We made it!!! We hiked Mount Wilson...
- 14 miles
- 5,700 feet in elevation
- it was 49,000 steps on my fit-bit
- It was 459 flights of stairs on my fit-bit
- 523 active minutes on my fit-bit
- 12 hours on the mountain from parking to leaving.
For me, this was one of those awesome moments in life that I will always look back on because there were people telling me I couldn't do it... that I wouldn't make it up, or that I wouldn't make it down... that I would have to force all of my gear onto my husband... That the snow would be the end of me... that someone had died the week before on the mountain when they fell off after hitting an ice patch (he wasn't hiking, he was trail running) ... every reason to say don't go
But I DID IT.
I completed it.
Sometimes you need to do things in life that other people say you can't do... and for me, this was one of those moments, not to prove it to someone else, but because I needed to restore faith in myself, and to do something larger than myself...
You see, I lost a lot of self confidence when I decided to quit at the first thing I have ever quit in my 32 years on this rock. Back in summer, we spent some time in Utah and had hoped to summit Mnt. Timpanogos... and we had to turn back about 1/2 a mile from the peak.
It was 11,752 feet in elevation, a 15 mile trip from aspen grove to the peak, and I had to call it quits 1/2 a mile from the summit.
I didn't blog about it... but I posted this picture in our annual spending post. (This was not in fact the summit, but rather, it was "our" summit for the day.
I made the decision to turn around and at the time, I thought it was because I couldn't do it. That I didn't have it in me.
On Mnt. Timp I had Gear failure.
- I had a pack that didn't fit despite getting sized at REI... (a Small/Med Women's pack cannot be swapped for someone on the SMALL end of Extra Small. I was miss sized as a "small" and we assumed it would be okay because it felt okay in the store with weight in the pack).
- My feet REALLY needed sock liners, in addition to wool socks because my feet sweat a lot in my hiking boots. I was blister city in them.
- I was a hiking newbie and didn't layer my clothes correctly, including removing layers when I got too warm...
- I didn't tell my hiking group when I needed to eat for more fuel because I was the slowest person in the pack... and when I got to the points where we did eat, I didn't eat enough of the right stuff to give me energy.
- I didn't listen to my body in an effort to try and save face and instead I "hiked their hike" instead of mine.
When I got home, I decided not to give up on hiking, and not to give up on me. I watched more hiking videos, did some road walking with my pack and really dug into nutrition and motivation on train. I watched hiking videos without my husband, and even read some articles.
Then, I began hinting to my hubd that I wanted to go with him and do Mount Wilson when he started his 1st peak on the 6 pack of peaks challenge. I opened myself up to the possibility of failure again, and in doing so, my brain kind of realized that I didn't make it up Mnt. Timp because I physically couldn't... I just wasn't prepared, and I didn't "hike my own hike." I knew I could make changes and try again with Mount Wilson.
Mnt Wilson, wasn't a perfect Hike for me. I learned a lot more that I plan to implement moving forward on the trail, but if I gave up, I never would have known I had it in me to summit.
We got up at 4:00 am, and hit the road by 4:45... parked the car, ate a quick breakfast and hit the trail around 6 am... I was wearing EVERYTHING I brought for WARMTH in my entire pack... and then took the wool finger - less gloves from my hub's pack to wear over mine since he had leather gloves. I'll be buying my own set of wool gloves for my next hike.
We leisurely hiked the start to warm our bodies up and enjoyed the nice "approach" trail in, which leads to other less crazy hikes than the peak.
About 1.5 miles in, I turned around and asked hubs if he took out the parking pass and placed it on our car before we left... he didn't, which meant a 1.5 mile slack pack back to the car, so I carried his 20 lb bag, plus my own pack further up the trail to a good wait spot while he went back to the car.
 |
| Steamy glasses after a jog back in the cold temps |
Thankfully we avoided a ticket, but we lost a little over an hour and hubs added 3 extra miles onto his hike with that move...
So, we continued on, hubs snacking as we walked. After a few minutes we were back and enjoying the trail, taking the path that would lead to the summit.
We hit the trail marker at the top of the falls / water dams that were REALLY full from all the rain and snow.
At the half way point, we stopped near the trail privy so we could eat with the sun on us.
Then we hit Sturtevant camp, and I got to ride on the swing and take a few moments to walk through the cute area before the real incline started...
The incline came with the start of the snow.... much sooner than we expected in all honestly. We shushed through it and started the trek up. Hubs put on a podcast for me when he realized my pace was going to be like molasses... and it was a nice distraction while we headed up some of the steeper sections. (We listened to Back packer radio and listened to interviews from PCT and AT thru hikers and I really enjoyed it).
When the trail turned to heavy snow and we started approaching some of the steeper drop-off's, we decided to take a snack break to give us more energy and to take the time to pull out the micro spikes we bought just days before so we could continue.
Then it was snow, snow, snow all the way up. With the gear, the spikes and the snow, it was taking us AT LEAST like an hour a mile to get to the summit....
We got to the half way rest spot (half way from Sturtevant Camp to the summit, that is), giving us only 1.4 miles to summit. Along the way we got our first good view
and we thought we were up high enough in the sun that we could shed our micro spikes... thinking the rest of the trail would be in the sun...
But we were wrong... and turned the mountain to find more snow... we started hiking through it, thinking it might just be a bad patch, but the snow continued, so I put back on my micro spikes.
We got to the summit there around 2 pm. The skies were so clear, you could see all the way to Saddleback Mountain!
We spent an hour at the top eating 2nd lunch at the closed cafe benches with the sun on our backs. I used my cook pot to heat up some hot chocolate for hubs and we took the time to get him warm since my pace was a bit slower than planned and he wasn't able to move the faster pace he needed to, to keep warm... Which we realized only after the summit.
At 3 pm, we hit the official parking lot marker as we headed toward the decent trail
Mnt. Wilson can be an out and back hike, but most hikers choose to take the decent trail down, and that's what we did because we didn't want to post hole down in the snow which was really bad on that side of the mountain... AND it would have required us to do the last mile 100 % Up hill on pavement.
So we hit the decent trail and we KILLED IT.
It may have taken us 8 hours (with our parking lot mishap) to get up, but it took us 3 hours to get off the mountain.
3 hours!!!!
I even had about 6 lbs of extra weight in my pack on the return since hubs had to do the extra 3 miles back to the car. Since I was still feeling good, we decided I would carry the emergency water reserve for the both of us.
Not as many pictures or views on the way down, but we were able to do the return without spikes. We actually flew past everyone who had left the lunch area before us. (I chatted with a few girls who were looking for the return trail while we we still at the marker, and I joked about how i'm like molasses going up, but speedy going down... When we passed them she was like "damn, you really are fast!" It gave me that burst as we hit the slush and trekked on.
We found rocks in the road, trees we had to climb over, but we were racing the sun and didn't snap ever photo we could. We also didn't do a single break down other than for quick water swapping as needed.
We hit the car at 6 pm, as the sun was starting to go down, so we just avoided needing to use our headlamps as we cleared the trail as it started getting that late dusk ish before dark.
But we did it!
(And we used all the gear we ended up buying for our hike, so it was money well spent. My bottom base layer was awesome. It breathed when I needed it to and it kept me warm under my thin summer hiking pants).
We really couldn't have done the hike without our friends who watched our toddler for 24 hours. We dropped off little man Friday night for pizza and a sleep over and they kept him till Saturday night when we grabbed him before bedtime because we had the traffic back.
They are amazing people and we are blessed to call them friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment