Summit junkie!

I woke up early this morning to climb West Mountain, which is the prominent peak south of Utah Lake, West of Payson. I took my one year old dog and this would be her first summit.

We started just after 6:00 and we went straight up the Southeast Ridge on a ATV trail. There was only one switchback up to the ridge and it was very steep! There is just about 2,000 feet of elevation gain on this hike, and most of it is trying to gain the ridge. We took a break to watch the sunrise and snap a few pictures.

Once on the ridge we ran into a herd of sheep and my dog was very interested, so I had to keep a tight leash on her. The final push was steep again, and we finally reached the top in 1:15. We had a quick snack, and then I spent the next 5 minutes trying to time a peak jump. I got a few good pictures and we headed down.

The descent was much quicker, we ran the whole ridge and it was a lot of fun, and we made it back to the car for a total time of two hours. This was a really fun hike and I made it home in time to have breakfast with the family. A great way to start my day.

I went to the gym and lifted (upper body/core) for an hour tonight. I mixed things up because I feel like I have goten into the same routine for the last few months, and I have noticed I haven't been as sore after my workouts. I added weight to all of my exercises and also changed about half of them up. Where I had been using machines I switched to free weights to do the exercises. It really helped and I was totally worked after an hour. I could definitely feel the difference.

My mom had an Easter egg hunt/BBQ tonight and it threw us off, so the kids were late getting into bed, and I only had time for 4 miles on the TM. I didn't feel like working out at all, but I am glad I did because I felt really good after I was done. 

This has been a rather boring week, so I thought I would add a link to spice things up. Last week Jun and I put together a photo album of some of our peak jumping pictures from the last few years. Some of them are cool, others are funny, and a few of them look crazy. Check it out if you have a few minutes:

Peak Jumping

Got the kids to bed and went to the gym for some exciting TM miles. I did 4 at an 8:30 pace. My right ITB was slightly tight at the end, so I went home and stretched for 30 minutes. I picked up one of those foam roller-ball-thingies, and I rolled out my ITB, and also did some yoga stretches (thanks Missy and Kelli).

I woke up early this morning to lift at the gym. It was pretty crowded in there, but I had a great workout. I worked on my chest, arms, shoulders and lats. I felt like I could keep going for a while, but I needed to get into work, so I only lifted for 35 minutes.

I'll be climbing View Benchmark (high point south of Draper) later in the day. I'm not expecting it to be very difficult, but I think the views will be great and I am looking forward to it. If the weather holds I'll be climbing Wire/Red Butte again tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone.

**PM update**

Did View Benchmark after work. It took about an hour, and was really fun with excellent views. There was some deep snow near the summit, but nothing serious. FUN!

3 miles and 700 ft elevation gain.

I climbed Mt. Wire today with Matt Van Horn and Twinkies. We started a little after 7:00 AM. The forecast called for snow this morning, but it looked like we would have a nice window that would allow us to get up and back down without any precipitation. Based on the forecast the night before I was fully expecting to be driving to the trailhead in snow, and I was excited when I drove over the Point of the Mountain and I could see that the storm wasn't as big as I was expecting. There were still some threatening clouds, but I knew we would be fine.

Twinkies and I started off running, with Matt hiking. It was cold and windy, but I heated up fast. Once on the ridge, Twinkies took the lead, and Matt was still a good distance behind. The ridge was very windy, and I was very thankful for my windstopper fleece hat and jacket. It took about 30 minutes to negotiate the main ridge and we were pounded by the wind the entire time. It was COLD.

I stopped a few times to shoot some video and pictures, and my hands would be numb within a minute. That ridge is really exposed, and I was feeling bad for Matt because he didn't have a hat on.

Twinkies had a pretty good lead on me, while Matt lagged behind me. When I finally made it to the top I could see that Twinkies had continued on and I don't blame him at all. That was one of the coldest summits I have ever been on in my life. I waited on top for Matt for about 15 minutes until he finally arrived, and I was pretty much numb by then. After a few photos we headed back down the way we came. I knew we would never catch Twinkies, and both of us just wanted to get down as quickly as possible.

We ran/hiked back down and actually made pretty good time, and when we got back to the cars I noticed that Twinkies was already gone. It was a fun morning even though we had to battle the weather. I actually loved almost every minute of it.