Step by Step Parenting

For the past several years, when asked what my favorite memories were, I would rattle off the usual suspects:

Getting married. Seeing my daughter smile for the first time. Finding out I was accepted to law school. Giving birth to my twins.

But through it all, there’s always been something else, something a little different, that has remained on that “favorite memories” list, and that’s hiking Mount Timpanogos in 2017 with my dad.

All growing up, I wanted nothing more than to attend Brigham Young University. This is largely because I think my parents really wanted me to go there, but they always made it sound so amazing. My dad would tell story after story of his adventures while in college, and every time we went to a BYU game or visited the campus in Provo, Utah, I couldn’t help but look around and think, Is this my future? Could I really be apart of this?

For never living farther west than Illinois, we visited Utah a lot. It was always for different reasons — a family reunion in Saint George or a visit to my mom’s sister in Jordan or summer camp in Provo — but the story always started the same. We would land in the Salt Lake City airport, pick up our rental car, and start our drive south. I would stare out the window in awe at these huge mountains, captivated by their grandeur, while my dad would marvel out loud, “Aren’t they amazing? Can you believe people live here and probably take this view for granted every day?”

I couldn’t believe it. I vowed to never do the same.

So when we were planning another trip out to Utah in 2017 to tour colleges, and my dad asked if I wanted to hike Mount Timpanogos, the answer was immediately yes. Mount Timpanogos towers over Utah Valley as the second highest peak in the Wasatch range. I knew how many miles the hike was, and how tall the mountain was, and that was all I needed to know. All of the other details — the planning, the danger, the risks — were my dad’s concerns.

Miraculously, in my beat up New Balances and high school gym clothes, I made it. I remember the views were phenomenal, the hike was hard but manageable, and the hike down was a breeze. The fact that I was able to do something like that with my dad was even better. It was truly one of the best experiences.

Flash forward to today, almost nine years later. My husband and I were planning to fly out to Utah, this time for my brother’s wedding. My mom offered to take my daughter to an aquarium Friday morning if Kevin and I wanted to sneak away and go on a hike (she clearly knows me well). As I was trying to decide where to go, a crazy idea popped into my mind:

What if… what if we hiked Timp?

I flew into planning mode, quickly realizing that we would need parking permits to even park at the trailhead, and that most of the permits were completely sold out. A small batch was going to be released 48 hours before the Friday we were thinking of doing our hike, but that was it.

I ran the idea by my dad, to see how crazy he thought I was. With three days of notice, surely this was a bad idea, right?

Instead, he was on board, too (I wonder where I get it from!) and he agreed to help me try and snag a parking pass the second they were to release on Wednesday. We reasoned if we got a pass, great, but if not, it wasn’t meant to be.

I filled my husband is, letting him know what the tentative plan was. Climbing a nearly 12,000 foot mountain last-minute wasn’t out of the norm for us, so he was on board, too.

We all logged on to our computers ten minutes before the parking passes were set to release, so that we could act as soon as possible.

Then my dad’s computer crashed.

Then I got kicked out the site because it couldn’t verify I was a human (?).

But then, thankfully, Kevin pulled through, and was able to get one of the last permits. So the decision was made:

We were going to summit Mount Timpanogos.

On Thursday, we boarded a plane and flew from Charlotte, North Carolina to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we rented a car to drive to Orem. The elevation where we live in North Carolina is around 800 feet above sea level, whereas in Orem it is around 4,7000 feet above sea level. This is already a big change, and then we had less than twelve hours to adjust to 4,7000 ft before attempting to summit Timp.

On a whim, I drove to the nearest running store to buy a pair of trail shoes. Normally, it’s strongly recommended to notbuy brand-new shoes for a hike, but I bought Altra Lone Peaks, which are the same shoes I’ve run three ultramarathons in and run hundreds of miles with, so I knew my feet would be happy. I decided I would rather deal with a blister or two from a new pair of shoes than wear shoes that had hardly any traction at all.

We made sure to pack all of our stuff the night before, since our alarms were set for 2:30am and we wanted to be leaving the AirBnb by 3:15am. Since it’s July, it’s recommended that each hiker carry 3 liters of water for the hike, and because my backpack was bigger than Kevin’s, I actually ended up carrying eight water bottles. It’s also recommended to have 200-300 calories, and due to me technically still breastfeeding, I need even more.

Needless to say, we packed a lot of snacks. Personally, I brought three Chomps sticks, two packets of Made Good oat bites, a Cliff bar, some Liquid IV packets, and a bag of gummy Nerds. By the end of the hike, there was none left!

The night before, I could barely sleep. I felt like a kid trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve. It was hard to get settled when I knew that I would have to wake up in just a few hours. Evidently, my husband felt the same, because he went to the restroom at 1:37am, after which I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Finally, around 2:00am, I decided to just call it, and I got out of bed to pump.

