Provo Peak 11,000 feet

The next event with the Utah Climbing Club was hiking Provo Peak.

We met at Rock Canyon trailhead in Provo at 11 am. We hiked about a mile past the Rock Canyon campground. We set up camp, ate some good food, then found a good spot to practice self-arresting and belay techniques.

Here is my friend Ang sliding down a not very steep hill. We had to practice sliding down lots of different ways to see if we could use our ice axes and stop ourselves.

See how nicely she has "self arrested" herself.

We had a nice place to camp. The camp was quite by 9:00 pm since everyone knew we were waking up at 1:00 am.

We hiked up the north-west ridge. There was less avalanche danger on this side. We woke early and had a nice oatmeal breakfast. Then started hiking up the road to the south until we got to the West Ridge. Then we just went up.

We used snowshoes to break through the feet and feet of wonderful soft powder. I never broke trail, but my friend Ang sure did. I cant even imagine trying to make steps up a mnt in powder that sometimes went up to you thighs!

It was so nice to have the sun finally come up. I may not love waking up at 1:00 am but it is so nice to not be able to see where we were going. If I had to stand at the bottom of the mnt and look at the summit, I may never have started. Instead when the sun starts to come, you realize how close you are... just a couple more hours.

We had hiked in 4 miles the first day. Which left only 3.5 miles up the mnt, 3.5 mile down the mnt, then back to base camp, pack up and hike out 4 miles.

Well- the 3.5 miles up the mnt took us from 2:00 am to 7:45 am.

I got to the bottom of those trees at about 6:30. I refueled. and prepared myself for the last .25 of a mile. It would take an hour to do it.

There were heavy huge cornices all over. They are dangerous if you go out on them, since they could just collapse under you. But they look very grand.

This was so close to the summit ... but I had to stop and take a picture. The sun coming up was so spectacular.
We were so tired, but we were going as fast as we could....which wasn't very fast at all!



I didn't ask anyone to take a picture of me at the summit. I was to tired for that. Instead my friend Ang is in the blue. She was second to summit. She would have been first but she broke trail so much she was a bit on the tired side!

We put on crampons and got out our ice axes for the way down. It only took us 3 hours to get down what had taken us 6 hours to get up.

We made it back to camp. Laid down on sleeping bags and ate a wonderful squished peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We packed up and started down the trail.

I was low on energy but my legs just kept going one step in front of the other. We stopped at the most wonderful place to get some food. Magleby's. WOW. I ate so fast. Then came home and slept 12.5 hours. Then ate more and more and more. I was surprised how hungry I was.

It was a great adventure- But I am looking forward to going to St. George in two weeks to learn to do some great rock climbing. Thankfully this year wont be all snow and mnt, but also some sun and rocks!

I think I must mention that no was was injured on this trip. To my great relatives... who worry about my safety on these mountains... This one was exhausting but not dangerous :)