To the Summit and Back :)

[pecan]

Well we just did a great hike yesterday. We woke up at 12:30 am and started hiking at 2:30 am. We reached the saddle (just below the summit) just before sunrise at 6:00 am which was our goal. Hung out on the saddle while the sun came up. My DH stayed on at the saddle being gear watch (since he had been to the summit before) while my brother and I took the summit I did it!!! It was scary, but I did it!!! 11,749 feet above sea level It took us a total of 10 hours from start to finish.

Weird encounter. About 45 minutes into the hike we came across 1 guy in his 60's and 2 women in their 60's. They were headed down and didn't look good. My brother asked if they needed anything. The guy said a flash light (theirs had burnt out) and one of the women said water. So we gave them an extra flashlight we had and an extra bottle of water. They said they had been on the mountain for 21 hours!!! They had no camping gear either.

I will kind of narrate through the pics

I love hiking! Sitting at the top of the world watching the sunrise is one of the most amazing things you can do.

Since it was dark the whole way up to the saddle, there are no pictures of that portion of the hike.

From the saddle at sunrise looking east:

Looking west into Utah county and Utah lalke:

Looking straight down a 1,000 foot drop scree field

DH watching the sunrise (you can see the summit behind him)

Here is where the summit push starts. Keep in mind, once you hit the trail from the saddle to the summit it is 1,000 foot drop in ALL directions straight down. You just don't look LOL.

Looking toward the summit trail and my brother:

More summit trail:

Looking up toward the summit. See the little building on the right tip? That is our destination point:

Still heading to the summit, but looking back.

Almost there

Looking back at the saddle.

So close you can almost reach out and touch it.

Finally made it. The following pictures are at the summit.

Looking east from the summit. You can see the glaciers and emerald lake below.

Looking north toward the saddle and salt lake valley

Looking west toward utah county and utah lake from the summit.

The edge of the summit

cont...

 

[pecan]

I am KING OF THE MOUNTAIN!!!

But my brother thinks he is.

The trail back down from the summit to the saddle is very sketchy with sudden death in all directions. But even sketchier when a heard of mountain goats decides they have the right of way. They got as close as 8 feet to us. There is nowhere to go but to fall and they will push right by you. So my brother and I propped ourselves against rocks and let them go by. Then once they were above us they knocked rocks down so toward us so we were trying to move quickly but cautiously to avoid getting hit.

Sweet little Baby goats!!!

Then when we got back to saddle where my DH was we found he had company too

Now for the hike down the mountain

cool rock

Looking back at the summit

The upper meadow (at about 10,000 feet)

Here is a good picture of the glaciers just below the summit.

About half way down the mountain

Cool waterfall

 

[ididntdoit99]

That's cool, and some great pictures.

 

[Mmathis]

Oh, awesome, awesome, awesome! A hundred times thanks for sharing!! What was altitude at the top & how many vertical feet of climbing? Love the goats! Sure hope those older folks made it down OK. Sounds like they weren't very well prepared for that trek!

 

[pecan]

You start at 7000 feet above sea level and the summit is 11,749 feet above sea level. The hike is not that steep (other than the last 1.5 miles to the summit) but it is long... 15 miles round trip.

The older folks we saw were about 45 minutes from the bottom and we asked them to put the wtaer bottle and flash light in the back of my brothers pick-up when they got down. The flashlight and water bottle where in hte pick-up so they made it

 

[addy1]

Very pretty! I loved the hiking we did in colorado, above tree level, the flowers where just fantastic and the views too.

 

[lovinglife]

I have never seen any of Utah from that angle! Awesome! I live about 300 miles from you. Have you been really hot this summer too?

 

[pecan]

I have never seen any of Utah from that angle! Awesome! I live about 300 miles from you. Have you been really hot this summer too?

Not hotter than any other year. It has been in high 90's to low 100's since June and it has rained once. But that is actually pretty average. It's not unusually hot here till we break 105 to 110 on a daily basis. We did have a unusually warm and dry winter which effects our summer water. So here's to hoping for a wet winter this year

 

[j.w]

Gorgeous pix Pecan!

