Preparation in the Snow

Sorry this update is a couple of days late. I tried to sneak in and delete the part that said we would post again on Monday, but apparently there are a couple of people who are a little quicker than I am on the comments. In our defense, Monday didn't quite turn out as we planned.

So we have a goal for this summer. I've lived in Utah for uqwenv years (that means I'm not in the mood to figure it out), and I've never hiked to the top of Timp. Michelle has been here for a few years herself and hasn't ever made the trek either. On July 19th, 2008 we will be making the 14-16ish mile round trip up to the top of Mount Timpanogos (you are all invited in case you want to add it to your list of accomplishments as well). We don't want to just wake up one morning and say, "You know what, I'm in the mood for a long hike. Sure, I haven't been hiking in over a year, but I'm sure I'll be alright," so we've planned several smaller hikes around the beautiful Utah mountains to help us prepare (you are all invited on those ones too, if you're interested, let us know and we'd be glad to let you know when we're going).

Our first hike of the season was planned for Memorial Day, which, a week before the hike looked like it would be beautiful, but eventually became a day for scattered showers. Not to be discouraged, we decided we could handle a few wimpy scattered (which I interpreted as scared) showers. We invited Charisse and Kory, and were extremely pumped up for our hike to a beautiful lake up Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Memorial day arrived, and we discovered that our wimpy scattered showers were actually all combined into a steady downpour (Why would you lie to me, Mark Eubank? Why do you love it when it's more than 10 degrees colder than average, Dan Pope? Our relationship is now permanently damaged and streaked with distrust and pain!). Anyway, we called Charisse and put the whole hike on hold until the weather cleared up.

11:00 AM rolled around, and our "scared" showers were still courageously and constantly beating our hopes and dreams into the saturated turf. We called Charisse back and cancelled the whole hike, planning to meet up for dinner and some games, and sat defeated on the couch wondering what in the world we could do with ourselves. We had our hopes so set on a refreshing hike in the verdant mountains that everything else seemed stuffy and second rate.

Fast forward an hour and a half to 12:30: it stopped raining! The decision was made that we would rush to the mountains and hike as far as we could while the showers had finally scattered. The weather was perfect for hiking in pants and long sleeves, and even though our camera battery was mostly dead, we were able to trick it into taking a few pictures of our hike. For some reason it refused to take a picture of the coolest looking spot we found with a nice little (very little) waterfall in the background, but here are some pictures.

We never made it to Lake Blanche. As we hiked higher and higher, we started facing some weaker rains. It was OK, because it was actually quite refreshing. A little higher we found small patches of snow on the trail, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle, so we kept going. It was actually fun to try to figure out which one was actually the trail, and which one was just the water runoff path (sometimes they were combined).

We got quite a way up the mountain, and the solitary feeling began to press on us. Maybe we’re a couple of major wimps, but we both (independently, we hadn’t mentioned anything to each other) started thinking about bears and mountain lions. I was going over scenarios in my mind about whether it was possible to kill a bear with my bare hands or not (what else could I do, offer it a granola bar and a drink from my water backpack?). We eventually talked a little about it and decided to try just a bit further to see what we could see (like the bear in the song).

It wasn’t too much farther when we came to a point in the trail where snow dominated it. It was instantaneous: no snow, no snow… BAM! 6 inches of snow. About that time, the sprinkling rain was starting to come down as snow as well. Mentally deciding that my chances of killing a bear with my hands would be severely limited if my hands were numb, and blaming the snow and the fact that we had a date with Charisse and Kory to get back to, we decided to turn around. This picture is not too far before we turned around. If you look closely between the two middle pine trees you can see a waterfall.

Well, the bears must have realized they had no chance, because we made it down safe and sound in time for the real adventure to start. For those of you who don’t use it very often, I-215 has some major drainage issues. The rain was coming down as hard as I’ve ever seen it, and there were a couple of harried moments when I thought Elphaba (the name of my car) was going to hydroplane.

Somehow we made it through the ordeal and were able to go to Charisse and Kory’s apartment for pizza and games. It was a great time! Just as Kory planned, everyone got a chance to win at Uno, and I had my first bout of good luck playing Yahtzee and pulled out a victory. It’s just fun to be with family that you love and also that are your great friends. We should definitely hang out more (that applies to all of you as well as Charisse and Kory). It’s been far too long since we hung out. Hopefully everyone can go to Meg’s party. I say we also have a barbecue at Andy’s and see if his midnight madness really was worth it. Not to volunteer you, Andy, I’m just throwing it out there.