel the effects of lack of oxygen (we're still not used to this high altitude) and the wear on our legs. One of the snow falls was tricky to get across and we slipped most of the way back to the trail. I stopped and put up a prayer flag, one of the conceptual ideas I've been playing around with. Read more about them here. If you want to know more about my idea, it's something I'm still working on, you could email me. Or whatever.

One of the nicer sites we got to was a difficult crossing where a large snow drift had collapsed over a waterfall, but it was the only place we could cross. We took some pictures of that, and I even climbed underneath the ice. I hope when it collapsed, no one was on or underneath it. By that time in the day, the sun had come out and our legs were shaking from all the hiking. I could barely stand up, but we kept going. Rebecca, at this point, decided she wanted to go all the way to the top. But when we stopped for lunch in the top basin, saw how far away the peak still was and felt how exhausted we were, we decided to split ways with Karl and Angela and start heading down.

That top basin had a good deal of wind, so I built some more temporary prayer flags, just to see how the things would look. With these prayer flags, I'm trying to make a connection between the religious people of the Himalayan mountains and the mountains here in Utah. White prayer flags are for luck and prosperity, but those mean different things in the Himalayas compared to here.

After struggling with that for a while, we started back down the mountain. It's a good thing too, because we were tired. We stopped to cool down at a nice waterfall, but the water was ice cold so we couldn't stay in it for too long. But our feet appreciated the rest. I built some land art with Rebecca's help, but some of the pieces were a bit dangerous to do. It might not seem that way in the picture, but when I built the staircase, I was carefully balanced on a slide of small rocks. Before we reached the bottom, Karl and Angela caught up with us and passed us, heading for the car. So we stopped doing land art and tried to catch up with them. Then we were sore all night and all morning. The END.