Thursday, August 26, 2010
Hiking Mt Timp - part 4
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
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