Wilson Peak Hike

This was the third outing of the Intuit Utah hiking club. In attendance were Jeffry, Yulin, Kirk, Kirk's son Delan and Myself. We ended up running into the big RAGNAR race (see http://www.ragnarrelay.com/) and the trailhead we had planned on using was one of the relay exchange points at the end of leg 33 . When we arrived the exchange point team was setup but the first team was yet to arrive. We parked up the road in compliance with the police officer's instructions.

Jeffry got a little bit of local info from one of the race people. I started worrying about the stream we had to cross since I could hear the water raging from the trailhead. The local guy thought we would probably be able to find rocks to cross on but that didn't turn out to be true.

When we arrived at the stream it was clearly much bigger/deeper and violent than any of us had expected. Wading across was just up to the edge of iffy. I started bushwhacking up the stream looking for rocks or a log to cross, Jeffry started down. I gave up after a while because the terrain flattened out and the stream got wider. I was thinking taking off shoes & socks and wading was going to be the ticket. I got back to the road and the rest of the people were gone. The stream was so loud it was hard to even hear shouting. Eventually I found the other with everyone but Jeffry on the other side.

Jeffry led me to a aspen tree across the stream. My legs were wobbly but I made it across. On the way back most of us crossed a different spot where there was a low log to walk on and a higher one to hold on to with your hands. You can see both it the photos.

Once we were across the stream, the hiking was fairly easy. We were walking on a pretty good jeep trail though steep and rutted at times. The views were great and soon we heard and saw the first few runners go though the trailhead from up on the mountain.

We stopped a few times to take pictures and hiked all the way to the overlook point that has lots of antenna. I took a few panorama shots and will try to get around to stitching them together when I get a chance. Delan was collecting lots of rocks along the way to take home as souvenirs.

When we got back to the trailhead it was chaos on the magnitude of the Tour de France. The road was clogged with runners and support vehicles. We ended up finding that there were over 575 teams. I feared it would take hours to get down the road against the race traffic. We ended up getting in behind two other vehicles heading down and got back to Midway in surprisingly good time.

We didn't bushwhack up to the high peak (there is no real trail), so the hike ended up being a little on the whimpy side. I want to do it at some point, I think that will be a good one for Nutmeg and I some day.

Photos: flickr

GPS Tracks: kml gpx