King's Peak 50 miler

While Marci was off playing with Erin and the kids I was off playing with seven 14-16 year old Scouts. A lot of the drama started even before we left as I had to scramble to find another leader to go with us as our Assistant Varsity Coach tweaked his back the week before and was not going to be ready to hike 50 miles in the high Uintas. I even posted on facebook to see if anyone would be able to help out. My nephew Jordan volunteered, but when I proposed him as a substitute there was some concern about his age (21) and not being part of the ward nor registered with the Boy Scouts as a leader. One of the parents was able to re-arrange his schedule to fly back to Utah and Tuesday to meet up with us. In order to get him to the trail head the Stake President flew him out to a nearby airport in a private plane.

We were hoping to meet up with him on Tuesday night but we didn't find a suitable camping spot until about 4.5 miles in. About half of our hiking the first night was in the dark. This was fine except for making sure we didn't miss the trail fork and slightly spraining my ankle when I went back about a 1/4 mile to retrieve and hiking pole that one of the scouts left behind. He didn't even realize he lost the pole until I noticed that I was no longer getting struck by it when he would pull his baggy shorts up from around his knees. The sprain wasn't bad AT FIRST. But by the last day of the hike I was limping pretty bad. I ended up using my hiking poles more as crutches to complete the last ten miles.

Wednesday was our first full day of hiking. We made it near Lily Lake by about noon. We took off our packs to eat lunch and wait for the stragglers. We waited a full hour so we got a nice nap in. Once we were reunited we hiked just another 1/4 mile to Lower Chain Lake. Two of the boys were complaining about the packs and altitude sickness. We waited for them for another hour before they wanted to continue on. We made it to Atwood Lake at about 7:30. We were able to make dinner and then everyone wanted to crash.

On Thursday we got a really late start. The two boys that were complaining before, faked having altitude sickness until about 11 a.m. One of those boys tried his best to annoy everyone by blowing his whistle incessantly. That morning the other boys disposed of the whistle. I was going to hang out in the back for the day, but that didn't last long. About a mile in I needed to catch up with the lead boys. I tried to keep them in my site but somehow they made wrong turn. When I got to a clearing I saw another troop of boys. When I caught up to them they told me that there was no one else in front. I kept going to the top of the hill and waited. A while later I see this group of three boys trucking straight up the boulder field mountain instead of sticking to the trail. The trails are actually hard to spot sometimes as it consisted of walking on 6" rocks which didn't help the sprain. We descended to the next basin where we had lunch and then started working our way to summit King's Peak. The trail from the basin to the saddle was tough. For the most part the trail stayed out of the snow fields but a lot of the runoff chose the trail as the quickest route down. When we got to the saddle all but one of the boys and Jordan attempted to make it to King's Peak. From the saddle to the peak was all about 6 foot boulders tumbled on each other. Although it was a lot easier climbing these instead of trying to descend them. We got off the peak and pitched our camp as soon as it was flat enough. It was about 8:00, so once again we had dinner and went straight to bed.

The Top

Friday was our easiest day. We made it Red Castle Lake by about 2:00 so the boys had a chance to hop in the lake and try to protect themselves from the mosquitoes. This was also the day where we did a service project cleaning up old campfire rings and picking up trash.

Red Castle

Saturday we hiked out. For some reason the boys that were complaining the whole time actually made good time on Saturday. We made it out 10 miles to China Meadows by 11. When we got there unfortunately our ride wasn't, but the cars were. The drivers were supposed to meet us Friday night but they followed the GPS coordinates from an out of date map. They ended up hiking 27 miles in about 18 hours, including falling in a river and taking a couple hour nap so they could warm up. While we were waiting a family took pity on us and brought us chicken breasts and chips. That chicken tasted soooo good.