That which does not kill you.....

Must make you stronger.... (still debating this)

Three of my brothers, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and I decided to make the trek up Pine Valley Mountain. We all did our pack check the night before and left Enterprise the next morning. We had to stop at Sportsmans to get the last minute supplies, stopped and got a sandwhich and were off.

We staged at the Oak Grove Campground with the mountain looming in the background.

I have never ever packpacked before. And without Ian there to help me along the way, I was a little nervous especially about having to carry all of my stuff all by myself, but excited for the adventures with my siblings that I don't get to see very often. (ok so I did pawn off a little bit of my stuff. Thanks Mikey and Dylan!)
The Oak Grove Trailhead is a 6 mile trail that switchbacks up 2200 ft.
We were off about 1pm. It was starting to get pretty warm, and we hiked.
And we rested...
And we hiked some more... by about this time, I was feeling my sea level lungs pretty good.And rested some more because I thought I was going to die. About this time I was starting to think what have I gotten myself into?
The excitement of the hike got to us, and Dallin told us we can slow down (thank you!) If we hiked slower we didn't have to take so many long breaks! I am just glad we slowed down, I never would have made it at the pace we started off at. We still took lots of breaks! Thanks boys who waited on us girls.Back and forth we went up the mountain. Until we were able to start seeing views like this! I got thinking, okay maybe I can do this!
We stopped for a long break at this cool rock, because we hadn't been in any shade along the way and it was hot!


Then we could see what we had next, we were almost up into the trees! But could I keep going? They informed me we were not even half way yet!
I toughed it out and we headed out again. Up and Up
With peeks of the view to keep us going!
Until we made it to the top!......
Of one peak...only to have to start down the hill, to our surprise...in the snow! It was a welcome relief from the hot temperature!
We hiked down and around in the snow, got lost just a little....whipped out the GPS...
And came into the first meadow! It was such a welcome sight to walk on flat ground and not be going straight up or straight down!

But it was short lived, and we headed back into the trees. I was ready to stop for camp, but this was not the place. We were in search of water! Not long after that we found what we were looking for, or atleast what we thought we were, and decided this would be a great place to camp!

We set up our tents.Chopped some wood.And watched Dallin start fire with his cool toys!Then we purified water to fill our camelpacks and boiled water for our mountain houses. Dried out our feetTold scary stories around the campfire.

Said goodnight to the field mice and went to bed! My tent was on a slight incline and I slid off my pad the whole night, got a little cold, but managed to sleep a little.

We woke up to a beautiful cool morning.

Some a little cozier than others.
My little brothers were nice and toasty.

We ate our breakfast and got our water packs ready to make the last push to the top.

Where we were beamed to the top :) Dallin's camera was the only one that caught this cool lighting. We hiked through another meadow. I never would have thought that at the top of Pine Valley Mountain there would be a bunch of flat meadows.


And once more we met up with the snow. In most of the places is was straight up in the snow. Thanks to Mikey's trusty weatherproof boots he was able to make us stairs in the snow almost all the way up, probably making this last hike way easier!





It was rough going part of the way.... :)
Or so we would like to make you think...some more successful than others :)
And we finally made it to the VERY top!
Looking out toward Snow Canyon. Aren't we awesome?


Then it was back down in the snow.

Until we reached the meadow.....
Where things got a little crazy


The camera man set up. Then back down the mountain with the beautiful views the whole time!

We made it!
One flat tire later.......
We made it home, hot, exhausted, with aching muscles, but we made it and now I can say I hiked to the top of Pine Valley Mountain in Utah. Would I do it again? The jury's still out.... but I wouldn't trade the fun I had with my family for anything!

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know. Rene Daumal