Just about the day after I posted my fun "goals" I got a text from Aaron. He invited me to hike Timp. I was not prepared, but I decided to go ahead and give it a chance.
This is a link to a slide show of beautiful pictures from the hike (these are a lot better than mine, and will show you why it was so amazing).
All of Friday evening I tried to take a nap. All of Friday evening I was too excited, and too busy to spend much more than 20 mind numbing minutes in front of the TV. I ran over to Aaron's apartment to find our group. There were 14 of us, mostly guys, but there were 3 or 4 girls. We headed up the canyon in Matt's old Cadillac. I was crammed in the back in-between Aaron and Grant. The twisty roads played tricks on my stomach. Lets just say, starting the trip at 12:30, with no sleep, and being car-sick, wasn't the best idea.
We started up the trail, and I wasn't about to be lame about it. I tried to keep up with the pace of the leaders, but probably before we even got to Stuart Falls, I started to get winded. Finally I slowed down and walked with the "slow" group with about 4 of us. We slowly made our way up the curvy trail. We could see the flashlights of groups in front of us, which helped us tell where we were going, and gave us hope that we were getting closer and closer to the top.
We keept leap-frogging another group that had some sort of professional basketball player in it. It was interesting chatting with him, but I honestly had no clue who he was. He had done the hike at least once before, and he let us know that we had no idea about how much farther we had to go. We got up on the initial ridge and started hiking up what looked almost like a road to Emerald Lake. Once we got past that, we all sat on rocks for a brief rest. Here the area opened up, and we could see the lights of those coming up the Aspen Grove trail combining with the lights of those coming up the Timpanooke trail. The basketball player shared some of his fruit with us, and I was really thankful for it (though I had a peach or a plumb, and it didn't really have much flavor).
For those of you who don't know, I'm afraid of hiking. Or maybe I'm afraid of mountains. In any case, I knew that I would not have started the hike if it weren't in the dark. There was even a section where we went the wrong way, and started walking on the side of a rock. That's when I was really glad that I was wearing my new hiking boots (yes, I know it's wrong to wear new boots on a hike like that, but mo other shoes, which I brought, don't have the traction that my boots do). It surprised me that the burning in most of my muscles ceased after a while. I was amazed at what my body could do. I will say, my hip flexers weren't prepared for that trip, and they hurt so bad the whole time. As we moved from the ridge onto the loose rock field, I discovered, that as long as I focused on the little circle of light in front of me, I was never overwhelmed. I could always keep going.
This came in handy as I crawled up the steep side as we worked our way to the real ridge. The sky was starting to lighten as we finally reached the top. Our little group was going to rest there until sunrise, but it was cold and the rest of our group was nowhere to be found, so we decided to continue.
This was the worst part of the hike for me at this point. The trail was no wider than my couch cousin at some points. When you're walking along a ridge on the top of a mountain with steep drops on either side, that is not how I want to describe my trail. I had to stop for a rest, and close my eyes to keep the panic at bay. I let my little group continue on without me. What was nice is that there were so many people doing it that we were never alone. It provided a little bit of safety that I wasn't expecting. I joined two other college kids who were of a mind to make a slower ascent than my group.
When I finally got towards the top, the sky was starting to light up, but the sun wasn't up yet. I felt proud of myself for conquering a fear and not stopping when it would have been so easy (granted... I was also afraid of freezing). I called out for my group and finally found Ben. He directed me over to everyone else, and I climbed up to happily sit down. From where we were I could see everything, and I was very happy to sit back to back with Grant for some extra warmth.
We watched the sun come up and I remained terrified, as you can see in this video.
I signed the book in the little building at the top and I was so proud of myself for making it. Before we headed down, I recruited Ben to be my personal helper. From my experiences in the past, I'm full aware of how slowly I go down mountains (it often takes me longer to go down than up). While he ran around chatting with people, I found myself a little space between some of the rocks where I could rest and be sheltered from the wind. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I couldn't dispel the fear that someone wouldn't see me and would step right on my head.
At this point, all I wanted to do was take a nap. For anyone who knows me, you know how I get when I'm tired. Finally I gave up on it, and decided to head down before others. I figured I'd need all of the head start that I could get. The walk down the ridge was horrible for me. I wanted to sleep. I was afraid of dozing off while I walked. I was afraid of tripping and falling down the mountain. Despite all of this, we kept going, and Ben was more patient than I even hoped for.
On the way down I couldn't believe the beauty, nor could I believe how far I had walked the night before. I had planned on sharing water with someone, but I ended up getting separated from them. I ran out of water on the way down, and by the time noon came I was completely exhausted. I wanted sleep. I wanted my knees to stop hurting. I wanted to be able to lift my legs. There was a point that I felt a few tears of exhaustion roll down my eyes. I thought about Branden, and the way he would have pushed me to keep going. Were it not for that, I probably would have taken much longer getting down.
There aren't many pictures of the forest-area towards the bottom. The pain only continued to build as we made our way closer to the base of the mountain, and I barely was able to continue putting one foot in front of the other. Looking back on it, I'm amazed. I was absolutely miserable during most of the hike. It was tough going up, terrifying at the top, and painful going down. Now, I can't believe what I accomplished or what I learned. I discovered that through out the difficult things in life, although they can be entirely overwhelming (like a 11,749 foot mountain), if you keep your focus on the little circle of light in front of you, you can do so much more than you thought was possible.
Now it is one of my favorite things that I have ever done. The memories and sense of accomplishment far outweigh the misery. I experienced more physical pain than I ever had before, and while I said that I would never ever do it again, if I'm still in Utah next year I may just try.
1 comment:
Beautiful!!!!!
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