Summiting Timpanogos

I finally summited Timp! I've wanted to do this hike for the past several years but I would only ever think of it during the Winter which is a bad time to hike mountains; luckily my friend Tallia orchestrated everything as part of her birthday so it finally happened.

"Mount Timpanogos, UT" by Brian Smith - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

I guess this is a pretty popular hike in Utah, one of my friends summited it three times this summer, so we had to show up early. We arrived in the parking lot at 6 AM to be greeted by a completely full parking lot. We didn't want to give up but also didn't know what to do since there were no-parkng signs everywhere. Eventually we decided to park illegally figuring the parking ticket, divided by all of us, would be worth the hike.

It was dark when we started which made for lovely light. I only took one photo which turned out really grainy. I teased my companions for taking panoramas but I probably should have took at least one.

me, abby, natalie, tallia, ben

The hike was grueling, especially since it is the only hike I did all summer but we pushed on amongst Tallia's panic attacks each time someone slipped a little. We reached the saddle and almost turned around but Ben gave a rousing speech on how we were the rising generation and destined for greatness so we pushed on.

The wind howled in our ears as we forced our legs and feet to carry on through the loosely defined trail among the rubble. All of us rolled our ankles more than a few time but we persevered and made it to the top at 11:15am, a little under five hours from the start.

sitting at the summit shack

We all ate our various lunches and used our cell phones since we happily had full service and then started back down. We made it back to the car at 3:30pm and didn't have a parking ticket. 

We celebrated by eating at the Cannon Center on BYU campus.

just a bro on a mountain. so many people on the trail commented on the hat. IT WAS FREE