I'm not sure when my sisters started talking about climbing Mt Timpanogos. It was something like three or four years ago. And I don't know who proposed the idea first. Maybe they both had the idea. All I know is that for the last few summers my sisters Lindsey and Emily have been trying to plan a hike up Mt Timpanogos.
The biggest obstacle to their plans was trying to time it right. Lindsey often comes to Utah in late June/early July. But apparently the best time to climb Timp is during late August/Early September - which is after school starts. So to make it work Lindsey had to plan a trip to Utah specifically to climb the mountain.
At the beginning of the year she said she would come to Utah in September specifically to climb Timp.
My involvement in this hike was more on the periphery. I liked the idea of climbing the mountain, but when my sisters were first talking about hiking Timp my feet were still in really bad shape. Walking a mile was painful - climbing a mountain felt impossible. However, my feet had improved a lot by this year. I knew I couldn't summit - hiking through a boulder field would be murder on my ankles, but hiking on a regular trail would be do-able. So I agreed to come along and just kind of be on my own parallel adventure.
My goal for the hike was the lake. I'd been that far before. My aunt Vera had taken me and my siblings there when I was around 15. I figured I could make it that far again - maybe. I hedged my bet by saying my other goal was the 3rd waterfall. If I could at least make it to the 3rd waterfall I would be happy.
I stayed at Emily's house on Friday night and we all woke up at 3:00 to get ready to hike. Everything was already packed so we just had to get dressed. We started driving at 3:30.
Emily invite a bunch of other people along. In the end there were 8 of us in a group. Me, Lindsey, and Emily, two moms from her homeschool group Molly and Emily. The other Emily also brought her 12 year old daughter. Our Uncle Johnny and our cousin Danny also came along. Johnny and Danny had climbed Timp about 3 or 4 years ago and Danny had wanted to do it again. So that's why they were coming.
My inner 6 year old was thrilled when I found out Johnny was coming. He's only 9 years older than me so in some ways he's more of a cousin than an uncle. He was always SO COOL to me as I was growing up. He told the funniest stories and had lots of interesting hobbies. So grown up me was super excited to have a chance to hang out with him.
Emily's brother in law John and his wife Angie were also going to be climbing Timp that day. But they had a concert that evening and wanted to be done with the mountain earlier. So they left about 2 hours ahead of us.
Me, Lindsey, and Danny shared the back seat of Emily's 8 passenger van. If we were smart we would have gone back to sleep. But Lindsey and I can't stop talking when we are together. Not.At.All. So we talked the whole way. Danny was in on the conversation a little bit too.
We got to the trailhead around 5:00. The parking lot was already full and there were cars lining the road. We found a parking spot on the shoulder and walked a short distance to the trailhead.
We were going up the Aspen Grove Trail because apparently that's the Loveless Way. The other option was the Timpanoke Trail. Johnny said he'd asked about that route when he was a kid, but his dad had said, "We don't go that way!" Though that is the way that Johnny and Danny had gone a few years ago.
A few of us used the bathroom at the trailhead. I ate the creamcheese and cheese and ham bagel that Lindsey had made the night before. And then we started hiking.
It was 5:25 AM.
The sky was dark. The moon was bright so we could see the trail okay. I had a flashlight, but I didn't use it. We could see lights from other hikers going up the mountain in front of us.
I'm a very slow hiker. My knee was dislocated when I was hit by a car 7 years ago. Everything healed fine, but I've never really regained speed. I also don't have the typical physique of a hiker. Most hikers are what I call gazelles. They are skinny and move fast. In contrast, I'm an ox. I'm heavy and slower. But I have stamina. I can keep going for a long time.
So very quickly everyone else was pulling ahead of me. I felt bad when I did catch up because I felt like I was slowing everyone down to wait for me. But then I found out they hadn't stopped for me. My Uncle Johnny wasn't feeling well. And the 12 year old girl wasn't doing very well either. The group was moving pretty slowly and stopping frequently for them.
