Climbing Closer to the Summit

You may recall that last weekend I hiked up Timpooneke Trail. This trail takes adventurous hikers to the 11,700 foot summit of Mt. Timpanogos. On last week’s hike I made it about one third of the way up at 2.6 miles for a total of 5.2 miles.

Today, Ann and I climbed up more than half way to 4.1 miles. We had a 2,100 foot elevation increase on this wonderfully beautiful journey on a day with perfect hiking weather. Another key milestone for today was the fact that we reached 9,300 feet of altitude on the hike. That is the highest I have ever been hiking.

Since we were only about 3 miles from the summit, we talked about going all the way today but we were dissuaded after talking with a few climbers on their way back down. They let us know there were still several areas on the east side that were snow covered and challenging. I don’t think we were going to do it anyway, but that certainly shut down the consideration.

The views were everywhere today. Ann said at one point today, “Every time we turn a corner, we are in totally different terrain.” It was true. There is a good mix of terrain on the hike. There are tree covered areas for the first 2 miles-ish, where parts remind you of the Land of Endor. There are wide open plateaus surrounded by high mountain sides. There are rocky sections on the side of the mountain from rocks sliding down over time. There are snowy areas, wet areas, and waterfalls all along the way. The photos below show a few of the differences.

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And here are a few videos that give you a sense of the terrain, sites, and trail.

One of the fun parts for Ann and I is seeing all of the wildflowers. Our hiking pace was slow today due to the excessive amount of time we spent photographing wildflowers and other scenery. It’s super fun seeing her get excited by the visual components of the hike.

Below are but a few of the pix of the flowers along the trail.

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One of the reasons I am going on this trail several times before I make the actual attempt to get to the summit is that I want to be familiar with the early parts of the trail. That way, on the day of the actual climb, I will not be as distracted by wanting to take so many pictures. I will be able to focus on the climb and successfully and safely making it up and down.

So again today, we took time to shoot the many beautiful things. Below are a few of our faves.

We had a great hike. We took 6 hours and 25 minutes to complete it. However our moving time was right at 5 hours. So that means we spent about and hour and 25 minutes stopping to take pix. We like to have fun when we hike and we are both visual people. It is almost like an addiction where we simply cannot help but stop and take pix.

I am ending this with some photos of Ann and I.