Saturday, July 28, 2012

Scree is not your friend

Since I'm sure everyone checks this blog daily just to see if more Pulitzer material gets posted here, I should explain. Two weeks ago the weather was iffy, so I ended up getting a half hour up the trail and it started pouring. Since this blog is already boring and contrived enough, I thought it would be considerate to spare you a post about pretty much nothing.
Last week (7-21-2012),  I had a grand adventure, but then my browser session crashed when I was 80% finished writing my post, and I lost everything because I'm neglectful and didn't save it. The frustrating part is that I can see the draft of the post I wrote, but can't edit or copy-paste it.
Anyways, enough with the meta-blogging. This post is dedicated to the Broads Fork Twin Peaks (now that's a mouthful). The main story of the Twins is scree. In case you don't know what scree is, it's a bunch of loose rock. The Twins consisted of at least 2 miles of nothing but gravelly rock fragments covering smooth stone. The only thing that's harder than climbing up a scree-covered slope without falling to your death is climbing down a scree-covered slope without falling to your death. I'm going to be honest, the hike was a lot of fun, but that section was really nerve-wracking.
The Twins were the tallest mountains I had hiked thus far, but barely. The Pfiefferhorn is 11,326 feet, West Twin is 11,328 feet, and East Twin is 11,330. The funny thing is that when I was standing on the Pfeifferhorn, I saw a pair of peaks (The Twins) that looked way taller than the Pfeifferhorn. But when I stood on the Twins, the Pfeifferhorn looked taller. So either the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, or the height of the peaks of the Wasatch are determined by the current gas price.
 Ah yes, the good parts: The views were tremendous. I could literally see every hike that I had done so far with one turn of the head. Even Deseret Peak was vaguely visible in the distance. The 10 miles were quite difficult (one guy I talked to said this was the hardest hike in the Wasatch in his opinion), but they were well worth it. I'm lazy and don't want to type out a really long description, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 Below: standing on West Twin looking at the East Twin.


 And this week's Utterly Impractical Hiking Item Of The Week is...? Nothing. I only saw probably 5 or 6 people on the entire hike. But although I didn't see something bizarre, I certainly met someone bizarre.
Meet Greaser. Greaser is a very strange yet eccentrically personable older guy. He picks a mountain and hikes it every day for 5 or 6 months at a time. As I was descending the scree slopes, he was huffing and puffing up with an ancient metal-framed backpack that probably weighed 10 pounds empty and doubled as a lightning rod. After greeting me Tacky-the-Penguin style (complete with a loud nasal "hey there, partner!" and an especially hearty slap on the back), he proceeded to regale me with stories about his close encounters with bears, falls down snowfields, and lightning strikes. I estimate about 10% of it to be actually true, but 100% of it to be highly entertaining. And the kicker? He only refers to himself in the third person.
Greaser: a guy with so much personality, even I couldn't have made him up.



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