The Sleeping Maiden

Woke up at 2:30am. Ate cereal and toast. Loaded up my gear and picked up Jake my neighbor. We drove to I-15 and met Craig. We then drove to the mouth of American Fork canyon to meet up with Madi, Jake's sister. She had a carload of BYU students with her. We drove to the Timpooneke trailhead. Forest Service personal were there directing us to park up the road as the lot was full. Really? We were hiking at 4:30. We had a good 2 hours of hiking in the dark. As it was starting to get light we came to the first spot where there was snow on the trail. We gingerly crossed the snow and kept hiking. As the sun was coming up we crossed another snow patch just before climbing up to the Timpanogos Basin. There was a fair amount of hiker traffic going both directions on the trail. Our group arrived at the saddle at about 10:30 then pushed on up to the summit. One of our group was having difficulty with the exposure on the push up to the summit but with some encouragement she forged ahead. The weather was bright and sunny the entire day but the temps were cool and pleasant. After the summit we talked about going down. Craig and I had carried in our skis with the intent to ski the large snowfield on the backside on the mountain. Madi was wanting to slid down the snowfield as everyone talks about but few sane people do. I had suggested a meeting spot if the hikers went back the way we came up. They elected to slid so we all hiked over to the saddle at the top of the snowfield. I had forgot that it is a long hike to the saddle. It doesn't look that far from the top. It is about the same as hiking back to the saddle the way we came up. Then the fun begins. Not. The snow is hard, lumpy and littered with rocks making for very sketchy skiing. Craig and I skied down to the very edge of Emerald Lake. The hikers slowly worked their way down the edge of the snowfield. In the end it added an hour or more to our hike and wasn't that much fun. I filtered water at the lake and we packed up to head back to our cars. The hikers got off a bit before Craig and me so when we got to the Quonset hut we couldn't see them. When we got to where we should have been able to see them they weren't there. I took off my pack and ran to another vantage point and saw them hiking down the Aspen Grove trail. I ran and hollered to get them to stop. That added another 20-30 minutes to our hike. Dang. I know the BYU students wanted to get back in time for the football game. As we started down the pace different between the hikers and the skiers became more pronounced. Since there was no more forks in the trail I suggested that Madi and her group bolt. Craig and I tried to keep a decent pace going down but the combination of the extra weight of the skis and the pressure on our shoulders made the slog our difficult and slow. With about 2 miles to go I pushed my pace as hard as I could with the idea that I could get out, unload my pack and then hurry back up to lighten Craig's load for the rest of his slog. After I got a drink and unloaded my pack I headed up the trail looking for Craig. It turns out that Craig wasn't that far behind me and had gone straight to the outhouse at the trailhead so when I went up he was already down. The further I hiked up the more frantic I became. I couldn't find Craig. I asked the other hikers coming down if they had seen Craig. They hadn't. That added to my frenzy. After 40 or so minutes going up I decided to head back down. When I got back I was glad to see that Craig was there. My feeble mind had congered up all sorts of disastrous outcomes so I was pretty happy but also sad that I was long beyond the time that I told Connie I would be home I knew she would either be worried or figuring out how to invest the life insurance money. When I looked at my cell phone the battery was dead. Weird. I had charged it the night before. Sorry Connie.

Would I haul skis in again? Probably not. Do I want to hike Timp again? Heck yes.

Sorry about the poor placement of my new helmet cam. I'll get better.

As a side note. The motivation for carrying skis on this trip was to complete 12 consecutive months of skiing in the Wasatch mountains. Since last October I have skied 53 times and climbed 76,900 feet of vertical not counting this slog into the Timp snowfield. Hopefully we will get snow in the mountains by the end of October and I can keep the streak going.