Timpanogos (Aspen Grove)

Since the hiking season is rapidly coming to a close for the year (I'm not a big fan of hiking in snowstorms) I decided to get out and tackle Mount Timpanogos again.  I've lost track of how many times I've climbed the mountain. I'm pretty sure it's eight or nine, with two of those times ending at the saddle rather than continuing up to the peak. It's a great hike, though, and always fun to do.

 

There are two main routes to Timpanogos peak: Aspen Grove and Timpooneke.  I've always done Timpooneke, and wanted to do it again. There seem to be too many BYU fans on the Aspen Grove side (and you have to drive past Sundance, which is morally abhorrent to me for whatever reason.)

The timing of this year's hike was a little difficult, though. The Forest Service closed the Timpooneke trailhead parking lot on August 5th.  It was supposed to re-open on September 5th, but they issued another press release that it was going to be another month.  The new date was supposed to be September 28th.  Well, September 28th came and they extended the closure again.

It's already getting to be pretty late in the year to hike Timpanogos comfortably (It was in the 30's at the trailhead this morning).  I wanted to hike the hike, but didn't want to wait until mid-October to do it.  So rather than wait until it might be too late, I decided that Sept 29th was the day to go, and that I'd just have to find some way to survive all the BYU fans.

I woke up at 4:00am after a horrible night's sleep (I like to go to bed really early on nights before big hikes, and that usually means taking some sort of sleep aid.  The problem is that every sleep aid I've tried makes my legs ache all night.)  I headed out by 4:30, swung by McDonald's for some of their breakfast of champions (2 sausage McMuffins from the dollar menu) and headed down to Provo. (A side-note on Provo: in Italian "provo" means "I try".  I really try to like the city, but just can't. Back to the story...)

The parking lot was almost full when I arrived at 5:30.  It was very dark. I had to turn my headlamp on to even know which way to go.  The trail signage was a little confusing at first (maybe because I was operating on so little sleep, and it was dark) but I made it pretty easily onto the trail.

It's an interesting trail.  It's sort of paved for the first mile or so.  When I say "sort of" I mean that there are places that are paved, and places that aren't.  There are also places where the paving has half crumbled so you have to walk on uneven trail.  But, whatever, it's sort of a nice touch.

By the time the sun came up I was 3 miles into the hike, and more than half way up the side of the lower bowl you have to climb up.  It was fortunate that I started the hike in the dark or I may have looked at the rock wall they expect you to climb and just gone back home.

The trail was interesting.  I'm going to compare it with the Timpooneke trail, because that's what I know.  They both appear to be the same length; about 7 miles one-way.  The Timpooneke trail starts about 400 feet higher, though, so it's not as steep overall.  The Aspen Grove trail has a lot of level spots, and a lot of really steep spots to make up for the level spots.  I don't remember Timpooneke having quite as many flat spots; it seems much more consistent in its slope.  The Aspen Grove trail also had a lot of really rocky areas where you have to climb up rocks and hope to find a way to get back down at the end of the day. Timpooneke has a few spots like that as well, but not nearly as many.  Lastly, Aspen Grove is nothing but switchbacks for the first 4.5 miles. Seriously.  In one spot you climb nearly 1,000 vertical feet without moving more than 100' back and forth.  That may be an exaggeration.

I do have to give the Aspen Grove trail credit for the Primrose Cirque just below the Emerald Lake area.  It's pretty.  Like, really pretty.  Like, probably prettier than anything on the Timpooneke side.  There are also great views all the way up (although it's really the same view, just a couple feet higher every time you switch back.)

In the picture below you can see the "glacier"/permanent snow field (I've recently read that there's evidence that the is an actual glacier under the snow and rocks that you can see in really low snow years, but I'm not going to spend time debating the issue here) in the distance and Emerald Lake at the bottom.  Every time I've seen Emerald Lake it has been MUCH bigger than that.  I don't remember ever seeing a peninsula in it, as it currently has.  I've also never see so little snow in the snowfield. Seriously. It doesn't even go all the way to the top.

There's also a little stone/metal shelter near Emerald Lake that's worth a picture.  It's old.  Somebody had their tent set up inside it.

I continued on a little bit past the lake.  In the picture below you can see (maybe) the trail continuing on just above that cliff, and then around the bowl (just below the white patches of snow) to the low point of the ridge just right of center in the picture.  That's the saddle.  I stayed for quite awhile looking out over the Timpanogos Basin, as it's called.  I looked at the trail coming up from the Timpooneke side (on the right of the picture).  I looked at the mountain peaks in the distance (not pictured).  I took inventory of how I felt physically and what I wanted to accomplish on this hike.

