Login

My Timptation

About 7 weeks ago I messed my bad ankle up playing laser tag. Whether I undid my surgeon’s tendon reconstruction handiwork with this booboo remains unknown. I got an MRI on it this morning though so hopefully I will have some answers on that front soon. (I’m crossing my fingers for the “right” answers.) But that will be the subject of another post’s ramblings.

In the meantime I got my doctor’s approval to undertake a feat that few attempt even when they aren’t one ankle shy of cooperative legs.

In between two vertical challenges a sprawling meadow gave our legs a little break.

Mount Timpanogos is not Utah’s highest peak, it’s not even on the top-ten list for the state, but it dominates the Utah Valley landscape with its 11,749 feet and is one of the most popular climbs around. We made plans to conquer the 16 mile trek to its top with our friends Adam and Abigail a couple of months ago but then my ankle injury left the feasibility of this conquest a little uncertain. Finally, last week my doc said if I wore my brace I should be able to scale this behemoth unscathed thus we decided to still go for it. Of course, what the doctor exactly said was that my ankle would be very sore but taking on this twelve-hour hike wouldn’t do any permanent damage so he had no medical objections to the activity. Since I am pretty much the most stubborn person alive, pain but not permanent injury was good enough of an endorsement for me.

The trail up Timp travels through diverse vistas. Each region is so different it's hard to conceptualize the entire area as a unit.
When we stopped at the saddle for a snack break Adam immediately fell asleep and started snoring.

The last time I hiked Timp I was a teenager; I’m not going to confess how long ago that was. Adam too hadn’t traversed this trail since he was an adolescent and Jason, despite his years as a scouter, had never made it all the way to the top. Since the thought of ascending Timp hadn’t ever even occurred to Abigail, we were all kind of green to the experience and oblivious to the suffering we were about to endure.

The blooming wildflowers were everywhere. They painted the landscape with stripes of color.
The climb from the saddle to the peak was pretty rough. Wobbly rocks and dizzying heights made the going slow.

We began our climb around 7 AM to give ourselves plenty of time to get up and back down the mountain before it got dark, which was wise because construction on the trailhead parking lot forced us to park near another connecting trail instead and hike in nearly a mile to get to the actual start of the trail. We ended up doing nearly 2 more miles of climbing than we had anticipated; that’s over 17 miles in total for those of you who can’t count.

The wedge-shaped peak looked intimidatingly severe even from the saddle.
This ugly shack marks the top of Timp. It may not be much to look at but the view from it sure was.

The scenery along the Timpooneke trail is beautiful and constantly changing. First you travel through thick growths of pines and aspens with the occasional waterfall offering you its flowing chatter until you end up in a boulder-strewn grassland. Then, a sharp climb through pine covered precipices later, you find yourself in a stretching alpine meadow full of brilliantly colored wildflowers with the starkness of the triangular peak looming in the background. Once you leave those blossoms below the landscape becomes harsh. From the saddle up the terrain is nothing but rock. With lots of loose stones and over 1000 feet of vertical gain that last ascent is a bugger.

The panoramas from the ridge were spectacular and otherworldly.
We crossed paths with a herd of mountain goats; we counted over 40 in total. A few of them let us approach surprisingly close.

The weather during our trek was perfect. A nice breeze and some afternoon cloud cover kept us pleasantly cool for the most part. Mother Nature was in a good mood and her hillsides of vibrant blooms, which are apparently prettiest this time of year, seemed to echo that cheery humor.

The steps to the stony summit seemed never-ending.
The trail passed a few mossy waterfalls as they gracefully cascaded toward the valley bottom.

How did our group and my ankle fare? I’d say overall things went rather well. All of us made it to the top and that counts for a lot. I think Adam and Abigail got a bit more from this hike than they were bargaining for though. Adam, who proudly admits that he hasn’t exercised in years, struggled a little on the steep slopes from the saddle to the peak. He lagged behind us on the way back too and was so exhausted he actually fell asleep on the side of the trail when he stopped to rest for a minute. Luckily, Jason randomly decided to backtrack to find him right about then or we may have tramped all the way to the bottom without realizing that Adam was snoring in a grassy patch hours from finishing his descent. Abigail didn’t close her eyes unexpectedly mid-mountain but I don’t think she was the happiest of campers the last few hours of our expedition; she just wanted to be done. I guess when you’ve never hiked that far before you don’t realize that throbbing swollen feet, achy knees, and utter fatigue are the price you must pay to see your world from an extraordinary perspective and obtain some bragging rights. As for my ankle, I was proud of it. It gave me grief the last few miles and its aggravation didn’t subside when the trail ended but, since I was expecting more resistance, I was pleased with it all things considered.

Jason, as always, was a trooper. He didn't whine even though his backpack was hurting him and left big welts on his back.