I’m in the process of weaning, but still need to pump around three times a day. Originally, I had planned on bringing my pumping supplies with me so that I could pump near the top of the mountain, but I decided to risk it and leave the gear at home in an effort to keep my backpack as light as possible.

I had packed all of my stuff the night before, so once I was done pumping, I got dressed and waited for the boys to finish getting ready. We ended up leaving just a few seconds after the clock hit 3:15am, so we were right on schedule. We had about a 40-45 minute drive ahead of us, and would be going from Orem up to American Fork Canyon, and then driving windy roads up the canyon to the trailhead parking lot.

We joked on the way up that there were probably some bozos out there who don’t get a parking pass, but park at the trailhead anyways and just accept whatever fine or ticket they get. However, when we arrived at the parking lot, there were several park rangers checking each car’s parking permits, forcing them to turn around if they didn’t have one. Almost every car in front of us was having to turn around! Thanks to our careful (albeit last-minute) planning, we showed the ranger our permit and were allowed past the checkpoint. With that, we hit the trail right at 4:00am.

The sun wasn’t supposed to rise until closer to 6:30am, so we knew that we’d be hiking for several hours in the dark. Kevin and I each had nice headlamps from our trail running days, and my dad had one from when he used to train for marathons in the dark. The sun was down, the bugs were asleep, and those early miles flew by. It felt nice to get several miles under our belt while it was still dark. Although the temperatures on the mountain would be more forgiving than down in the valley (where the high was nearly 100 degrees), it was still going to be a hot day, so the more we could get done before sunrise, the better.

When we reached the first meadow is around when I had to take my first bathroom break. It had luckily occurred to me several days beforehand that my postpartum bladder would not survive an 8+ hour hike, so I came prepared for this, but it was still a hassle. This was around an hour into the hike, so we also all ate our first snack to try and stay fueled up for the journey ahead.

My dad had downloaded a GPS map of the trail, which was definitely the way to go because we would have missed a few switchbacks without it. Several easy stream crossings later, and a handful of confusing spur trails avoided, we made it mostly out of the woods just as the sun was starting to rise.

My aunt who lives in Utah had lent me some hiking poles for the hike, since I was nervous about the narrowness and steepness towards the summit. It’s not always the best idea to use poles on a big hike like this without practicing, but luckily, it would take over seven miles to reach the summit! So I pulled out the poles just after sunrise to try them out and decide whether I wanted to use them at the summit. The only downside of the poles in the beginning were that they restricted my ability to easily reach snacks and drink water.

{photos are from 6:21am}

Once the sun rose, color and light flooded the valley beneath, revealing the spectacular views that had been there the whole time. Pictures truly can’t capture how beautiful this view was, so after a few (ok, maybe twenty) attempts, I mostly gave up and resided to just soaking up the views with my own eyes, trying to commit every shade of green and blue to memory.

Sunlight also meant that we could see the trail better, which meant it was time to keep our eyes peeled for mountain goats! The first time I hiked Mount Timpanogos back in 2017, I was so startled by a goat that my immediate thought was, Is that a polar bear?!?!?, before I caught myself and remembered that I was in Utah, not the North Pole. This time around, I was a little more prepared for some wildlife sightings!

We heard goats bleating in the distance long before we saw any, but by time we did, we were lucky enough to see a goat and its kid! Well, lucky until the mama decided we got too close to her baby, and then she started chasing us down the trail (walking towards us not slowly, which felt like chasing), so we just backed away until she got bored and left. I swung a wide left into the field just to give them as wide a berth as possible.

We worked our way upwards through the meadow, and there continued to be goats along the trail. At one point, my dad counted nine goats out and about, just grazing! The trail was also starting to get pretty crowded, too. It was a holiday in Utah, and July and August are the most popular times to hike Timp, and it was the weekend, so this wasn’t surprising, but phew. There were a lot of people!

There are lots of “shortcuts” near this part of the trail, but not only are they dangerous for those that attempt them, they are also dangerous to those hiking below, as loose rocks are sent skidding down the mountain. To the group of high schoolers/college students who thought it would be fun to try every short cut on your way down while we were all hiking towards to summit, you suck. You could have hit your fellow hikers with rocks, you could have hurt yourself, and not to mention, it damages the trails. Not a great way to take care of the mountain. Boo!

Anyways… the farther we got into the meadow (also known as “the basin”), the clearer our view became of the actual summit! It was both invigorating and terrifying to see our destination looming ahead. It was hard to comprehend how the trail would possibly take us up that high.