I was also very aware of everything in my backpack. I go through a lot of water when I hike. This has always been a thing. Back when I worked on the ropes course at Snow Fun I would get terrible headaches if I didn't drink enough water each day. And I'm still like that when I'm outside. So I knew I would need a lot of water for this hike - and really for the whole day regardless of how much I hiked. So I'd brought my big backpack and I had ten 17 oz waterbottles in it. I also had a big bottle of gatorade and a Celsius energy drink. In addition to all that I had my ankle brace, an extra pair of pants, a small blanket, and a book. The book and blanket were for when I was done with my hike and waiting for everyone else to come down and meet me. Oh and I had my food. Another bagel sandwish, grapes, a bunch cookies, trail mix, and jerky.
All that wasn't impossibly heavy, but it wasn't exactly light either. I drank my first water bottle pretty fast just so I could have a reason so get another water bottle out of my bag and carry it in my hand rather than my back.
The trail also wasn't quite what I expected. I remembered this section of the trail from the parking lot to the first waterfall as wide, paved, and flat. This trail was narrow, rocky in parts, and more of an incline than I ever remembered.
As I hiked I found myself repeating some of the lyrics to Stay Alive by Jose Gonzales. Part of the chorus goes:
Open your eyes
Look into the sun as the new days rise
I repeated that over and over in my head as I hiked. (Here is the whole song if you want to hear it.)
We passed the first waterfall while the sky was still very dark. I could hear it, but I couldn't see it at all.
At some point either before the first waterfall or after it, Johnny started throwing up. He gets altitude sickness so he'd planned on throwing up at some point, but he expected it around the saddle high up on the mountain - not down by the first waterfall. He was starting to think that he was getting sick sick, not just altitude sick. But he kept going.
We made it to the second waterfall as the sky was getting lighter. This camera actually makes it look lighter outside than it really was at this point.
This is my picture of the second waterfall.
We took a picture as sisters - totally planning to take another one at some point. But that never happened.
We kept going and immediately the trail went crazy. There were rocks to scramble over, and big roots crossing the trail. There were parts where we went up for a bit and then went down. At one point I caught up with the group and announced, "Whoever designed that switchback should DIE!"
I was not sure I could keep going if every part of the trail was going to be that rough.
Johnny was certain he couldn't keep going. We'd stopped at a place with a rock wall and a rock ledge next to the wall. It was a great place to sit and Johnny decided that was as far as he could go. He would go back down the mountain and wait for us, or maybe get a ride home. We were all sad to say goodbye to him, but this felt like the best option.
I considered turning around too, but aside from having trouble on the rough parts of the trail I was doing okay. Also my backpack was too heavy for me to turn around. Every time we went over a small downhill patch of trail I could feel the weight of my pack pushing into my knees. It was fine for uphill hiking, but going down would actually be harder on my body than going up. I didn't want to turn around until after I'd drunk through at least half my water. So I kept going.
Though there were some more rocky parts of the trail where I had to scramble up and over rocks that made me consider just turning around and finding Johnny.
Fortunately the trail leveled out onto a long, long, long switch back heading north and then another long one coming back south. The trail on those switch backs was easy to just plod along. So I stopped considering turning around.
Also the sun was coming up. I really liked watched this sunrise. Like really liked it. I knew how lucky I was that my feet had recovered enough to allow me to hike this far.
And there was actual scenery. Here's part of the mountain.
And this is what we would be climbing later. The third waterfall was there somewhere.
This is looking down at the second waterfall that was now looking very small. My slow body was doing a good job of getting up this mountain.
Still it was worth it. Look at that sun coming up over the mountains in the distance.
My cousin Danny took this panoramic picture around this time.
As the sun came up I could also see the fall colors on the mountain.
And here I am trying to take a picture with the sunrise.
I made it through the first long switchback and started back on the long one that headed back toward the mountain. I had a pretty good look at where I still had to go. The trail would go over the tan area in the middle of the picture. Then it would start small switchbacks up the shadowy area. The castle looking area at the top was where a meadow started. And after the meadow was the lake.
