Have you ever scaled a mountain before? Well maybe you have, but i had never done it until last weekend. I went up with a couple of friends from the neighborhood and school, and we took on Kings Peak, which is the highest peak in Utah. We started off, and began the hike in. We used the buddy system, and i got paired with one of the cross country kids, Adam Price. Honestly i was a little nervous because i wasn't sure i could keep pace. But we started off, and Adam and I lead the way. Shayne and Andrew, the two other guys who went on the trip, both wrestled, and Andrew claimed that he was built for short bursts of extreme exertion, and that hiking was not his forte. After this trip i believed him.
We started, and i was amazed at the beauty of the scenery. We stopped for lunch a few miles in, then spent the rest of the day packing in. Later in the day, we found a spot a good distance from the "No Fire" zone, and thought it a good place to camp. Adam and Cole, one of the leaders that went with us, scouted out an area, and said it was no good. Cole suggested that we go camp by one of the waterfalls way the heck off the trail. I thought it would be fun, and we were off. Needless to say, none of us looked where we were going, because by the time we reached the waterfall, we had all tramped through a good four marshy patches around the numerous creeks that teemed over the landscape, and all of us were sloshing around in soaking wet shoes.
I have no idea how far we went that day, but i was dead tired. A 40 pound pack gets pretty heavy, and i wanted it off. Adam and I set up camp on a hill, and if I were thinking, that would have been a BIG red flag. Then again i was tired, so we set up our "tent." I figured a tube tent made out of visquine would be light and durable, and i was right, I just had no idea how to make a tent out of visquine, rope and rocks. So I let Adam take care of it.
We got the tent set up and made our freeze dried dinners. Even lasagna tastes good after a full day of hiking. It was all of about 8 when i went to bed, and slept like a baby, literally. I woke up every hour to find that i was sliding down my sleeping pad in my mummy bag. I had to wriggle myself up the hill so i was at least on my pad, and would slide down again in my sleep. Finally, at about 7 the next morning, we woke up.
There are people that tell me that camping and being out in nature makes them feel more alive. Picture if you will a sixteen year old kid running on next to no sleep, trying to jump start his morning after sliding halfway down a mountain in a sleeping bag. yeah, that's about the long and the short of it. I've never felt like I'd been run over by a train until that morning, except this train was carrying a load of nuclear mosquitoes. I itched, I ached, and i was exhausted. Then Cole woke up, and told me to hurry up. That was the last thing i needed to hear this morning, but i shut up and made myself breakfast.
Looking back, i probably should have made myself something more nutritious than oatmeal, but it was the best i had. Cole was excited because today we were going to summit, but none of us could share in that rush of energy. I packed my day pack...a water bottle and a tuna cracker lunch, and all the survival stuff my Dad told me to take with me. it was extremely light, and Adam didn't have one, so he took mine and strapped his plastic grocery bag into the bungee mesh on the back of my pack and put it on his back. I went freestyle with nothing but my water bottle to climb the tallest mountain in Utah.
Hunger set in quickly, and the trail we were taking was a long, long, long one. I get cranky when i don't eat, and i was plenty cranky before the mountain was in sight. i bore with it, and tromped onwards and upwards, way upwards. By the time we got to the base of the mountain, i wanted to drop dead. I munched on the trail mix and apple rings that Adam brought, and felt a whole lot better. Andrew and Shayne complained the whole way up, stuff like the trail was too long, "why can't we just pick a mountain to climb and call it good," and stuff like that, and i agreed. So we abandoned the trail and the four of us scaled the mountatin. We rock hopped all the way up, which was easy because we couldn't even see the trail most of the way. I got to a part which looked like the peak from the base of the mountain, and i thought "Yes, I made it!!" But a nasty little surprise loomed on the other side of the 'peak.' There was more mountain to climb, and we toiled onwards, the air getting thinner and thinner as we ascended, until we made it to the peak. We had summited!