My Everest

Just to the north of the city of Salt Lake City is a community called the Avenues. It is an older neighborhood which is full of eclectic homes, some aged apartment buildings, a hospital and some other stuff.

Above the Avenues is a hilly area appropriately called the foothills. It is criss-crossed several trails. Some follow the ridges and force you up and down the various hills, and some skirt around the hilltops and make for an easier hike.

The east side of these foothills rises steeply in elevation and peaks at about 8,000 feet at a place called Little Black Mountain. This is my Everest (at least so far this year it has been). This peak has been my destination twice and both times I have failed.

We are still getting winter storms and the last little bit of this hike is in snowy and steep terrain. But I it is my feeling that I should be tougher – or at least plan better.

My first attempt was about 6 weeks ago. We’d had a warm spell in the valley which left most of the lower trail snow-free. I departed the trailhead late in the morning with a full Camelbak, a few snacks and the companionship of my dog, Ginger. The hike across the hills was simple enough. Slow and steady got me across to where the hike starts to get steep.

Hiking along the ridges was windy and now the trail was covered in snow. It was soft and most of my steps sank about 2 feet into the snow. Luckily, someone else had been up this trail earlier in the day and so I was able to step into his footprints which made things quite a bit easier.

I’m not the strongest uphiller by any means. Climbing this steep section became more of a counting exercise than anything else. I’d take 100 steps, stop and rest, take 100 steps, stand around and wheeze, take 100 steps…well you get the idea. I did this for about a thousand vertical feet and finally got to the top. As I took the last few steps to the peak, I looked up and saw that I had another ¼ mile of trail that continued upward to the summit. Damn it!!

The trail wasn’t nearly as steep. I continued to walk upwards only to discover that my apparent destination was another false summit. I wasn’t even close! There was a ridge that ran another ½ mile or so to the true peak. I could see it now but the way was windblown with the snow angled over the edge in a small cornice most of the way. To my left was a steep dropoff that dropped a couple thousand feet into City Creek Canyon. To my right was another dropoff that looked like it went somewhere into Emigration Canyon.

At this point, I was about 5 miles from the trailhead. I was getting tired. I was hungry, having eaten my Zone Bars and fruit and peanuts. My dog was hungry enough to devour a Kiwi fruit so who knows how much she had left in her (although I’m betting it was a lot more than I had in myself).

I decided to make the call. I was going back. Coming to this conclusion wasn’t as depressing or as heart crushing a decision for me as it was for all those people who did the same thing on Mt. Everest. After all, I had invested all of two and a half hours into this adventure – not months or years and my life savings on it. But I thought it would be a crappy way to end the day as a corpse at the bottom of the mountain and my picture on all the local news stations. I would be back to conquer another day…