45F, High Uintahs Wilderness Area. This was our assault on Kings Peak, the highest point in Utah. Wade is in a club of guys that do this for every state. Utah is his 24th state or something like that. He climbed Elbert in Colorado on Monday, and after we were done today he said Kings Peak is more difficult due to the length and condition of the trail, even though it is a thousand feet lower. I returned from Peru Friday morning at 6:30, got home at 7:30, packed and left for the airport at 9:30. I stuffed everything I needed for the weekend into my backpack, Wade picked me up at the airport in SLC and we camped at the Henry's Fork trailhead on Friday night after buying some last-minute supplies in Evanston, Wyoming. We woke up early, broke camp, ate a cold breakfast and hit the trail at 6:17, first light.
The goal was to do the 28-mile round trip in 10 hours. Wade had a lunch bet with some work colleagues that he could make it that fast, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't the reason he had to buy lunch. We didn't see anybody until we got to Dollar Lake, which is about the halfway point, then there were lots of people on the trail after that. The normal schedule is to hike in, camp and then do the assault as a day hike from a closer distance, then pack out -- a 3-day trip. No such luxuries for us, but we got lots of compliments for our foolhardiness, especially when they found out we were sea-level rats.
After Dollar Lake is Gunsight Pass, following which you have a choice to climb a ridge and go straight across to Anderson Pass, or do the more sensible thing and drop back down into a basin that eventually goes to Mirror Lake (I think) and then back up to Anderson Pass. We went into the basin and back up. Just below Anderson Pass a lone hiker came across the ridge and said the shortcut wasn't too bad at all. He was Matt, the only guy all day we saw who was faster than us -- more about the girl side of things later. From Anderson Pass we headed up the ridge to the summit, actually about 5 of them, it stairsteps and each one looks like the top as you are coming up. Worse, there isn't a trail, it is just a boulder scramble, and it lasts almost a mile. The view from the top was magnificent, of course, we could see 4 basins surrounding the peak. Matt was waiting for us up there and had us take his picture because he forgot his camera. (I would post pictures but I left my camera cord and can't download photos yet.) I have never been over 13,000 feet before, the summit is over 13,500, so at least one PR this year. Wade and I were both getting altitude headaches, but they were under control. I did lose my appetite once we cleared 12,000 feet, though. Despite it all, we still got to the summit in 5:17, so we figured we would make it up on the way down.
Wrong, it took longer to get off the summit back to Anderson Pass than to climb up. Below Anderson Pass I twisted my ankle badly, about 12 miles from the parking lot. Insult to injury, I twisted it because I stepped wrong on a clump of grass. I could tell when it happened that it was bad, but no choice, had to keep going or call a helicopter. Even though I didn't twist it on a rock, I blame it on my jello legs from coming down. Then to make up time we took the cut-off across the ridge. It was OK until we had to come off the ridge into Gunsight. Those rocks are loose, some of them large, and I was not in good enough shape to be coming down a rocky slope. At one point I started a rockslide and almost went down with it. Needless to say, I am not recommending the cut-off, frankly I think it is dangerous. Then weather moved in and we found ourselves in a hailstorm. After Gunsight the hailstorm turned into a thunderstorm, and the lightning was hitting within a couple of hundred yards of us, a couple of the strikes even closer. But there was no place to hide, so we kept going and hoped for the best. Altogether the storm lasted about 2 hours, which in my experience is very uncharacteristic for summer monsoons in western mountains.
Below Dollar Lake Wade started to get very tired, and I wasn't feeling too good either. We stopped to refill water and he and I both ate, which turned out to be the only thing wrong with him. About 4 miles from the trailhead a couple of women came jogging past us. They said they had been all the way to the top, although we couldn't figure out how they had done it since we didn't see them heading up. We think maybe they started after us and had dropped down into the basin on the way up while we were taking the cutoff on our return trip. But Wade and I were unable to jog along these rocky trails at this altitude. We are just flatlanders -- we would need trail shoes, trail skills and trail training to be able to jog this thing. Apparently the record is in the 5-hour range.
The trip down took almost 7 hours, so about 12 hours total. Wade graciously didn't blame it on my ankle, he said he wouldn't have been able to make 10 hours anyway. We were both relieved to be back safely. I am putting this down as a long run because, believe it or not, we were wearing heart rate monitors and the whole trip was in the LHR range.
My ankle today is very sore, to the pont it could interrupt SGM preparations. On the good side, my quads are the sorest they have ever been, including after any downhill marathon,. That means I got some very good downhill training which hopefully will carry over to October 1. Honestly, I can't go down stairs today without grasping a handrail.
Back to the heat in the morning. Houston set an all-time record high on Saturday. Apparently some weatherman is predicting that the ridge of high pressure is supposed to move off in two weeks. Two weeks? That sort of a forecast has no science to it, about as useful as saying temperatures will drop by Christmas. Hate to say it, but we need a big, slow-moving tropical storm to get us out of this rut. But I got out of the heat for one memorable day at least. | 