A Balance, Redefined

Mt. Timpanogos summit attempt. Started on the Timpanokee trail. Were the second people to sign the login. Up at 4:30am and started just a little after 6am. The first hour was in the dark by headlamp. A little after that we saw the people who at started before us heading back down, they had not made it to the summit. The rest of the way was more or less on our own. We could see two groups behind us by headlamps but that was all. There was snow from the lot on. By about mile 4 were were breaking our own way through the snow. Once we hit the ridge the wind was very bad and we were in the cloud bank. We couldn't see too much. Between the wind and wet feet we opted to turn back at 11,423ft. I know that is only a few hundred more feet of ascent but it looked like at least another half hour of climbing and with numb toes and numbing fingers we opted to turnaround. I guess next time. We ran whatever stretches we could on the way down but between the snow and our packs we didn't run much more than 3 mi of the 13.5 mi we logged. Overall, Garmin had 5,564 ft of ascent.