Emerald Lake

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.