Mount Nebo

Mount Nebo Campout - June 21-22, 2013

Who:
Bryan Beausheur
Bryan Goodman
Todd Goodman
Zach Goodman

Paul Bodily
Adam Goodman
Dustin Hofheins

Where: Mount Nebo, North Summit

Travel Log:

We slept in a meadow full of yellow flowers, beautiful yellow flowers. We stayed at the Blackhawk campground. We played guitar. Zach played tunes on his iPod and we tried to figure out how to play them. We test out a jetboil stove and it performed magically:

We'll never have to wait for water to boil again. We also talked about Phineas & Ferb.

That night we had wicked good smores with Reeses instead of Hershey's (the graham crackers were precut to smore size!) and Starbursts. Then we had a devotional about missionary work. And then we had an epic game of Bases on a road across the field from our campsite. The best part about Bases is waking up the next morning to find all of the grass stains on your clothes. A new element to the game became throwing sticks and stones to distract the attention of the person in the middle.

There was 0% chance of rain, so Brother Bodily slept out on a tarp (at first, right downstream from the smoky fire). The next morning we loaded up on Pop Tarts, Oatmeal, Bananas, granola bars, and waters. After a quick pit stop at the "man with a horse," we headed for the trailhead near Mona Pole road. We met Brother Hofheins there. We lathered up on sunscreen and then hit the trail. We started around 8:15 AM. Here's a picture of us near the trailhead:

The first few miles were pretty easy. We found this dead tree around mile 2.5 or so that everyone seems to take a picture with:

Here's a picture when we finally hit the ridge. This was right after our epic snowball fight:

It was about a mile to Wolf's Pass. From there it got really hard. It goes basically straight up without switchbacks for a half mile. From the false summit, you skirt along the ridge and then you ascend up to the highest point on the Wasatch front (11,945 ft). The trail at the end is pretty sketchy and isn't for the faint of heart.

At the top we called a new member of our quorum and wished him Happy Birthday. We signed the logbook, snapped a few pictures, and headed back. Here's a picture of us on top:

Coming down was a doozy. One of our hikers got (we think) altitude sickness. Another (Brother Bodily) had his legs basically self-combust–or rather his knees just really took a beating. It was steep. Between the casualties, it took us as long to come down as it did to go up for a total of 9 miles in 9 hours.

That was a great campout!

What we learned about Hiking:

1. Always bring lots of water.
2. Don't rely on your phone, the battery will die. If it doesn't, the top of Mt. Nebo has four bars with T-mobile.
3. Ascending more than 1500 feet in a day may give you altitude sickness.
4. Altitude sickness can kill you. Acetaminophen can help.
5. Don's skip the switch-backs on the way up.  On the way down, it's okay to skip them, unless you're experiencing #6 (see below).
6. Your knees may give out.