I’ve been trying to improve my health lately. My teacher for the women’s weightlifting class I’m in (which is really fun BTW) told us about a program for hiking the Timpanogos Cave trail. Since it’s the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service there’s a program where if you hike the trail up to the cave 100 times from May-beginning of Sept you get a free jacket.
I’m a sucker for big ideas and for about a week I was SO PUMPED to earn that jacket! But then I counted the days I had to hike and it was something like 115 at the time which meant I would have to go at least 6 days a week or do it twice a day which just wasn’t going to happen :/
I don’t have time for that! It takes me 2 hours to drive from my house to the trail, hike up and down, and then drive home. Most of the people whom I see hiking it multiple times are older (and probably don’t have little kids at home). So my friend Amy decided we would get ourselves our own reward when we hiked it 50 times 😉
It’s a pretty good hike: 1.5 miles up gaining about 1,100 ft. At times it’s really steep. I keep waiting for it to get noticeably easier but I just hiked it for the 13th time this morning and it’s still really hard in places. But I’ve shaved a few minutes off my time up so that’s good.
I normally leave the house at 6am so I’m back by 8 for N to leave for work, but last Friday my friend Amy and I took our kids with us around lunch time and went on the cave tour. It was fun but afterwards I was wiped out. Turns out it takes a lot of energy to cajole a whining 8-year-old up a mountain. It took us an hour and a half to get up to the cave when it normally takes about 43 min, ha!
I was looking forward to sleeping in this summer, but I have to get up even earlier than normal when I go hiking. But I love it!–I definitely love it more on the way down than on the way up–but I feel so invigorated and ready for anything. It usually wears off around 2pm when all I want to do is crawl in bed for a quick nap, but it’s nice while it lasts 😉
what is the earliest that you can climb the trail? Is it open at 6 AM? I see the visitors’ center opens at 7 AM but the trail opens earlier doesn’t it?
There’s a gate about 1/4 of the way up and they unlock it at 6am during the week and at 7am on the weekend. I hope you can give it a try–it’s a great hike!