Hiking Timp

Sunday night at ward prayer, a guy from La Casa mentioned that he and some friends were going to hike Timp that night and anyone was invited. I talked to him a little about it and decided that it was probably now or never, and decided to go.

When we got there at midnight, there was a group of 13 people that were coming with us. I was one of the drivers. When we got to the base, fate was not on our side. To make a long story short, we accidently went on the wrong trail so we had to go back to the beginning. When we got back, some nice guy told us that we should probably pay the dues so that are car didn't get booted, since over 100 got booted last year. All I had were coins, and when we put them into the envelope, it wouldn't fit into the spot available for the envelopes so we just shoved all the coins in individually and hoped they would accept it. :)

We didn’t get a very good before picture. I’m didn’t even show up in any of them. Ah well.

Then we went on another wrong trail. This experience was definitely the blind leading the blind. A couple people in our group had hiked Timp before, but it was several years earlier and they were just followers. Luckily we turned back after only after about 10 minutes of hiking. That trail may have led us to the top, but some guys convinced us to turn back when they said they had been hiking that trail for 20 minutes when they heard a car pass. We figured that probably wasn't the right way to go…

When we finally we going on the right trail, 4 members of our group decided that this was not what they had bargained for, and decided to leave and go to some hot springs (which they ended up not doing). This group included the people who had initiated the hike, so we were left with 8 girls and 1 guy. Not ideal circumstances…

Joan and I took the lead. My flashlight was pathetic so I basically just relied on Joan's except for a couple times when I got out my iPod and used that. It was pitch dark. We kind of joined up with another group at the beginning, so there were like 30 of us. The hike up was just long. You had to watch every single step so that you didn't trip over some root or rock. After probably an hour and a half or two hours, we kind of stopped and asked the people behind us if they needed a break. This girl replied "We're not in your group" in a not-very-nice manner. We waited until they all had passed and then realized we were no longer with our group. It was only Joan, another girl (in the blue BYU sweatshirt) and I. We waited for a couple minutes but when they didn't show up, we decided to keep going. Since it was a bunch of girls, we figured they had probably just needed a lot more breaks than we had taken.

I couldn't believe how long the hike was. Even though prior to the hike, I knew that it was going to be close to 6 hours to the top, I don't think I was really mentally prepared for that. At about 3:30 am, my feet started not responding quite as fast as I would have liked… I found myself stumbling some, but not very much at this point. I was also starting to regret that I hadn't made up for the lack of eating on Fast Sunday, and had only eaten a sandwich, some carrots and a bowl of cereal. It was starting to get extremely cold too. Out of the three of us, I was definitely the most prepared for the cold. Poor Joan was only wearing underarmour, a t-shirt and pants. She would have been wearing shorts too if I hadn't made her change before we left. Luckily I brought an extra hat for Joan, and happened to have 3 gloves, so I gave one to the other girl and tried to get Joan to take the other one, but she wouldn't.

The hike was primarily silent. No one talked because we were all pretty tired, both from lack of sleep and because the hike was pretty strenuous at times. We all knew we needed to conserve our energy. Us three girls were rarely by ourselves, which was nice. We would join up with one group, and then pass them, and then join with another one ahead. A little after 4, I started having a pretty hard time and convinced my group to take a slightly more substantial break. That actually helped me out a lot, but my mind was really starting to wear down. Joan was doing fine mentally, but she was getting extremely cold without a whole lot of protection.

We got really close to the "Saddle" and the winds starting coming more frequently and much harder and they were literally like getting hit by ice. Every time a gust would come, we would all turn our backs on it to try and shield our faces. We were in this highland type place by then, and there was not going to be any protection from the wind for awhile at least, and we were starting to doubt whether or not it was smart to continue. Joan kept saying she was legitimately worried for her body because it was so freezing. She said she couldn't feel either of her arms. We stopped to discuss our option when we saw people coming up the trail. It was our group! We were really happy to see them.

We all huddled in a group and discussed our options. There were a few that really felt like they needed to go back down now. There were several reasons for that. People were not prepared for the cold, and we thought we were ahead of schedule for the sunrise, so we would be getting there and then sitting in the freezing winds for a sunrise and then have the entire hike down, which we knew would take several hours. Then Lucy said that some guy on the trail said we were about 2 hours from the top. I think that was the deal breaker. We had already been hiking for over 4 hours, and the thought of hiking for two more was not appealing. Also, we weren't as on schedule as we thought we were, so that was not ideal either.

A couple people would have gone to the top. I wanted to finish, but then I finally accepted that it was only my pride that made me want to keep going. I didn’t want to go down without making it to the top. We considered having one car leave and one car continue, but decided it was better to stay as a group. The final decision was to start down. It wasn't a half-hour before we knew we had made the right decision.

The hike down the mountain was one of the most mentally challenging things I've ever experienced. I kept remembering a guy from my ward saying that he fell asleep several times on the way down while he was walking, and then woke right back up. I could definitely tell I was close to that stage, and it really scared me. Most of the hike is not exactly hiking through plains or anything. On the contrary, most of the time it was an extremely narrow path that had an extremely steep drop on one side. We had several scares, although we were extremely blessed in that none of the scares actually produced an accident, although Lucy hurt her ankle (but was an extremely good sport) and everyone stumbled and fell several times. It was mentally challenging because:

1. it was 5-7 in the morning, and all of our bodies were hating us for the lack of sleep we were giving it.

2. We had already been hiking for 4-5 hours and our legs, backs and the rest of our bodies were exhausted (I mean, when's the last time I've done physical exercise even close to this!?)

3. It was still pitch black. We couldn't see anything except what was right in front of us. It was almost worse when it got like 2% lighter, because then we could see how dangerous the path actually was.

4. We all knew (although were trying to forget) that the hike down was going to be several hours, and although we wanted to know that soon we would be sitting in our cars and then going in our nice warms showers and beds, we still had a long time before that would happen.

5. I knew I was going to have to drive when I got back down, and I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to.

And then my stomach was screaming at me to stop and eat something substantial, but every time I took a bite of granola or something, I just felt ill.

Jacquelyn was the group's mom. She’s amazing. Whenever anyone needed to stop and rest a minute, or eat something, she was there waiting with us, and talking us through our tiredness. When we finally got down to where we were passing people on our way up, she was super energetic and wishing everyone luck, while I would merely grunt, and that was only if i felt obligated to.

I’ve never been so happy to see cars as when I finally did. The last fifteen minutes was terrible because you kept expecting to see the cars around every corner, but they were never there.

When we got there, I had Lucy, Tracey and Chelsea reenact how cold it was. This was the best they could do.  :)

We dragged ourselves out of the car to take an after picture. I knew I would be glad if I did, and I really am.

The drive home was scary. I’ll leave it at that.

I took two 3 hour naps and did homework in between on Monday. At FHE, it was just as bad as I thought it was going to be when people asked if we made it to the top. We defended ourselves well though.  :) I had a good time talking to some of the girls about the funny things about the hike though, so that was a good experience.

It was really hard to walk up the stairs the next two days, because my right leg was so stiff and my groin hurt, but overall I wasn’t as sore as I expected.

It was a good experience, and I’m really glad I did it. If I were to do it again though, I would not go for the sunrise. 5:00 AM would be perfect, and would eliminate most of the issues I believe. The sunrise was really great and the hike would actually be beautiful if I could have seen any of it. By the time it was light enough to see how pretty a hike it was, I didn’t care. Haha.  :) I would like to do this hike again though, with the lessons I learned. In a year maybe.  :)

Horray for Timp!

 

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