Here's it is zoomed in.
I wasn't too worried about hiking by myself. The trail was full of people so if I did get hurt I wouldn't be by myself for long. And I was loving the scenery. Just look at this view down the mountain.
I came to the section of trail that crossed over rock. I later called this "The slog" but I hadn't named it that yet. I was more looking ahead at the area with all the switch backs. I was trying to figure out where exactly the 3rd waterfall was.
All the sudden someone behind me said, "Is that Valerie?" I turned around and saw Johnny. It was like he came back from the dead!
In my mind he had immediately gone down to the car after we left him. So I couldn't quite understand how he was here. But really he'd decided to take a nap on the stone ledge where we had left him. He said he'd slept there a while. When he woke up the sun was up and he was feeling a lot better. So he decided to keep hiking. He knew I was going slow so he figured he had a chance of catching up to me. And he did!
I'd been doing just fine on my own little solo adventure. But now that I realized I would get to spend the whole day with Johnny I was suddenly having an AMAZING time. At some point I had told Lindsey about a time when we were little and we went on a hike to Timpanogos cave with our dad and Johnny and our aunt Lori. On the way down on that hike I'd been paired up with Lori who was very fun and I had a great time with - but I was super jealous of Lindsey because she hiked down with Johnny. So I was thrilled to finally have Johnny all to myself on a hike.
We were reunited at maybe 10:00 AM. We would be together for the next 8 hours before we were reunited with anyone else from our group. We spent all that time talking about our families, our interests, our relationships with the church, our jobs, our hobbies, pretty much everything.
We went across "The Slog" together and started on the switchbacks. This part was CRAZY. There were people who had already summitted coming down the mountain. There were other people going up the mountain. EVERYONE was passing me and Johnny, but there wasn't much room. There were social trails and the real trails and it was getting really sunny and sort of hot. The trails had loose rock and dirt and it just felt a little hectic.
And one point Johnny told me I was going to fast for him- which just goes to show how bad he was still doing because NO ONE has called me a fast hiker in years. He went ahead and set the pace and we both kept shambling up that mountain.
We finally made it to some rocks that were in the shade and sat down to take a break. We were both feeling pretty beat, but we couldn't stop for long because the sun was moving higher in the sky and soon broke over the mountain outcropping that had been shading us.
So we gathered our strength and kept going. We went on for maybe another 10 minutes and came to the 3rd waterfall which was in a kind of alcove and seemed to be in an area that would be shady for a lot longer.
After all that work, the 3rd waterfall was pretty disappointing. It was dry!!!!!!! But here I am taking a victory selfie. (At the time I thought this was cute, but now that I look at it I feel like there is a lot of exhaustion in those eyes.)
Johnny propped himself up on a rock and fell asleep. I ate my grapes. They were delicious! Some of the best grapes I've ever had in my life. I also took inventory of what was in my back pack. I'd finished my 6th water bottle. This meant I could turn around if I wanted to and the weight of my bag wouldn't hurt my knees.
We rested there a long time. Maybe something like 30 minutes. (My biggest regret is that I didn't take a log of the times things were happening. Even on the hike time started to feel really fluid and waiting over a week to write about it isn't helping things.) Johnny said he felt like going on and I wasn't ready to turn around yet so we decided we should keep trying to make it to the lake. So we went up the trail a little bit more.
We stopped so Johnny could go down a side trail and go to the bathroom. While he was doing that I looked up the trail and felt my resolve slipping. I could see hikers on the switch backs far up trail. They were so small which meant we still had so far to go. They were so small in fact that they don't even show up in this picture. Trust me, I've tried zooming in on it and they are just little pixels.
When Johnny came back we both looked at that trail and I told him, "I think it's time to turn around. We might make it up that, but then we'd have to come down it. Let's just turn around now."
And he agreed.
So we started heading down the trail. And every five minutes or so for at least the next hour Johnny kept saying, "Oh I'm so glad we turned around." or "It was such a good idea to turn around."
