Posted by Tar

Whoo hoo!! I love achieving goals, and we achieved this one. I can now look at Mt Timp as we drive by and say truthfully, “I was up there!!” Not all the way to the summit – we have read that the climb from Emerald Lake to the summit is quite challenging, and neither of us could imagine doing it with a two year old on our backs. But we reached our goal of Emerald Lake, which is in a cirque just below the summit.

Whoo hoo!!

There will be a technical description of the trail to come, complete with photos, but I’m just not willing to sit in the Albertson’s parking lot for as long as it will take to upload the photos. (I also have no quick way of scaling the photos down while on the road, as this computer doesn’t have any of the right software on it.)

But here is my report. Whoo hoo.

The first mile or so wasn’t bad, considering that I had pre-determined that it was going to suck. This is the first hike that I didn’t have to carry Wally for the first part, and I think that made a huge difference. The trail climbs almost 1000 feet over the course of the first mile or mile and a half (to the second falls) and that’s all gravel and asphalt, which I personally find hard on the joints. Once we hit the dirt path above the second falls, it was fairly easy going. Gently sloping in places, steep rocky climbs in others. Several snowfields, none of which were very particularly difficult.

The higher we got, the steeper and rockier the trail got. The boulder field was not fun. Have I mentioned how much I hate walking through boulder fields?? I don’t like it much. Just passing the boulder field gave me a fairly sizeable sense of accomplishment, because it was shortly after the boulder field that we had to turn back last time. The thrill of seeing new things along the trail was nice.

There were a few places where we lost the trail, mostly because there are several shortcuts across switchbacks and there are no trail markings whatsoever. In a few places there are “not a trail – stay on trail” signs but the people who put those signs up have not been able to keep up! Anyway so we shortcutted a few times without really realizing it, but generally picked the right path just by going whichever way was the most up.

There’s nothing more discouraging than being able to see how close you are to the top, but not being there yet. We had this conversation numerous times – “we’ve gotta be close, right?” “you’d sure think so.” “Just around this corner/over this ridge/past this switchback.” Man.

Goat was dying carrying Wally, but I felt remarkably good with just the pack. We passed by a mountain meadow complete with shade and a small lake (really just a large puddle) and decided to rest for a while – about 45 minutes maybe – before continuing up to Emerald Lake, which we thought surely must be just around the corner, right? It was slightly further than we thought it would be, but it was there! Yay!!!

It was so pretty up there, too. There’s a small shelter house near the lake, which we headed to mainly because Wally was asleep but complaining about the wind in the cirque. We rested in the shelter house for a while, watching some mountain goats across the way. As we watched, they headed over in our direction, and eventually came within touching distance. They gazed at us somewhat unconcerned. There were several babies, none seemed to be nursing still.

Anyway, after a while we headed back down, and the way back down was hell with the constant pounding really hurting our feet and knees. We also ran out of water (I broke one of the bladders) and so were quite thirsty by the time we got back to the car, where we had cold drinks waiting for us.

PS because I know you’re dying to know. Cadence music – various Praise tunes (mainly Our God Is an Awesome God and Celebrate Jesus) for a while, then snippets of Sunday in the Park with George, then the script from Three Amigos where Steve Martin is chained up and trying to get free saying “gonna make it, gonna make it” then for a while I sang R rated lyrics to Hickory Dickory Dock, then back to praise choruses.

You can read Goat’s comments here.

You can view photos of the hike here.