attempt on everest ridge

so i mentioned quite some time ago that andy, meera, and i joined the utah climbing club through the good people at mountain works in provo. 

we have had a total blast so far. 

we're planning on climbing mount rainier this summer in july so the club has been doing some training trips.

one of these trips was an overnighter on everest ridge. everest ridge is simply the front side of timpanogos. you hike up through dry canyon. the trailhead is in north orem, a handy two minutes or so from my parent's house. 

andy and meera are pretty in shape seeing as meera is just good at everything and plays lacrosse everyday and andy hikes up 3-4 peaks a week. so needless to say they hauled butt on the hike and took off. i was happy to be rid of them seeing as i hate slowing people down with all of my heart! 

luckily i was happy to be joined by another club member named craig and he and i were both rookies at all this physical activity so we decided to take it slow together and enjoy ourselves by not over working our bodies and enjoying the beautiful canyon around us. 

we ended up being waaaaaay slow and it took us about 6 hours to make it up to the saddle between baldy and timp. i am soooooooooooooooooooo out of shape. i think we got up to base camp about 45 minutes to an hour after andy and meera. oh well. i'll get better. it was that dang stupid pack on my back that slowed me down so much! i think i'm just gonna blame my slowness on that! my back is so weak!

andy had already dug into the snow and set up the tent and he was loving every second of it! he is such a  soul that yearns for adventure in the mountains! meera and i set up our beds, and mind you, i was so pumped to use my new mont bell 0 degree down bag and air mattress! i couldn't wait to get into bed just to solely experience the pure joy of sleeping warm and comfortable on a snow covered mountainside.

andy prepared dinner for us like a good man and we thoroughly enjoyed those mountain house dehydrated camping meals down to every bite! 

eric and whit came up too and they were two tents down from us.

so the plan was to wake up with the whole group at 1am and leave camp at 2am to start our attack on everest ridge. the wind set in pretty dang hard when we settled in for our short winters nap and my short 4 hours of sleep became 4 hours of pretty much feeling miserable. not because i was cold or anything, my bag definitely did it's job, but my body started reacting very strangely to the aches of carrying that pack up 3,000 vertical feet for 6 hours. my feet and knees felt like they were completely on fire and were aching so badly! 

darren gave us our wake up call at 1am and i could barely move and had not slept. the hike was going to be through the night until morning and i knew there was no way my body was going to allow me to do that. so i took two naproxens because i'm a wuss and meera and andy took off for the rest of the night. 

after i got that in my body and finally got my earplugs in correctly to silence the roar of the wind on our tent, i slept like a fat man after eating thanksgiving dinner until meera and andy returned around 8:30am, screaming into the tent for me to wake up. 

turns out they didn't make the summit because the storm had turned into a complete white out and visibility was dangerously low. no one in the group made the summit that day. so we packed up and took off.

it's a bummer that i pooped out so early and it's a bummer nobody made it to summit, but i suppose that's the life of mountaineering. 

the hike down was ok, until we got low enough that the snow turned into rain... then it got miserable and we all got to the point where we weren't ornery but were definitely done hiking in the rain. the hike in the snow was fun though! we took turns sledding down on andy's shovel!

even though i did sleep the night away, i was still beat when we got to my parent's. i can't imagine how andy and meera felt. i made some french toast and then we watched american idol and then we all passed out on the floor and couches.... all three of us slept like we had been shot up with a tranquilizer for three hours. don't know why we woke up, maybe because by then we were hungry again. made spaghetti and rented a movie and passed out again for the rest of the night. 

it was a fun, adventurous, tiring weekend!