Both Jason and I are glad we trudged into the wilderness. Achieving that mountaintop goal was a highly satisfying and breathtaking experience. I’m not sure Adam and Abigail feel quite as enthusiastic about their accomplishment but I’d like to think that with time, after the torturous aspects of our adventure have been forgotten, they’ll realize how beautiful the slopes and valleys they were so eager to leave behind actually were and decide that the misery of their extreme workout was worth the chance to view one of nature’s unaltered masterpieces.

Rachel August 15, 2012 No Comments

The Usual Mayhem

Birthdays this, birthdays that, more birthday stuff blah, blah, blah. Thought you were done hearing about the 20 ways Jason and I celebrated our birthdays eh? Well, looks like this old girl’s got one more in her yet.

My family, like Jason’s, has no shortage of July birthdays. (I think the birthday quota for July has officially been met so could you people please have a few kids during different months just to shake things up a bit?) As they have in the past, this year my family held an ultimate July birthday extravaganza collectively for me, Jason, my sister Tonya, and her husband Ryan. This party went down at my parents’ house last week and involved: chile rellenos, freeze tag, cake, pant wettings, dog fights, beans, cello serenades, blanket forts, cowboy hats, and poetry readings. In other words, it was just a normal night for our crazy crew.

Drew and Simone brought birthday gear for the guests of honor. We wore our largely embarrassing hats with pride.

My mom made one of my favorites, chile rellenos, for our dinner along with her typical assortment of way more food than a zoo full of stoned monkeys could consume. Beans were a part of this great feast too of course because, no matter what the meal occasion, with my family there is always room for beans.

Wesley informed us that he was a miner during dinner and contorted his stern face to prove it. That was just seconds before his brother shafted him by stealing his "mining" light.

We ate in the backyard, as is our custom during the summertime. It was an agreeable evening for lounging in the shade while enjoying some tasty grub but before our plates had been emptied the usual mayhem began. Between my mom’s and brother’s dogs streaking around people’s legs as they wrestled each other’s ears and our niece Isabelle having an unplanned bladder evacuation, even the dull moments weren’t dull. Following dinner the birthday squad blew out their candles, with the help of a number of transfixed children, and opened what seemed like a never-ending pile of presents. Once all that normal birthday stuff was out of the way a group of the youngins halted their picnic table blanket fort construction to enlist me and Jason in a series of tag games that required some pretty fancy dog poo dodging skills on our part while our nephew Benson brought out his cello and recited a few well-rehearsed pieces to the other adults.

My parents gave Ryan an authentic cowboy hat for his birthday. It seemed to suit him just fine. I guess you can take the lawyer out of the honky-tonk but you can't take the honky-tonk out of the lawyer.

Ah yes, the melodious sound of screaming kids harmonized by the mellow vibrations of the cello and the sharp accents of yapping dogs. It was like a birthday symphony commissioned by the primal god Chaos. But that’s how family is supposed to be, right? A messy jumbled filling smothered in a shell of love?

All this merriment and bedlam marked the conclusion of our birthday festivities and, yes, I promise that is the end of the birthday party posts, at least until next July when a whole lot of birthday jiving and mayhem will be going on once again.

Rachel August 8, 2012 No Comments

Birthdays Are the Pits

A crackling campfire brings to mind crisp mountain air, smelly pines, and sizzling wieners. Yes, summer isn’t summer until you’ve spent some time burning marshmallows around a campfire. Sadly, Jason and I have not made it to the mountains for any camping or roasting yet this season. Although we plan on remedying that insufficiency soon, last week instead of going to the campfire we brought the campfire to us.

Jason’s family is peopled with July birthdayers, too many for individual recognition I’m afraid, so this year their specialness was celebrated in bulk. In way of birthday festivities we ate a yummy Dutch oven meal and then took the party to the pit.

Keith and Sue own a rather large plot of land and they’ve added a fire pit to its topography. While this pit doesn’t have the accompanying scenic splendor you’ll find when lighting a glow on any of Utah’s majestic peaks, it does provide more than enough smoke and flames to give you that signature mountaintop reek.

The best way to assure that a Sabin looks absurd for a picture is to tell them you are taking one. For some reason their kneejerk reaction to a camera is an expression that would make a baby cry.

That evening our group formed a large circle around those flaming logs and ineffectively played musical chairs with the blaze’s persistent billows until the scorched mallows and smoke inhalation left us a little buzzed. You always suspected that most of the Sabins were headed for a fiery inferno, right?

I have to admit that those suburban fire rings are pretty snazzy. You can just pop into the backyard with your bag of marshmallows, roasting stick, and camp chair and voila! You’ve got yourself an instant nearly-authentic campfire experience right down to the stinky hair.

It was a nice and odorous way to celebrate our bunch of July birthdays. Who says that pits have to be full of despair?

Rachel July 31, 2012 No Comments
 Categories

Recent Posts

Recent Comments
Blogroll