Mt. Timpanogos Anniversary Hike

I told Ryan that I wanted to hike Mt. Timpanogos for our 15th wedding anniversary.  I hiked it when I was a teenager with my dad and brother, but we only went to the lake (which is still pretty darn awesome).  So after 11 years of living here, I finally hiked to the summit!  Ryan, on the other hand, has hiked it several times.  But in my defense, I was always pregnant or nursing a new baby for all those missed opportunities.  But anyway, yeah, it was a long but really fun day!!  To hike Timp, it's a little over 15 miles with a 5,398 ft elevation gain, topping out at 11,749 feet!  I'm still sore today...and we hiked it 3 days ago!  Oh, and if you're wondering where our children were that day, they got to spend it with my mom (thanks mom!).

It was absolutely beautiful!

And there were lots of wildflowers still!

We took a little break at the lake and had something to eat.

Now, at this point, you have two options: 1) Hike to the summit via the glacier (although, there is not much glacier there right now).  It's steep and slippery, and no trail, but it shaves off a mile or two, so it's much faster!  2) Hike to the summit via the trail.  This way is a lot longer!  

The glacier looked a bit perilous, so we chose the trail.

Little known fact:  Ryan has a fear of heights. 

I didn't realize to what extent until this hike...but it certainly doesn't stop him!

A little bit of a hazy view, but there's Utah County and Utah Lake.  Our house is down there somewhere...actually it's more to the left, probably out of this photo.

 I love this picture because you can see the lake where we sat to have lunch (at the very bottom and middle of the photo) and the trail system we walked on.  That's a long way down!!

We tagged...rebels.

It wouldn't be complete without some selfies on the summit!!

While we were on the top, it started to get really dark with clouds and we heard thunder in the distance...yeah, not good when you're sitting on the peak of a mountain!  We decided to take the glacier down to save time.

This is a view of the little shelter on the summit as we started walking down.

A picture right before we slid down back to the lake...and when I say slid, I mean actually sat down and slid on the snow.  

 Almost down!

If you look behind me, you can see the "trail" on the glacier where we slid down.  And you can also see there is a gap between the ridge line and the where the glacier starts consisting of basically loose sand and rocks.  Yeah, I fell on that portion and slid on rocks for about 10 feet.  It hurt.

So while we were making our way down the glacier side we apparently missed a massive down pour!  By the time we got back to the lake everything was wet.  We got lucky.  It's a good thing too because we didn't have any rain gear!

The rest of hike down was smooth sailing, although I was kind of hobbling at the end (my darn bad knee!!)  

We ended the day with a fabulous dinner at the Foundry Grill at Sundance, dirty and all...it. was. so. good.

I've decided to make this an annual thing.

Happy Anniversary to us!