A couple miles before this I realized that my pace was much slower than I had hoped.  The trail was just so steep in so many places and I hadn't really counted on that.  Originally I had thought I could complete the whole hike and be home by 2 in the afternoon.  I'd get home at about 2 if I turned around right then. I calculated that, even at my best, it would take at least three hours to get to the peak.  I needed to be home by five, so that would work, but with my sore feet and pulled hammie I wasn't convinced 3 hours would cut it.  I might be able to return to the point I was at in 3 hours, but the additional abuse to my body would slow my descent down the rest of the trail.

So what did I want to get out of the hike? I considered that for a long time.  If I had never previously been to the peak, that would be an easy question. But since I'd already been to the peak at least 6 times what did it really matter? I remembered how every other time I've come down from the mountain I've been sore, hurting, and in a terrible mood because of the pain.  And my mood wouldn't change much after getting home.

In my old age I guess I've gained some wisdom and decided that I had gone far enough. I had learned about a different route up the mountain. I had seen some incredible scenery. I had shared the trail with a dozen mountain goats for awhile. I had climbed 3,700 feet up a stinking mountain. That was enough.  I turned around with a smile on my face and, for the first time, enjoyed climbing down from Mount Timpanogos.

And, at Annie's insistence that I take more pictures of myself, here's a self portrait. You can even see my hand holding the camera in the reflection of my glasses.

The one bad thing about going this late in the year is that most of the waterfalls were turned off. I guess the Forest Service turns off the tap sometime in September every year.  It was a little disappointing, but my feet stayed dry.

There was one waterfall still working.  Apparently it's called Stewart Cascades or something like that.  It was pretty.  If there's one reason to hike this trail again, that's it.  I'd like to see it when the Forest Service turns the water on all the way.

It didn't take too long to get back to the car, but with all the switchbacks it was a little depressing to walk a mile and still not appear to be any closer to the bottom.

The parking lot was full when I left, and there were cars parked all up and down the road for at least a quarter mile.  And people laughed at me when I said I planned to get there at 5:30.

Oh, another interesting thing about the hike: I decided to take my HAM radio with me. There's a volunteer group (TERT) that spends the weekends at each trailhead and up near Emerald Lake and they help people who need help and radio for more help if someone needs to be helicoptered off or anything.  I was interested to hear their conversations. It turns out that their conversations weren't all that interesting.  But, as a bonus, I think people thought I was some sort of official-type person with my radio.  One group asked if I was with Search and Rescue. I was going to tell them that I was just with "Search", and that I left the "Rescue" to people who knew what they're doing.  But I didn't actually think of that for 1/4 mile, and it really wouldn't have been that funny anyway.

In summary (finally), I hiked 11.5 miles and climbed about 3,700 vertical feet to a point a bit past Emerald Lake.  And I realized that there are more reasons to climb a mountain than just reaching the peak.

Lake Blanche

Rather than head out bright and early Saturday morning, I decided to do this week's hike right after work on Thursday.  There are many reasons for this:

1. The trail head parking lot fills up really early on Saturdays.
2. It's getting really cold in the mornings.
3. I really want to sleep in on Saturday to enjoy the nice cool sleeping weather.

I've wanted to hike to Lake Blanche since I found out it was there.  Annie and I made an attempt to hike the trail last year about 2 weeks after Titan was born.  We hauled him up about a mile before we realized it was really hot and we didn't think to bring any water

Of course, at the time we thought we were at least two miles into the 3 mile trail and felt really bad turning around so close to the end.  

The trail starts at the Mill B trail head, right at the bottom of the S-curve.  When I arrived, I got the last parking spot in the lot.  The trail starts out paved for a quarter mile, then the real trail branches off to the right (if you come to the bridge, you've gone too far).

The trail climbs a little bit and eventually crosses the river at a wooden bridge.  From the bridge, the trail heads up to the left for a bit, then switches back and goes pretty straight for a mile and a half or so.  The trail is steep in places, and flat in other places.  Up until the last mile it's really not all that bad.

There are a lot of trees on the trail.  Even though I hiked it in the evening, I was in the shade for a majority of the hike.  That wouldn't have been the case earlier in the day, but I was grateful to not be in direct sunlight.

