Anyway, our labor day was nuts! So sunday night, we were at a Floyd cousin get together (Caleb's relatives). We drove with Ben (Caleb's brother) and Erica (Caleb's cousin). Later that night we found out Ben and Erica were planning to hike Mt. Timpanogas for their labor day festivities. Coincidentally, Caleb and I were planning on doing the same thing. We originally were planning a sunrise hike, but since we had our cousin reunion party, we thought it would be smarter to get a full night's rest before the big hike.
We're smart people, but not smart enough to resist spontaneity.
After the cousin party, we go back to Ben's place to look up directions and confirm the time of when to meet together. After getting all excited about this amazing hike, we decided out of spontaneity to meet back at Ben's place in an hour. It was 11pm. And so it was decided, we were going to do our sunrise hike.
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| at the trailhead before we begin L to R: Scott, me, Caleb, Erica, Ben |
I won't go into to much detail, but for the first hour and a half, we decided to do a 7 mile warm-up. Meaning we got lost. When we realized we had gotten on the wrong trail, we were 3.5 miles in and had to back track. We jogged back. I was just grateful that physically I was able to somewhat keep up. After our nice little warm-up, now we were ready for the real hike. And it was awesome. (this is Caleb putting in my two cents: it was awesome, but for some stretches of trail awesome needs to be interpreted very liberally. Kind of like when we told some hikers we past on our way down who still have about 4 hours left to hike they were close, as long as you interpret 'close' liberally enough. It was awesome in an every step feels like it should sprain an ankle because there is no way to get level footing on loose 5 inch mini-boulders/mega-gravel kind of way. Awesome in the my back is sweating and my hands are freezing and my heart is pounding and I can't even see where I'm stepping because we don't have enough flashlights kind of way. Awesome in the one false move and my wife is a widow sort of way. Of course, it was also awesome in the hiking behind the most beautiful girl in the world (great view)-surrounded by stunning scenery (almost as good of a view)-together with family-accomplishing what most wimps only dream about-pushing my body hard-makes nuts and dried fruit taste like steak dinner on a cruise-sleep like a rock for 14 hours when you're done kind of way. Sorry, I just thought 'awesome' could use a little enumeration. Like, great overall interspersed with bits of elation and agonizing. Now back to Jessica)
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| the sun hadn't risen yet |
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| Scott and I both take a little nap right after seeing the sunrise (it was only like ten minutes) |
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| mountain goats? We saw these on the way back down. |
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| More napping. Waiting for Ben and Erica to come down. |
Not only were we exhausted, but also super hungry. Scott, Caleb, and I went out for all you can eat sushi at Wild Ginger on University Avenue. I don't think the amount of sushi we ate even made up for all the calories we burned, but we sure stuffed ourselves. It was super good.
We hiked the Aspen Grove trail which was a total of 13.8 miles (almost a mile elevation gain), plus our lovely 7 mile warm-up, gives us a grand total of 20.8 miles. Good job guys. Now I'm going to take a nap and hopefully my body will be nice to me after I wake up. Hope you all enjoyed reading about this adventure. It was fun, but I don't think we'll be doing it again any time soon. We're not as young as we used to be :)
3 comments:
we're so hard core :)
Very entertaining to read! I did hear there was a little ambush at one point that got a stellar reaction. Did you forget to put that in? :)
Stellar? I had forgotten about it, not suppressed it. It was clever and fun, but not scarring :)
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