We went back down the crazy tight switch backs which were just as full of people. Johnny was like, "How did we go up this? Was I conscious?"
Now that we were on the downhill it looked like we were coming down after summitting. So some people were congratulating us. That was kind of funny.
One guy said, "You guys are killing it." I said, "Oh something died - it was our ambition." I thought that was pretty funny.
We went back across The Slog which wasn't that bad because we'd had the long rest. And then we passed, "Reunion Point" where we'd met up again.
I was starting to need to go to the bathroom. I told Johnny, "There's going to be a gully of sorts up here eventually and I'll need to go to the bathroom there. When we came to it I was like, "Hmmm this doesn't look quite the same. I guess everything looks different now that the day is lighter. So I climbed up the gully and went to the bathroom. Then about 5 minutes later we came to the real gully and I was like, "Oh this would have been much better." But oh well.
The only other real notable part from this part of the hike was when I slipped a little. I was holding a water bottle that was nearly empty. It CRUNCHED against a rock when I fell and it sounded like I broke at least 3 bones. Johnny was really concerned until I said, "Don't worry, that was just my water bottle."
We finished the two looooooonnnnnnngggg switchbacks and were back on the part of the trail with the rocks that had been hard to go up. They were also hard to go down. Especially since I was starting to feel dizzy from loosing electrolytes (I'd been sweating a lot.) I was so happy when we finally made it to the rock ledges at the spot where the group had left Johnny that morning. We decided to rest there for a very long time.
Johnny stretched out and took another nap. I drank a whole bunch of Gatorade. I also took off my boots and rubbed Aspercream all over my feet. I put my ankle brace on. I would have put on my knee brace, but what I thought was a knee brace was really another ankle brace. But really I didn't need the knee brace. My knee has been doing really well lately and even on this hike it was doing fine.
Johnny had been using his phone to track Danny throughout the hike so we knew the rest of our group was somewhere near the summit. Around 1:10 we started getting texts with pictures of our group at the summit.
Here's Danny, Lindsey, and Emily at the summit. We both said something like, "good for them." followed by another, "I'm so glad we turned around!"
Later I would see more pictures from their adventures.
They saw mountain goats at the lake. Back when we did this hike as teenagers we'd thought the goats were polar bears when we first saw them from far away. Lindsey said, "I was really happy to see how fluffy these were because it meant we weren't complete idiots as kids."
They also ran into John and Angie after those two had summitted. Here's the group picture. Johnny and I had been looking out for John and Angie, but pretty much every hiker looked the same so I didn't think I'd recognize them. But sure enough they came down the trail while we were still hanging out on the ledge. I've met Angie like twice so I did recognize her. I was like "hey, you made it!"
Here they are crossing the boulder field. (This is what would have been impossible for me.)
And looking back over the boulder field.
Here they are at the saddle looking at what was still to come. They had to follow the trail around behind the rock plateau, go up more switch backs, and then walk the ridgeline to the summit. I later asked Lindsey if this was the start of the trail would she have done this. Her answer was "heck yes." Apparently this was the "easy part."
And here is the view down to the lake.
Everyone - including the 12 year old girl summitted. So that's pretty awesome.
Anyway, back to me and Johnny way down on the rock ledge. We knew it would be hours until our group was back down. So we were in no hurry to keep going.
Two girls came up the trail and took a break with us on the rocks. One of them was really struggling and they were deciding whether or not to keep going. They ultimately decided to turn around and try again another day. (It was really late in the day to be going up the mountain.) We had a nice time talking with them until they went back down.
Most people didn't want to stop at the rocks. I'd offer a seat to anyone coming down the mountain. Most declined. One guy said, "I want to sit in my car!"
Johnny and I were talking about my Aunt Vera who was the one who took us up this mountain. Johnny was talking about how she used to do 100 mile trail running. I said, "And then that got too easy so she decided to challenge herself by taking 5 kids up Timpanogos.