About 2 miles in you start catching glimpses of Sundial Peak, the peak directly above Lake Blanche.  It's pretty impressive, even from far away.

At 3.38 miles or so I caught my first glimpse of the lake.  I was a little disappointed until I realized that it went around the hill to the right and was really pretty big. One really neat thing to see is the old dam (I guess that's what it is).  There's one just as you get to the lake, and the bigger one on the downhill side as you go to the west.

The lake was still enough that I was able to take a few good pictures of the reflection of Sundial Peak.  I wanted to get a good picture of both the peak and the reflection of the peak, but my hiking camera no longer has a working screen.  It's just like taking pictures in the olden days when you couldn't see the pictures until you brought the camera home.

One of the main reasons I wanted to do this hike was to be able to see 3 lakes all at once.  Lake Blanche drains into Lakes Florence and Lillian to the west.  It's a little strange to hike to the highest lake first, then hike down to the others, but it's kind of cool, too.  The picture below is Lake Florence (nearest) and Lake Lillian (behind Florence in the center of the picture).

I made an attempt to do a panoramic picture showing the relationship between Lake Blanche (on the left) and the other two.

Annie's always trying to convince me to take more pictures of myself, rather than just pictures of the scenery.  I think I might even be smiling in this one.

One last picture of the lake at Sunset before I had to head back down.

I started hiking at 4:40pm and made it to the lake by 6:45pm.  After playing around at the top I started heading back down about 7:15pm.  About halfway down it got too dark to see the trail anymore.  Fortunately I had my giant headlight.  The trail was pretty rocky and steep on the way down.  I even slipped and did a faceplant in the bushes, but just got a couple little scratches.

It took about 1 1/2 hours to make it back down to the car, making it a total of 4 hours for the whole hike.  I don't think I even passed a dozen people on the trail, and I had all three lakes to myself the whole time I was up there.  It was a great hike, but I think it'll be a couple years before I head back up there.

Sunset Peak (from Brighton)

So with a free Labor Day and a very supportive wife, I decided to head out bright and early to hike up to Catherine Pass, with the option of going on to Sunset Peak.  The trail starts at the Brighton Ski Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  The temperature in the parking lot when I arrived at 7:45am was 44 degrees.

The first mile seems pretty steep.  It didn't seem as steep as it did last year when I had Titan strapped to my chest, but it was still pretty tough.

There are some nice spots to stop and rest take pictures of the views.  It really is a pretty area--one of my favorite places to hike.

About 3/4 miles in I decided to take the short side trip to Dog Lake.  About halfway down the short trail a guy coming back the other way told me there was a moose ahead and there were some people there taking pictures of it.  I continued up over the hill to see the lake and saw the people taking pictures.  They were very, very quiet, as if they were hunting rabbit.  I looked at the other side of the lake, looking for the promised moose.  I scanned everywhere in the little valley, then finally looked about 50 feet of the trail behind a small tree.  Yeah, it was close.  My pictures were all blurry (of course).

I went back to the main trail and headed up to Lake Mary.  In reality, it's a reservoir, but "Reservoir Mary" doesn't have the same ring to it.  Annie and I came up here last year on Labor Day and I'm pretty sure that island out there was under water. But I was still surprised how much water was up there, considering how little snow we got this year.

I continued to the next lake, Lake Martha.  It's hard to get close to Martha, but easy to take pictures of it through the trees.

I continued on up past Lake Catherine to Catherine Pass.  Annie and I turned around just short of the pass last year, so it was great to make it up there.  This was all I had committed myself to doing, so it was nice knowing I could head back at any time without feeling bad.  But, still feeling good, I decided to keep going up to Sunset Peak.

I always wondered where people were standing to get pictures of Lakes Mary, Martha, and Catherine all in the same picture.  You have to be on the peak to get them all lined up.

I made a stab at a panoramic picture.  Hopefully Blogger can show it.

 

Heading back down I decided to take the long way.  I took the scenic route next to Lake Catherine, then decided to try the trail between Lake Mary and Twin Lakes.  The trail was a little hard to follow in places and I just had to make my own trail here and there.  By the time I got to the real trail I was a bit below Twin Lakes and really didn't feel like climbing up anymore, so I made my way back to the car.

In all, I hiked 8 miles in 5 hours.  The trail was very steep in a lot of places, and very flat in a lot of others.  It was a great way to spend a Labor Day morning.