A 50mm Life

Hidden Lake Sunset

(+2 over at Flickr)

Living at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Utah Valley, we sit just below the 2nd tallest mountain in Utah, called Mount Timpanogos or Timp for short. Timp sits at 11,749 feet, and I hadn’t had a great desire to hike up Timp until last week.

After a series of short and easy training sessions, I decided that we’d go explore the area and mountain to get a feel for how tough it will be to hike. If this is all you read, just know this mountain is completely unforgiving and kicked my butt.

So, last week me and my son put on full backpacks with a tent, sleeping bags, water, and food, and took the Aspen Grove Trail (there is also a Timpanooke Trail to the summit of Timp) to start our exploration.

In a fairly aggressive time schedule, I must admit that I was a little naive. It took 5 hours from the base of Aspen Grove to reach our camp site at Hidden Lake, and took 4 hours from this point to hike down. We explored the Hidden Lake, Emerald Lake, Timp Shelter, Timp Glacier, Timpanooke/Aspen Grove Trail merge, and the Timpanogos Saddle.

After all was said and done, we hiked about 16 miles and gained/descended about 4900 feet of elevation. We ate a  freeze-dried hiking dinner (Western Chili and mashed potatoes), went through 10 liters of water, ate snacks, and energy bars. We saw a herd of mountain goats, and earned sore shoulders, hips, and feet from our expedition.

Pictured is the last light of the day in its fisheye HDR glory.

EXIF:
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
Aperture: f/4.0
Focal Length: 10.5 mm (fisheye)
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 (7xp)

View on Flickr