On Top of a Mountain

For those of you wondering how I proposed to my beautiful fiancé, here is how the story goes...

I bought the ring at the end of April. It was laborious process, one that every man should have to go through so that they appreciate the fact that they only have to do this once as long as they faithfully honor the commitment behind this incredibly expensive purchase. I was seeking many different ideas of ways to propose to Jacqueline, when finally I figured the best way would be to go to a place that was very important to the two of us, Great Basin. We had spent an amazing weekend there a year previous, so we decided to head on up again.

This time I picked a more remote section of the park hoping to get away from any sort of crowds. I was successful. When I got up to the trailhead in the Snake Creek section of the park, we were the only ones there.
We started our extremely difficult hike to a lake far, far away. Actually it was only 3.7 miles away, but 2400 feet uphill. I was not exactly in what you would call the best shape of my life. I was still recovering from my bad ankle injury. This was actually the first trip I was able to take on my ankle other than for work. We were both rather winded the entire hike up. Eventually we made it to our destination, which was Johnson Lake for the night. 

The lake was beautiful, resting peacefully under Pyramid Peak rising with its boulder sized scree slopes above. We spent the afternoon doing various activies: sleeping, cribbage, taking dips in the lake, as you can see the small scale silhouette of Jacqueline in the photo above. I was proud of Jacqueline as it took some coaxing to get her into the lake, for as my face shows, it was not the warmest of lakes. The history of the lake makes it even more interesting as there was a rather productive tungsten mine above the lake until the cable works, still visibly in shambles, were destroyed by an avalanche. We spent the evening, eating, playing hangman, playing cards, and then eventually sleeping and enjoying the cool mountain air away from our hot desert home.
The next day we awoke with the rising sun. I got Jacqueline going pretty quickly and we headed up the "trail" to the pass between Johnson Lake and Baker Lake we visited last year. The trail became steeper and rougher the higher we climbed. Finally near the end, it got a bit sketchy. There was snow over the trail in the only safe place to go. I had to blaze a trail and lure Jacqueline to attempt the same way. Soon we had reached the pass.

From there I could see that the summit was only a boulder hopping climb away. We continued our way up and both of us did well considering how winded we could have been heading to our eventual elevation of 11,926 feet. Meanwhile little does Jacqueline know that as I am walking up to the summit I am thinking, well, I hope I can pull this off. Inside my pack, hidden for the duration of the time out in Utah and then on the backpack is the beautiful diamond ring I bought for Jacqueline. I had my strategy planned out and now it was time for me to execute it.
This is the picture I took of Jacqueline right before I proposed.

 I said stand over there and I will take your picture. After the picture, I said that she should take my picture. In the camera case, instead of a camera, I got the ring case. When she opened it up, the largest smile appeared on her face. I walked back to her, told her how much I was in love with her and how happy I would be if she would spend the rest of her life with me. She said yes and thus the next step began. We still had to continue our way down the mountain to make sure that the happily ever after had its opportunity. We scrambled down to the pass which was the easy part. There was a couple there that we chatted with, but did not tell them we just got engaged. It would have been hard to tell someone who did not know us first the incredible news. As we came off the pass, the lake below us looked so small.

We still had to make the traverse across the snowed out trail. We did well, as Jacqueline seems to be willing to do just about anything if I do it first. I even took a side trip up to see the mine (not very impressive). We made it back to camp where I took one more good dip in the freezing lake. Then we headed down the hill and back to the truck where home meant sharing the wonderfully exciting news with our family and friends.

