How High Can You Climb?

It’s May. That means Spring in Utah. A little rain. Snow in the mountains still. Green grass. Flowers. And it’s time for our family to take our annual hike in the mountains.

It’s not today. It’s not even this week. It’s about ten days away. We’ll start on a Friday afternoon and hike up Grove Creek Canyon about 3 miles. There’s a natural spring there. That’s where we’ll have dinner. It’s only three miles in, but it’s about 2,000 feet in elevation.

After dinner it’s another hike of a couple miles and another 1000 feet or so of elevation. If we’re lucky, we’ll camp in a gorgeous campsite overlooking the entire Utah County valley.

It will be an especially cold night. It might be May, but at 6000 feet, it gets really cold at night. Saturday will either be another hike to summit on Baldy at 8,000 feet, or we may simply make our way back home down Battle Creek Canyon.

If we summit Baldy it will be 13 miles. Without diverting to summit Baldy it will be about 8 miles. It’s a hard hike. I’ve done it most years. Sometimes with my kids. Sometimes with the scouts.

My oldest son has gone with me the last two years. He was the first to offer to go this year. It might just be the two of us. I asked my other sons and they have work conflicts. And then I asked my daughters. They are 20 and 19 years old.

My girls have never been shy about doing outdoor activities. One of my older daughters is a captain in the US Army. The 20 year old went on the Baldy hike two years ago with us. The younger one hasn’t been before.

I thought you were going to give us some warning.

I did, this is your warning.

No, I mean so we could practice!

We’ll see how they do. I’m a slow hiker. She’ll probably do just fine.

The older girl invited her boyfriend. Nothing like a 10 mile hike to get to know someone. Should be fun.

Stay safe

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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