Really it's awesome that Vera took us up this mountain. She was continuing a tradition of climbing this mountain. My grandpa had taken the kids up this mountain nearly every year. Johnny said he was 5 the first time he climbed it. I asked him if he knew why my grandpa loved Timp. He didn't know. So I later asked my dad. He said it was because my grandpa's dad took him hiking up this mountain.
I wish I'd taken a picture of us at that ledge seating area, but I didn't think of it while we were there.
After a long time we decided we'd rested enough to at least make it down to the second waterfall. I was not looking forward to that awful switchback. I'm glad we rested a lot before trying it again. I made it through it okay, but I was wondering why I ever went up it in the first place. I was so young and innocent in the morning.
Johnny fell asleep again at the second waterfall. He'd had a cough for most of the day and I'd developed one too. We called it "Hiker's Lung."
I still had my energy drink with me and I was debating whether or not I should drink it. It was about 2:30 and normally my cut off for drinking one is 2:00. But I thought about all the things I still needed to do that day; get down the trail, wait for the group, go eat dinner, drive back to Layton, and check into a hotel and I realized that I would need that energy. So I drank it.
And then immediately regretted it because I'd forgotten that those things make me need to pee within 30 minutes.
Johnny woke back up and we talked about what to do next. We could keep hanging out all the waterfall for a lot longer. Or we could go hang out at the first waterfall. Or we could just hike all the way down and at be done.
We picked option 3. We just wanted to know we were done hiking.
So we headed back down to the first waterfall. Here's a picture of Johnny and his awesome poncho - he got so many complements on it. He told me its actually a serape because it doesn't have sleeves. He bought it in Mexico in 1996.
Then we kept going. As we hiked down that last bit of trail we both agreed that the trail was completely different that we remembered. Johnny's memories were also of it being wider, and paved.
The last 10 minutes or so I was looking for the bathroom the whole way. I was really happy to see that.
Then we found a picnic table and hung out there for a really long time. Johnny stretched out on the bench and fell asleep for probably the longest time.
I took stock of my water again. I'd drunk through the Gatorade bottle, the energy drink, and 8 water bottles. I had two water bottles left.
I'd only had to pee on the trail twice, but once we were off the trail all the water was working it's way out of me. I peed three times in the first two hours. One of the times I was standing in line at the bathroom doing a little potty dance. Someone asked me if I just got off the mountain. I was like, "No, I've been down for two hours, but all the water I drank on the trail is coming out of me now."
Johnny had been tracking Danny but his phone died so we had to just kind of guess after a while. Around 6:00 we figured everyone would be coming down the trail soon so we went to wait at the trailhead. We said, "They should be showing up ANY minute." We said that for an hour. It didn't help that Emily had called me from the first waterfall and said that she and Danny would see us in about 15 minutes.
It took them 30 minutes. Her knee had completely seized up and she limped down the last stretch of trail. Johnny and I were ready to jump into action as the well rested (in his case) and caffeinated (in my case) support crew. Johnny took the car keys and went to get Emily's van. I supplied her with ibuprofen and aspercream.
Lindsey and Molly showed up about 15 minutes after them. Lindsey wanted to sit so badly that she just sat with her back to the bathroom wall and didn't care at all. She had done amazing - especially when you consider that she came from Sea Level on Thursday.
Johnny had told me that one reason he came was so he could help everyone up the trail since he's climbed it several times before. He was a little worried about everyone being up there on their own. I told him, "Don't worry, Lindsey is up there. She is the most competent person and can do ANYTHING. They will be fine."
Then I quoted a line from Oceans 12 to him. There's a part where Linus askes the team "When you have a problem who do you go to?" And everyone answers in unison, "Rusty!" I told Johnny, "If you asked my siblings, "when you have a problem who do you go to?" Every single one of us would answer, "Lindsey.""
The last group to come down was the other Emily and her 12 year old daughter. They were about 40 minutes behind Lindsey. While we waited for them we passed 7:30 PM I said, "We've been here for 14 hours." A little after that Emily and her daughter showed up.
