John Colton's blog

This is the 4th and final part. If you haven't looked at the pictures from parts 1, 2, and 3, start below.

We had lunch at the top, but didn't stay too long (45 mins?) because it looks liked a storm might be rolling in. So, we started hiking back down. Up until the saddle, the trail down was the same as the trail up. Here are those steep switchbacks again.

Apparently a whole bunch of mountain goats live around here. They were cute, but much larger than I expected. (This guy probably weighed twice as much as me.)


This is where the trail down diverged from the trail up. The trail we came up on is off to the right (not in the picture). It would go back through the rock slide to the lake. This trail is the one that takes you down to the Timpanooke campground. It goes over the edge that you can see, and down.

This picture is looking back up, after we had gone down the trail in the previous picture a bit. You can see the saddle, the rock slide, etc. The trail that we were on is off to the right (not in view).

This trail went through what is called "The Meadow", where there were an amazing amount of wild flowers.


You can see we are starting now the descent in earnest.

We are almost at the bottom now. The part that we just came down is called the "Giant Staircase", because the series of ledges that you can see look like steps for a giant (if you use your imagination).

And who should be waiting for us at the bottom, but a friendly moose?


We had separated into to 2-3 groups by then. I was in the last group; the people in the earlier group(s) actually had to wait for the moose to get off of the trail ahead of them.


The End. It was an amazing experience, but a grueling one which I may or may not ever repeat again. We shall see.

P.S. For the originals of all of these pictures (these have all been shrunk to conserve megabytes), and many MANY more, go to this gallery on my BYU website: http://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/colton/timp%20pictures/gallery.htm

If you haven't looked at the pictures from "part 1" and "part 2" yet, start below.

As seen in an earlier photo, the trail goes up and south (formerly left) from the saddle. This is what it looks like. I think the thing way up there in the distance is the shack at the top. To further orient yourself, the rock slide would be down and to the left, from this view. The lake is that direction too, although it wouldn't have been visible from here.

There was a whole series of switchbacks in this section. You can see how steep it is.

And when we got high enough, we could see the lake again! How's this for an angle?

The views were indeed spectacular. I think this is looking down over that Aspen Grove ridge again, the way that we hiked up.

Getting pretty close to the top now, this is looking backwards. Starting from where the camera is and going backwards, you can see a series of switchbacks, the smaller peak where the really sharp switchbacks were, and to the right of the smaller peak you can see the trail going back down to the saddle. Then, you can see the trail going steeply down from the saddle (what I referred to as "the switchback" in an earlier picture, when I was talking about the trail going up to the saddle).


If you look closely, you can see our house! Find the two green ovals just to the left of the middle of the picture. (The left oval isn't really oval, but that's OK.) Make a rectangle with the centers of those ovals on opposite corners, and our house is pretty close to the upper left corner of the rectangle.

I made it!!!!!! This is the top.

Have I mentioned the view was spectacular?


I shot some video from the shack at the top. Here you go!

If you haven't looked at the pictures from "part 1" yet, start below.

This is "The glacier", which basically climbs up the hill from "The lake", up to the very top. Some people climb down from the peak by sliding down the glacier, but one hears about serious accidents nearly every year from people doing that. So we didn't.

A couple of the students hiked a little ways up the glacier. Here's a cool shot looking back over the lake.

And a nice butterfly.

Here's my student Matt, still at the lake. He took several hundred pictures on the hike, I believe, but he hasn't gotten them to me yet so none of these are from him.

And here's Courtney.

Leaving the lake, it wasn't too far before we could see how we were going to get to the top. Namely, the trail went through this rock slide for a ways, then climbed abruptly. You can see the abrupt climb start if you start at the middle of the person's visible forearm, and go over to the right about 30% of way across the picture. The trail climbs up (to the right in this picture), switches back, then climbs some more (to the left) until it reaches "The saddle". The saddle is the lowest point on the ridge line on the left hand side of the picture. The saddle is the first point along the whole trail where you can look out over Utah Valley. The trail then keeps going left (in this picture), along the ridge line all the way to the edge of this picture, and beyond.

This is now looking back over the rock field (boy that was a pain to cross!). You can see the abrupt drop-off at what I described earlier as the Aspen Grove ridge line.

Here's a closer-up view of the saddle. Almost there, now!

Now we're at the saddle! Be sure to click on this picture to enlarge. (Or even download it, so you can zoom in with a jpg viewing program of your choice.) This is probably the best panorama shot I've ever created, done by stitching together 5 individual pictures. It represents pretty close to a 180 degree view facing westward at the saddle.

The sweaty hiker is enjoying a brief respite at the saddle.

For me, one of the Big Events of the summer was hiking Mt Timpanogos. I had two visiting students as part of BYU's "REU" (Research Experience for Undergraduates) that I was supervising, and as a standard part of the REU program our department chair (Ross Spencer) takes the students on a series of hikes, culminating with Mt Timp.

To prepare I biked to work nearly every day for a month or two, and went on three "training hikes" of several hours each. It wasn't enough... I barely made it, and was extremely sore for several days. (The hike was about 5.5 hours up and 3.5 hours down, if I recall correctly.) But it was worth it! The day was glorious.

I'll share pictures in four sets of ten or so. Most of the pictures were ones I took, but some were from students Courtney Klosterman, Ben Francis, and Jessica Morgan. (Thanks!)

We hiked up the Aspen Grove trail, and hiked down the Timpanooke Campground trail. We started in the dark (6 am), so didn't take very many pictures of the first section. Fortunately, I have some great pictures of the first section from this blog post from last year: http://johncolton.blogspot.com/2009/08/summer-pictures-part-2-hike-near-back.html. So go look at those pictures, first.

I think this is the second waterfall you come to along the trail, but it could be the third.

This is the large snowfield you can see from below (see my blog post from last year). It's much smaller in this picture than in the blog post from last year, because this was later in the season.

The dawn hit us after we had been hiking a while. The light was pretty.

This is what I'm calling the fourth waterfall. (The third waterfall was a little off the trail, so I'm not sure if it counts.) The trail actually goes in back of the waterfall. That was cool.

If you look at the blog pictures from last year, you can see a clear ridge line at the top. This was what things looked like right around there.

I honestly don't recall this section, but I took the picture so I must have been there! It looks way more dangerous than it seemed at the time.

This is right at that first ridge now, or possibly just past. From this point you could look back and see the city of Heber and a bit of the Deer Creek Reservoir in the distance.

After you make it up over the ridge (after hiking for several hours up a pretty steep incline), you are rewarded with a view of the destination! If you look closely, you can see a small shack on top of the highest part. I couldn't believe how much higher it was than we had already climbed.

I was impressed with my camera's zoom ability. I didn't expect this picture to turn out so nicely.

This is "The Lake", as people call it. (Emerald Lake, to be precise.) It was much smaller than I expected--about the only thing the entire hike I could say that of.

You may have seen the original Double Rainbow youtube video,


...but have you heard the Double Rainbow *song*? (from the AutoTune the News people)


Made me smile! (The second video, not the first.)