Grandeur Peak—The good, the bad and the UGLY!

Steve and I made our first adult hike last Saturday. I don’t mean “adult” in the sense that you may be thinking, just that we left the kids with other people.

We’re making preparations for our September 24 summit of Mount Timpanogos, so we thought we’d better do a few rigorous hikes first. We started out around 4:30 p.m. and set off on the three mile trail to the top of Grandeur Peak. Our book told us it would be a 2.5 to 4 hour journey. We wanted to be more on the 2.5 hour side so we moved quickly up the trail.


It was our first mountain peak climb. Grandeur Peak is between Mount Olympus and Parley's Canyon. We’ve always hiked to lakes or waterfalls in the past. I once hiked Deseret Peak out Grantsville way when I was about 14, but I hardly remember anything besides my legs and lungs burning.
No burning this time. How sad is it that I am in better shape now than when I was 14 years old?

It was a nice trail. Fairly skinny. A little bit of bush whacking, but not bad.
It was pretty shady which was fortunate, because on the parts that were not shady…it was an inferno. We only saw three other people along the trail, so it certainly wasn’t crowded.


The weather was a little warm, but perfect blue skies dotted with a few crisp white clouds.
Really nice weather for hiking. Or so you might think...

We moved up high really fast, and since the trail is basically on the side or ridge of the mountain we had pretty spectacular views most the time.
Before we knew it we had a fairly incredible view of the mountains. We saw a little lizard on the trail. I tried to get his picture, but he was too quick.

After about an hour and twenty minutes on the trail, we were sure we just around the corner. Some lady who was hiking with no water and wearing only a bikini top carrying a smutty romance novel told us we were 10 minutes away. Liar. We were at least 40 minutes away and that was moving at a swift pace.

After we had hiked 20 minutes past her prediction we knew we were just around the corner only to find where the real peak was…still another 20 minutes away. We did get a glimpse of the view from this point and it seemed like it would be worth it.
It was pretty discouraging, because we were tired and very hungry by this time and Steve had drank through all his water. But…we didn’t want to come back and say how we almost made it to the top, so we soldiered on.

I was anxious to make it to the top so I was moving fast when I saw the UGLY thing about this trip. A big fat SNAKE!!! Okay, he was more skinny and long than big and fat but still. The point is he scared me half to death! I don’t think I have ever seen a snake in the wild before.


We watched him slither around for a few minutes in the middle of the trail, but then he moved right down the middle of the trail toward us, so I opted to hop off the trail for a sec and go around him. Yucky, yucky snake. Ewww.

We kept going up and finally made our way to the SUMMIT!
We made it. But we were surprised about what we found at the top. Storm clouds, lots of them. We totally couldn’t see them from the back side of the mountain everything looked perfect.
Just as we reached the top the thunder started to rumble. Perfect. It turned our plans for summiting around a little. I was planning to sit up there and look around for half an hour. I was planning to eat through my little satchel of trail mix (have I mentioned how much I love to eat trail mix?).
Instead all we had time to do was snap a few photos and chat for a few minutes with another hiking group who had also encountered the snake.

I shoved a few handfuls of my delicious trail mix down my throat and we decided to split down the mountain for safety. The other group didn’t seem nearly as concerned about the thunder and lightning as we were (I mainly mean me). The other group shouted several warnings to watch for snakes…ha ha ha…..AGRAH!!!!!

Just as we made our way around the first little corner off the summit I found another freaking SNAKE….This one was a RATTLE SNAKE! I sprayed my mouthful of trail mix all over the ground as I quickly turned around and ran back up the trail. The other group was in disbelief, but laughing at my find. It was scary and super gross. I didn’t bother taking a picture of the Rattler which I must admit was a small one, but still. I wish I had now, but I was too scared to face it again then.

The weather was my biggest fear although having another snake encounter was a close second.
I watch the news every day and I know that people get struck by lightning all the time in the mountains. The clouds looked very dark and frightening. No one ever thinks they are going to be struck by lightning, but I sure did. I could already see myself all burned and barely clinging to life. I thought about my girls and I didn’t want them to be motherless, so I decided to forgo the snake fear and just make a dead run to the bottom. It had taken us 1 hour and 54 minutes to get to the top, I was hoping it would be more like 30 minutes to the bottom.

I just couldn’t believe I had gotten myself into this situation. I am usually very careful. I don’t tolerate risk well, and here I am dodging lightning strikes and rattle snakes (this is an exaggeration). Still though…the top of a mountain is not a safe place to be in a lightning storm.

We ran down as fast as we could, which was not fast enough. Another lady who had passed us on her way to the top decided to join us and ran down with us. It didn’t take more than a few minutes when the wind and rain started in. There we were still running for the bottom totally unprepared and inexperienced for any unfavorable circumstances.

I’ll admit that I was really scared, maybe not terrified, but full on scared. I kept thinking about my van at the bottom and being back inside and driving away once we made it back. I was hoping that this WAS going to be in my future today. I feared that we’d have to find someplace to hunker down and wait out the storm and just keep an eye out for passing snakes.

In actuality, it wasn’t that bad or really even that scary. It was just the not knowing for sure what could happen that was the worst part. As we approached the bottom third of the trail the rain really slowed down and finally did stop. We walked for the last quarter of the trail instead of the dead run that we were doing before. The running down was probably the worst thing we could have done. We just as easily could have twisted an ankle or broken an arm in a fall. Luckily we didn’t.

For the last several hundred yards my joints started yelling at me for making them run down a mountain. They throbbed and ached. I was so hashed out. Steve who would never run as fast as me down the trail seemed to be in a lot better shape than me at the bottom. This is how it always is for us. We have almost the same amount of energy to expend, but we distribute it differently. I go full out for as long as I can then crash. He tends to pace himself better. I always want him to hurry it up, but in the end he has enough to not only finish, but carry me with him back to the car.

Speaking of the car, I was delighted to be laying eyes on it again. It was so beautiful all gray with its two super classy bumper stickers. We took off our hiking boots and dirty socks.
Geez Steve take a bath once in a while.
I guess between the dust I kicked up and the rain, Steve got dirty. Really dirty!

We set off down the canyon in our car and found a lovely and clear once more valley. How is it that we timed the storm perfectly? The worst 30 minutes of the week weather-wise was when we were on the top of a mountain. Perfect. By the way, it took us about an hour and 15 minutes to get down the mountain.

We stopped at Barbacoa for a big burrito before picking up the kids at Bob and Hana’s. They kindly watched them for us. While at the restaurant we had the pleasure of sitting by a couple on a first date. We very much enjoyed overhearing the awkward conversation. I’m no Casanova, but I’m pretty sure talking about your long term hernia is more of a fourth or fifth date conversation piece. Just saying.

In all, it was worth it, but I guess I need some kind of snake spray for my next hike. Do they make snake spray? Also I will be more diligent at checking the weather.