My Emily couldn't drive because it was her right knee that was hurt so Johnny drove down the mountain. He's used to his electric cars with regenerative braking so he wasn't used to the old technology of actually using the brake. We had to remind him that he was going REALLY fast down the canyon.
We went to JCW's in American Fork. I had a small hamberger and fries. I'd felt mostly fine all day, but now I was feeling a little sick so I didn't want to eat anything too big. Lindsey got a shake for the three of us to share.
Then Johnny drove us back to Layton. That drive felt like it took forever. When we passed Lagoon I was like, "Were only here!"
We went back to Emily's house where everyone had left their cars. My stuff was already in the car so Lindsey came into my car. Emily had to grab a few things from her house. I felt so bad for her when she had to climb up her steps into her house. She got her things and then followed us in her van. (Her knee was okay enough for the short distance to the hotel.)
I'd been the one to suggest the hotel. I'd realized that I wouldn't want to sleep on a couch after climbing a mountain. And I was really really looking forward to the hot tub. I'd probably talked about the hot tub at least once an hour on that trail.
We checked into the hotel at 10:05 and I was worried the hot tub would be closed. But it was open to 11:00. So we showered really fast and then put on swimming suits and went to the hot tub. That warm water felt so good on my tired muscles.
At 11:00 we went back to our hotel room and took longer showers. I'd brought a big tote full of comfort items. I always joke with my sisters when we do our camping trips and hikes and other outdoor things by saying, "Why can't we just go to a spa?" So I wanted to have a little bit of a spa feel.
I brought fake plants and soft blankets from home. I'd bought facial headbands and fuzzy socks for each of us. I'd brought things like essential oils and candy. It was really nice to have those things.
Lindsey was pretty certain she'd reserved a room with two queen beds, but somehow we only had one king. But we were so tired we didn't care. Back when we kids we used to share a bed so this was a nice call back.
We all tried the facemasks that I brought and here's a picture with us with the headbands.
We stayed up until about 12:30 talking. Then we all fell asleep.
My body hurt, but I'd taken such good care of my knees and ankles that they were doing really well. Nothing was swelling. And I could walk without pain. But when I laid down I realized that my hips were hurting. There was really nothing to do but fall asleep though.
In the morning I tried to stretch them out and that seemed to help a bit.
It would have been awesome to sleep until like 10:00, but we were all awake around 7:30. Around 8:30 we went downstairs for breakfast. Then we packed up and checked out. Emily was going to take Lindsey down to my parents, but we figured she needed to be with her family more. (And yes, her knee started feeling better with no long term problems.)
So I took Lindsey down to my parents and we told them all about going up Timpanogos. That was fun.
Then Lindsey caught an Uber to the Provo Airport and I started driving back home.
I had my seat warmers on high for the drive. Those helped my poor little hips.
I thought I'd stop and take a nap on the way home, but I just drove straight home. I was pretty sore by the time I got there. I went inside and sat on the couch. I had the kids go out to the car and bring things in for me.
I was pretty out of it the rest of the day. I still had my hiking cough and I was feeling so achy. I was pretty certain I'd caught whatever Johnny had had. Around 7:00 I went to bed. I took Nyquil and got the best nights sleep I'd had in like 4 nights. It helped that my bed is so comfy. I laid down and was like, "Wait, my hips don't hurt." Our mattress supported them perfectly.
I woke up feeling a lot better. And that's good because I ended up with jury duty on Tuesday. But that's a story for another post.
It's funny because when I was on the mountain I was like "I will NEVER climb this again." But since coming down I've been like, "Hmmm, I wonder . . . . . . "
I'm fairly certain I could get as far as I got again. And if I actually trained could I make it farther. And what if I tried the Timpanoke way? There's no bounder field on that route. Could I make it to the top?
So that's why I've titled this Timpanogos 2025, because maybe, just maybe, there will be a Timpanogos 2026 or 27.
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