Tokewanna-NW Wasatch and Wasatch Peaks + Highline trail, Uintas with Craig and MattVH:
Craig wrote up an excellent report of our adventure run/hike/climb in the Uintas here so I won't go into too many details, but it turned out to be pretty brutal for me. I had one of my worst days ever in the mountains and nothing seemed to go right. We got a very late start and had to start about 1.5 miles from the trailhead due to a 4X4 road that got a bit sketchy.
The first 9 miles were actually a lot of fun and we were running through some incredible country, going in and out of lush meadows with 13,000 ft. Tokewanna Peak waiting at the end of the basin. We had to do several stream crossings on this adventure and about 5 miles in I slipped on a rock while crossing a stream and went down into the river. My head landed on a rock and I was pretty shocked there for a few minutes. It was just the start of bad luck for me.
We ran into a large elk herd at the end of the basin and it was pretty amazing watching them take off up the mountain. I got behind on my energy and never felt great the entire day. About 12,500 ft. I started feeling sick from the altitude and it slowed me down a lot. By time I reached our first peak (Tokewanna) my energy was depleted and the altitude had sucked my will to move forward. I took a break and ate a burrito, changed into some warm gear and watched one of the most incredible sunsets I have ever seen from over 13,000 ft in one of the most remote places in the lower 48. I'm sure not many others in history have been dumb enough to watch the sun go down from that spot. :)
The ridge over to NW Wasatch was loose, exposed and long. About half way across I slid on a loose boulder and slammed my left knee into a large rock. I let out a barrage of cuss words and thought I might have broken my kneecap. It took about 5 minutes to get composed and start moving again and then within 15 minutes one of my water bottles spilled almost half of the water I had. We knew we would be up on the ridges for several hours without access to water, so now I could be even more screwed. What a slog! By time we reached the next summit I was slowed to almost a crawl. Matt and Craig had been waiting for me and both of them decided to pull the plug on the 13ers project. I was not happy and asked them to go on without me, but they wouldn't leave me alone up there, especially in those conditions.
One of the highlights of the trip for me was checking out the night sky. I can't even fully describe what we saw up there, but it was out of this world amazing. The Milky Way looked like a thick cloud and I have never in my life seen the stars so bright. Every time I looked up I could see a few satellites moving over the earth and we saw a few dozen shooting stars as well. Unreal.
We slowly made our way over to Wasatch Peak. It was the middle of the night and we were navigating through some sketchy terrain by headlamp and I was feeling so so sick. I felt bad because the other guys had to wait so much for me. Eventually I made it to the next summit and Craig told me they were going to get me down ASAP. We then made an exit into the unknown down the south side of the mountain. We had a vague idea of what we were getting into based on the topo map, but the next several hours were pretty gnarly, making our way down a loose boulder pile into some really loose cliffs where we had to do some sketchy down climbing. Finally we made it down to a pass where we would pick up the Highline Trail and I actually started feeling a bit better.
We had all been out of water for well over an hour and we ran down the Highline trail and eventually came into a meadow with some springs where we filled up our water. Before sunrise we took about a 90 minute break. I was trashed. We climbed into our emergency bivy sacks and when we woke up the sun had come up and we were in one of the most incredible places I have ever seen. Wow!
We then had to climb up and over two major passes and travel about 20 more miles to get out. The trail has tons and tons of boulders, deadfall and we had to do several stream crossings. It wasn't ideal for running, but we ran what we could. I was so incredibly wrecked by time we finished our journey almost 24 hours after we started. I know for sure now that I will never attempt this project again. I just don't respond well to high altitude and this route just has too much terrain above 12,000 ft. so next time I'll leave it up to Craig and Matt. I still want to finish climbing all of the 13K peaks in the Uintas, but I'll never ever try it in one single push.
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