MORE THAN WE BARGAINED FOR!!!

On Saturday innocently enough three white, single, girls, head up onto Mt. Timpanogos at 6am in the morning (I might add we began the hike with a word of prayer and asking for protection). We have all hiked the mountain numerous times before. In fact last year we hiked it on July 3rd and this year we waited until July 5th. The day started off beautifully and it was very enjoyable.
And then two hours into our hike we ran into this. An ice field. However, there were footprints of previous hikers and so we did what others had done and crossed the field. Cautious yes but not really worried about how dangerous these little fields of ice can be.
The higher we hiked the more of these little ice fields, or glaciers, we ran into to. But like the hikers that had gone before we continued on our journey in hopes of summiting the mountain. We even noticed that there were ski marks on a number of the ice fields and we wondered how they stopped before running into the rocks below.
There were three especially dangerous ice fields. One that did not end by running into rocks it dropped off a cliff instead. Yikes!! Two the one that we had to climb up and realized the only way down would be to climb backwards in our previous tracks. And third the picture below the glacier that is very thin in the middle and has a waterfall running underneath it. We choose to get our feet wet instead of hiking across this one. And so we were becoming a little nervous but we were doing well and had thus far had avoided injury.
However it seemed that we were not destined to make it to the top of Timpanogos on this particular day. I crosssed an ice field that actually seemed pretty safe, and then Amber crossed the field. Now it was Julieannes turn and she stepped in the same places we did but one of the footings slipped away and Julieanne went with it. Probably one of the scariest things I have ever seen. Amber and I had to watch her slide twenty yards down the glacier and crash into the rocks while we stood quite helplessly on the dry ground above. Julieanne, although scrapped up, was fortunate enough to avoid serious injury. A miracle. While she sat on the bottom of the slide and got composure Amber and I noticed that her tracks resembled all those we had seen earlier, you know the ski tracks. Turns out no one was skiing down these ice fields they had experienced the same terror as we had. At that point we decided it was time to call the hike and wait until a later date to summit the mountain. The only problem was that now we had to cross back over all the ice fields again (10-15 approximately) including the three fields that had been really scary. It was a long hike back to the bottom and I was extremely tense and nervous. How are you not a little nervous after witnessing a friend slide and crash?

I was mostly frustrated with the fact that I had put myself in such a dangerous perdicament. I consider myself a cautious person and I found myself in a situation that was more then desireable. It felt so great to finally cross the last ice field and enjoy the last few miles of the hike. Lots of other people were on the mountain on Saturday, some that felt like they wouldn't stop until the top. I am so grateful we had the sense to turn around and that we were protected on our little journey. Had I known the entire time that those tracks in the snow were not from skiis I really do not believe that we would have gone as far as we did. Thankfully we are all safe and below are some of the beuatiful things we were able to see. It was actually an amazing day to be on the mountain and the landscape and flowers were amazing.
I learned that I will not hike timp again until the snow the snow on the back of the mountain has melted or if I do I will turn around at the first ice field before anyone gets hurt.