The R Team!: Timpanogos Summit

For a couple of months, I had a little craving to go hiking. On a Wednesday, I had this really stupid idea to hike Mount Timpanogos. I told my idea to Nils, and he was all in. We decided to do the hike 2 days later on a Friday night/Saturday morning. Nils has hiked it many times with friends. I've hiked it once before, with Nils, when we were 19 years old. I remember a few things: It was incredibly beautiful, it was incredibly long on the way down, and my toes hurt really bad on the way down. I also remember not being able to walk down stairs the next day. That's it- I was obviously a different person back then; nicer, more patient, someone who liked nature, and clearly very, very forgetful.

I fancy myself somewhat fit, so I thought this would be challenging, but not totally killer. I'm an idiot.

We invited the kids to come along, and Ava was the only one who wanted to. We were kind of worried about her, and let her know it was going to be really, really long and really hard, but she wanted to do it.

Nils likes to do this hike in the middle of the night, so that the heat isn't an issue, crowds aren't an issue, and he's home by the early afternoon. We started hiking at 1:00 in the morning. We went up the Aspen Grove side, which is steeper but about a mile shorter than the Timpooneke trail. It is indeed steep, and kind of gnarly. You have to cross several waterfalls (which is not very enchanting in the middle of the night), scramble up rocks, there are cliffs off the side of the trail, etc. Anyway, the point I feel I need to make is that this hike is a beast. Once we reached the basin before the saddle after roughly 4.5 hours of hiking, we had to cross a snow field that was about a mile long. This broke my spirit. It was so hard. It was icy, slippery, steep, and after not getting any sleep for 24 hours, because I never went to bed, I was cooked. I was cursing the hike and calling it names, but I only said one swear word, in spite of thinking all of them constantly.

We reached the saddle, which you may think is close to the summit. No no, you still have what feels like 20 more miles of rocks to scramble up (it's actually a mile to 2 miles. Let's call it 1.5 miles. I don't know. It's eternal). I can't believe more people don't die on this hike. It is treacherous! Cliffs everywhere! Why don't I remember this from when I was 19?? Why did we take our 10 year old? Why don't people on the internet talk about how hard and potentially dangerous this hike is? I have so many questions born out of my trauma.

Anyway, I didn't want to continue to the summit, because I had views for days and I was fully angry at the internet for making this hike seem like a walk in the park. Ava was crying, probably because she was feeling like I was, and we discovered she would start crying whenever she had to pee. Nils put her on his back to go up to the summit, but then I was scared they were both going to die, so I followed. We reached the summit, where there were tons of people taking selfies and being happy. Ava was still in tears, because she still had to pee. (She drank a lot of Gatorade.) We had about 15 seconds of not being surrounded by people, so she just had to pee off the summit, and then she was much happier. #nature

The thing about reaching the summit, is that you have to turn around and do it again in order to get home. We decided to go down Timpooneke, and avoid that snow field. Not sure if that was a good idea or not. It is definitely not as steep, but it is so, so long. Soooooo looooong. I don't have words to convey how long it is. We kept passing people on their way up who were really perky and full of energy, and we looked like POW's.

We finally, finally, finally reached the trail head, after what was an eternity. Sweet, sweet, gravel parking lot. Nils hitched a ride to the Aspen Grove trailhead to get the truck, and Ava and I laid in what shade we could find on the ground and let our legs cramp up. It was bliss. Once Nils made it back to us, we drove to McDonald's and ordered Coke, ice cream, salty fries, and whatever the heck else we wanted. Trauma, I'm telling you.

Pros of going up at night: No crowds, no heat. Cons: You don't get to enjoy the scenery, and if you're like me and don't do well on no sleep, you will hate everything. It's a shame that on the way down, when it's daylight, you just want it to end. Thus, the incredible vistas are of no use to you. If you do well on no sleep, then this is all probably not applicable. Or, you could just hike it during the day and deal with the heat. I don't know what's worse.

Anway, we did it. We were super proud of Ava. Even though she had some emotional moments, brought on by pee, she did so great. Nils had her on his back for about 1 minute of the entire hike. She did it all. She kicked butt. On the way down, when we were feeling hopeless due to chafing, exhaustion, running out of liquid, and just not knowing when the trail would end (having not gone up that way), I would pray out loud, "Give us strength!", and we just kept shufflin'.

Our entire way up, we were tailed by a funny married couple, who we like to call "Mary and Babe". They were really friendly. The husband kept saying, "Mary, I'm so proud of you. You're doing great, Mary! Mary! Look at how good we're doing!" Mary would say, "Babe! This is crazy! Babe! Look at that! Babe, I'm feeling tired. Babe!" Mary and Babe definitely made the way up more interesting. 😂

Too many steps for one day