Hot Valley

Hot Valley, better known as Hop Valley, was our assignment on the schedule for this beautiful 110 degree day in July. Jonathan, our volunteer for the season, and I had no choice but to head into what we knew was not going to be a very enjoyable day. The nice part about going for work is that we get an early start and we got to drive the government rig. We hit the Hop Valley TH at a little past nine. It was already near one hundred. I came extra prepared on this day, bringing with me five liters of water. We headed across the sandy plain. The trail was in great condition, nearly 100 percent sand. The other time I had done Hop Valley was in the early spring when it was muddy. I could not tell which was worse. The flat sandy, sage brush filled plain seemed to go on for hours, but it was probably only an hour until we dropped into what actually was Hop Valley. After looking at the terrain and putting my geology experience to work, I realized that Hop Valley must have at one time been a lake. I confirmed this later and the largest tell tale sign was how incredibly flat the valley was. There was a small very slow moving stream which we would have to cross. I was glad that I brought all the water that I did, which I was drinking rather swiftly, though, because there was no way that I was going to drink the water coming out of the stream. This was because of the only reason why Ray would send us into Hop Valley in the middle of summer anyway: the cows. I was getting all fired up because I thought that the cows we were running into were on Park land. I took a ton of pics, but it turned out that they were on their legal private inholdings where they were strongly destroying the resource. I was a bit worried about these guys, too, because there were a couple of bulls mixed in with the cows. They did not seem too happy to see the two of us, so Jonathan and I carried with us a big stick to use in case one started to charge. When we got to the actual Park Service gate, we realized that the cows were legally on their side, though. Later we learned that Rich from Kolob chased the cows back just a day before. Jonathan was all pumped to go out to Kolob Arch. I was not about to let him down. So we headed up through the only trees and shade that we would have all day and then dropped into La Verkin Creek. I was stoked to see the creek flowing very strongly. It had been some time since I saw La Verkin Creek, so this was a pleasant surprise. We were able to make it up to the arch after another mile, for a halfway total of seven miles. After the arch, we went to the creek to refill our water bottles that were now near empty. It made a big difference as both of us were still feeling good because we were well hydrated. We knew we were going to have to haul to make it back by the time we got off work, so we just put our heads down and moved. Since we checked the campsites on the hike up, which were empty as we assumed, we could just go. The cows left us alone and the water kept being drained as this day was so incredibly hot it was hard to believe. We walked the long, sandy seven miles back to the government rig and both of us were very happy to see it. We each drank two gallons of water in one day, but speaking for myself, I only used a friendly bush once on the whole hike. It just reminds us that carrying a couple extra pounds of water weight can only provide for a more enjoyable hike rather than vice versa.

South Fork of Taylor Creek

Going crazy from lack of movement, my ankle resting days were coming to an end when Jacqueline and I took off on a lovely summer's evening to hike the South Fork of Taylor Creek up in the Kolob Canyons. We got to the trailhead about 6:30pm after dealing with Jacqueline's van overheating once again from too much AC. The last month here has been so hot and dry, that we figured an evening hike would be our best bet. We were right. I did not even know that there was going to be a trail for the South Fork, but there ended up being one. The ankle was feeling well although the stability obviously was not there yet. The drainage was beautiful. I could just imagine that without the trail it would be a rough bushwhack to get anywhere. But with the trail, which wasn't much of anything except a sandy trampled down path, we could navigate quite swiftly. Soon we were closing in on where the canyon walls narrowed. We could see it coming the whole time, but it was still impressive to look straight up on these nearly vertical walls falling a thousand feet down to the comfortable canyon floor. We were so happy for the evening shade provided as it was wonderful to not have to be sweating up a storm being outside in Southern Utah. The canyon walls continued to close in even more until we were in a virtual slot canyon. Here we found a dead and decaying ringtail cat. Right after that, we found out where the canyon ended with a headwall coming into view. We climbed up aways and then finally hit something that I would not climb without someone experienced belaying me. So we had no choice but to turn around. The view back down the South Fork was just as impressive as the view going up with the sun coming down on one of the longest days of the year. We enjoyed going back down and I was happy because the healing process on the ankle obviously was doing its trick. There was still some soreness there with the hike, but all and all, the ankle was in rather good shape. We hit the trailhead at about 8:30pm, so the hike itself was only about two hours. Still, I would have to rate it as one of the best short hikes in Zion that I have done.