 

[pecan]

Thanks J.W. and everyone else with your kind comments

I just loved the baby goats. They were so cute and little dare devils bouncing from cliff to cliff. The goats got so close to us I thought they were going to let us scratch their chins LOL. The picture of the goat standing on the trail with his head slightly cocked to the side was only about 8 feet straight in front of me walking toward me. It was like he was wondering if he trusted me or not, and I was wondering the same thing about him. Then he turned and bounce straight up the cliff face.

Silly goats

 

[j.w]

Those goats are really cute but there was a bad situation here on the news in 2010 on how one of them had a cranky side to him and killed a 63yr old man hiking up in the Olympic National Park here in Wa. Just be careful w/ them cuz ya never know how they might react. This was said to be a rare happening and the goat was being given an autopsy to see if there was something wrong w/ it. I never heard anything more about it tho.

 

[pecan]

I never hike without a firearm, too many bad things can hapen out there. This summit hike starts in the same canyon that a little boy was killed by a black bear back in 2007 and we have countless mountain lion sightings in the area. Plus you hear crazy stories of female hikers getting attacked by people and even worse raped or killed. My .45 ACP stays with me at all times.

Though I have never hunted and it hurts my heart to see an animal injured or killed, I would have no problem dropping one in self defense.

luckily these were nice puppy goats

 

[j.w]

Good idea pecan, it never hurts to be prepared! That one goat that killed that guy could have been ill. Wish they would have let us know if they found anything out about it tho after they did the autopsy on the goat.

Here's the full story below:

Mountain Goat Attack: Killed Hiker a Hero by Warning Others

By Jack Phillips
October 19, 2010
A mountain goat attack in Washington that left a man dead could have been a lot worse if it were not for the actions of the endangered hiker, witnesses of the attack told the Peninsula Daily News on Tuesday.
Bob Boardman, 63, was gored by a goat known to exhibit aggressive behavior in the past in Olympic National Park on Saturday. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but died due to injuries to his thigh.Boardman spent his last remaining moments alive trying to warn others of the 300-pound mountain goat chasing after him.
"He spent his last minutes putting himself between the goat and everyone else," witness Margaret Bangs told the Daily News, adding that he shouted at her and told her to get back.
"Boardman was clearly and knowingly taking on risk to protect others,” she said in an email to the newspaper. "Please let people know that Boardman's last act on this earth was to protect others even though he knew he was in grave danger."
Park rangers tracked the aggressive animal down and shot it. Veterinarians conducted a necropsy on it to see if the animal had diseases that could have prompted it to act strangely.

 

[pecan]

Wow, interesting story and the guy sounds like a hero. It sounds like the goat must have got him in the femoral artery. The only thigh injury that could by life threatening. It would be interesting to know what they found out.

 

[j.w]

I did find this and I guess they knew some of them were acting aggressively towards people but don't know if they warned people about it or not:

The family of a man who was gored to death last October by a mountain goat in Olympic National Park has filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit.
About 300 goats live in the Olympic National Park, and rangers have been tracking eight or so that have acted aggressively toward hikers on trails in the Hurricane Ridge area, sometimes following people on trails or not getting out of the way when people approach, said Maynes, the park spokeswoman.
Rangers have shot nonlethal firecrackers and beanbag rounds at the animals, which are not native to the Olympic Mountains, to discourage them from approaching people, Maynes said. The park service had a program to relocate some goats to the Cascades in the 1980s in part because they were affecting the terrain, but the population rebounded in the 2000s.
Maynes said it is possible people have fed the animals. The Olympic Mountains also don't naturally produce a lot of salt, so goats and other animals, always on the hunt for it, sometimes are drawn to areas where people urinate on rocks, she said.
Rangers advise staying at least 100 feet from goats.
"The underlying fact is that wildlife is unpredictable, and that applies to all types of wildlife," Maynes said.