Y-Mountain

So, around 6:00 pm on Thursday I was looking in my fridge trying to find something good to eat. This has sadly become a habit when I am bored. Then, all of a sudden, I had a crazy thought. Why don't I climb Y-Mountain. And so I did just that. I invited one of my roommates, but the book he was reading was far more interesting than my quest. So, here's me at the start of my journey with Y-mountain directly behind me. I started my journey at 6:30 pm and thought I'd have plenty of time. I was actually making better time than I thought I would at first. It only took me a half an hour to get to the trail head from my apartment and then another half hour to get to the top of the "Y". I did stop a few times to look at bugs, birds, wildflowers and rocks. I tried not to lollygag too much. I knew it'd be a race to get back before it got too dark. Here are some pix from my adventures along the way through the woods and meadows.
This is a bouquet of all the wildflowers from the top of the "Y" to the top of Y-Mountain. I never counted, but there were probably thirty different species. Cool huh?
I got to the summit at 9:00 pm, just in time for the beautiful sunset and gorgeous view of the valley. I'm probably making this face as a result of the combination of extreme exhaustion mixed with the bright flash.

My way back was a little darker than I had anticipated, so I made good use of the flash light I brought along. And to keep my mind occupied on the long journey I sang hymns and when it got dark, I told myself a scary story. I definitely should have brought a friend with me. I made it back to the to of the "Y" by 10 and to the trail head twenty minutes later.
When I got back at a little before 11:00 pm, I looked down at my sore, sore legs and found a little hitch hiking critter. Check out this pic. As if hairy legs aren't gross enough, check out that tick!
No worries. Searing hot tweezers worked really well. There's my roommate in the back ground still reading his book. Told you it was far more interesting.

Utah Lake

So, my roommate and I were kinda bored this today and wanted something fun to do, but couldn't really think of anything. Then my roommate, David, suggested swimming. That really sounded good to me, but where? We landed on the least likely place: Utah Lake. We looked it up on Google Earth and it was only 5.17 miles away from our apartment. None of have a car, you see. So we would have to walk. Then we were invited to go to a game of Ultimate Frisbee which we could hit on our way back. Well, we were bored enough that we decided to undertake such a journey. We invited another roommate and he gladly accepted to do anything that would get him out of the apartment.

So, we packed up my backpack and headed west! It was a lot longer than I thought it'd be. We passed lots of apartments, and then houses and then a free way and then more houses and then come commercial area and then some farms. I brought my kite and flew it as we walked down this long, long, country road. Here's a picture of us by some cows we saw along the way.

David and Jacob

Me and the cows

Within...lots of time...we were finally there. And it was flooded! There was water covering everything. When we finally found the little island of sand that was all that remained of the "beach", we put our stuff down and hopped in the cold, dirty water. It was really dirty. Gross.

Then, being boys, we started exploring. We found an old wooden pallet with some logs underneath. It looked like someone had tried to make a raft and failed. So we thought we might do just that. The failing part was inevitable. So, we went around collecting all the drift wood we could find and put it under or through the pallet so that it'd be more buoyant. We were going to make a sail too, but that'd require some tools and nails. So, we decided to stick to the old-school gondola style. We found a long pole and used it to push out and set sail. I was named captain (probably because I was the lightest) and we set sail. I stood on top and pushed us along with the stick while my roommates swam alongside.

We went out pretty far, but...alas...the current and waves got the best of us. We were forced to wash up along some rocks and swim back to the beach. Very fun, but very tiring. I only fell of the raft once! Grooooose water. bleh!

Then we began our long walk home. That's a lot of time to get to know some roommates. We stopped at a Subway on the way back and were way too late for that Ultimate Frisbee game so we just came straight home. Now I'm soooo tired so, I'm going to take a shower, finish preparing my lesson for tomorrow's Sunday School and get to bed.

Stewart Falls Hike

A friend and I went on a fun hike today up in Aspen Grove. We hiked up from the Mt. Timpanogos trail head to Stewart Falls. It was a beautiful day with amazing scenic views of the mountainsides.

We were surprised to find snow despite how warm it was. When we got to the falls themselves we had fun exploring ice caves in a smallish glacier that was being carved away by the river of water from the falls.

In this picture below I'm at the mouth of the cave at the bottom of the picture above, but I just had to go all the way in. This little stream meets up with the bigger river from the main falls in just about fifty feet.

Sorry there's no audio again. The microphone on my camera is messed up. Basically, you'd hear rushing water, Megan say hi, and me explaining just how cool this is.

For how cold it looks, it was actually quite warm. The freezing cold spray from the water was fun to walk through.

Then we climbed up the debris-strewn glacier a bit to get a better view and we saw more of the water carving away the ice.

What goes up, must come down. So we had fun sliding down the glacier using some of the debris as make-shift sleds. It was a lot of fun. I'd recommend it. It's called Stewart Falls. It's a little hard to find the right trail, but just ask around and you'll find it...that's what we did.