There were beautiful wildflowers all along the trail, but we were hiking so fast that I didn’t want to waste any time to stop and take photos. With the summit in sight, adrenaline was pumping, and we were ready for the climb.

The trail narrowed as it meandered up the mountain, getting rockier every step of the way. Eventually, there were so many spots where I felt like I needed my hands to scramble over boulders that the poles were just cumbersome, and I put them away. They were helpful for the miles I used them, but they did not help me feel more stable near the summit like I had hoped.

The closer we got to what’s known as “the saddle,” which was less than a mile from the actual summit, the worse I felt. At first, I thought it was just fatigue, but upon reaching the saddle, it became clear that it was something else. At over 11,000 feet, looking at the drop on either side of the saddle had a dizzying effect, and I began to feel like I had vertigo. I tried to eat a snack, thinking maybe I just needed more calories, but my Hostess cupcake felt like I was eating dirt because I was so nauseous.

I don’t know if it was anxiety or altitude sickness, but it was a Not Good Time. Before even arriving in Utah, I was skeptical about whether I would hike all the way to the summit, or stop at the saddle (I only made it to the saddle in 2017), but this sealed the deal: I was going to rest at the saddle while my husband and dad pushed onwards towards the summit.

Time to the saddle: 4 hours

What I didn’t know when I agreed to this arrangement was that it would take the boys nearly two hours to reach the summit and back. Had I known that, I might have told them that I would meet up with them back in the meadow so that I could descend the mountain a little and alleviate my possible altitude sickness symptoms. Instead, I sat at the saddle for over two hours, anxiously awaiting their return.

This provided a wonderful opportunity for me to chat with fellow hikers, though, and I met people from all walks of life! While I was trying to eat my Hostess cupcake dirt, I sat next to a woman, her grown daughter, and the grown daughter’s four month old baby. We chatted about birth and postpartum for a bit, since our babies are around the same age, and I told her I was just in awe of her for doing this hike with her baby strapped to her chest.

Eventually, a friend from my church back in North Carolina reached the summit. We had run into each other in the Charlotte airport a few days ago, while we were waiting to board our flight to Utah, and had a good laugh over what a coincidence that we were on the same flight to and from Utah, completely unplanned. I mentioned that I was going to hike Timpanogos the next day, and come to find out, so was she! I had been waiting at the saddle for about an hour when Ella and her sister got there, and it was so, so nice to see a familiar face. Her sweet sister even brought up a little cake and candles for Ella since it was her birthday, so me and a group of hikers all sang her Happy Birthday!

I spotted my dad and husband returning from a distance, and was so relieved to see them. I let them know that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get off the saddle ASAP, so we quickly began our descent.

Time at the saddle: 1.5 hours

Going back through the meadow a second time, I was able to take it in more, and also take more photos. I felt so much better once I reached even a slightly lower elevation, and once I had some more snacks and electrolytes? Golden.

After that, though, the hike started to really go downhill, literally and figuratively.

My dad and I both agreed that in 2017, the hike up was tough, and then we “flew down the mountain.” In hindsight, I’m wondering if we simply blacked out because oh my word, the hike down this time around was so much harder than either of us remember!

Hiking through the meadow was fine. Gorgeous, even. But once we passed through that, the temperatures got hotter and hotter, the bugs were out, and there were so. many. rocks.

After you’ve already hiked for over five hours, both your body and mind are tired. When there’s tons of rocks all throughout the trail, having to stay mentally present enough to carefully calculate each step is exhausting. What’s wild, though, is that we had already hiked the exact same trail up, and don’t remember there being so many rocks! That just goes to show that the heat, and the miles already under our belt, were really getting to us.

Several falls (mostly by one person, who was not me, who shall remain unnamed lol), a few bug bites, some sunburns, and around four hours later, we finally — FINALLY — made it back to the car. We joke that we could have kissed the parking lot, we were so happy to be back! It was one of the few times I’ve finished a hike and thought, Yup, I never need to do that hike again!

That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the hike. It really was truly amazing. But it is not an easy hike by any means, and requires you to already have a good base of fitness, lots of water, and lots of preparation. It’s hard enough that you feel like you’re really working for that summit, and that once you’ve completed the over 14 miles, you won’t feel the need to be doing it again anytime soon (but knowing me… I’m sure I will at some point!).

Time down the mountain: 4 hours

Total hike time: 9.5 hours, from 4:00am to 1:21pm

It’s hard to believe that only a week ago, my dad, my husband, and I were hanging out at the top of an 11,700+ foot tall mountain. I am so thankful that I was able to do this hike again since the first time I did it back in 2017, and that I have new memories (and photos!) from the mountain. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to explore so much of this beautiful world, and to have such wonderful people in my life to explore it with.

Life is good. Life is really, really good.