The point in the center of the picture above is King's Peak, the highest peak in Utah at 13,528 feet. That was what we did for the High Adventure this year with the young men. I hadn't backpacked since I was a teen. Needless to say, I was trashed. Too big of a pack, too far of a hike, and I prefer hiking on trails rather than boulders and rocks. Seriously, even the best trail sucked rocks (literally). The boys had a good time, only a few puking incidents because of altitude (base camp was at 10,000 feet). On Thursday we drove a couple of hours to the trailhead and hiked 8 miles in. I got a few blisters that day that stayed with me for the duration of the trip. Awesome! It was really pretty where we camped. There was a spring where we purified water close by. We summitted the next day. I made it to the false summit, then headed back down. I had a tough decision to make, continue on to more suckiness or go somewhere slightly less sucky. I chose the later. After the summit, we took another sweet shortcut down a 1/2 mile chute of pure DEATH. Awesome! The chute was steeper than anything you could ski at Alta. Just rocks and boulders. It wouldn't have been so bad if we were able to take our time, but rocks were falling on the people below us and rocks were coming down on us from the people above us. I kept yelling, "Keep going or you're going to die! Seriously, you're going to DIE!" It was cool to be that close to death, but not when you're in charge of someone else's kids. We made it down without incident, except one kid puked 7 times and one leader serioulsy SHARTED himself (no wetwipes available for touchups). On Saturday (which sucked hard), after 16 miles of hiking, the group strapped on their backpacks again and headed 8 miles back to the cars. My pack didn't feel any lighter and my feet were toast with the blisters. Awesome!
I will enjoy the memories, the pain, the barf (not my own), the dehydrated chili mac (that looks the same the next day, if you know what I mean), the bounteous lunches of granola bars, pooping in the woods (do you dig the hole before or after?), freshening up with baby wipes (or for the boys, not freshening up), more people barfing, someone spraying 100% Deet directly in the eye, holding a barfed on sleeping bag over the fire to dry it out so the boy could sleep (ever smell barbequed barf? Awesome!), one of the leaders nicknamed "Flatch" short for flatulent, Dave's "sleeping sheet" (he froze the first night), the devotionals were awesome though (Jason and I gave those). I wouldn't call this trip fun as much as I would call it torture, but I have some great memories that I will never forget. Seriously, being waterboarded at GITMO may have been equally as fun.
Camp in the trees by Dollar Lake, 10,000ft.
Taking a break at Gunsight Pass, we scaled this face to save time. Totally sucked!
This is the trail to the summit. Do you see it? There wasn't one and this was the nice part with small boulders. Totally sucked!
Garrett going down the chute. Just boulders and rocks no trail. Totally sucked!
A better pictured of the chute. 1/2 a mile of steep and deadly rocks.
He we are after the chute, taking a break, and praying in thanks that no one died. Seriously!
Here's the group ready and anxious to head home.
