Chris and I hiked Mary’s Nipple yesterday, then spent the rest of the day driving around the Wasatch Plateau finding geocaches and enjoying the fall colors in the mountains. It was a long day for me, and a much longer one for Chris. I woke up at 4:30AM and left Price a little after 5:00, and met Chris at his work near Scofield where he’d been working since late the previous afternoon. We both drove to Mt. Pleasant, where Chris parked his car and hopped in the truck with me, then we continued south to Mayfield. From there we headed up Twelvemile Canyon to Skyline Drive, then south to the start of the hike for Mary’s Nipple (also known as Musinia Peak). I had been wanting to do this hike for quite some time, ever since seeing the very prominent peak several times while hanging out at Cortney’s house in Sigurd.
We started hiking at about 9:15AM, and it looked pretty daunting. Ahead of us was 1,600 feet of elevation gain in only 1.2 miles. The hike started out moderately steep through some aspen and a few open areas. A little more than halfway to the peak we reached a very steep part, and we hiked and scrambled up a gully to get up it. Once at the top of the gully, it was only moderately steep again, until reaching the base of the peak. Once again it was extremely steep, and there was only one good way to get up it on the northeast side of the peak. Chris had been ahead of me for all of the hike up, and by the time I got to the base of the peak he had already been on top for 10 or 15 minutes. I stopped before beginning the steep ascent and let Torrey eat some snow that was lingering in the shade of the north slope. When I reached the top, Chris was lounging around near the sighting tower at the survey marker. He’d gotten some blisters on his feet and didn’t feel like exploring the small plateau on top, so Torrey and I walked around the top and I took a lot of photos looking in all directions. It had taken two hours to reach the top, which was faster than I was expecting, and we spent about half an hour up there. We started to hike down at about 11:45AM, and it took about an hour to reach the truck.
After the hike, we drove around a lot and found several geocaches. We left Skyline Drive for a bit and drove around the east side of Block Mountain, then rejoined Skyline and continued north to the campground at Twelvemile Flat where we ate lunch. We took another road–a very rough one–around to the west side of Mt. Baldy. I had the truck in low range, but never locked the hubs in, for most of the drive down that road. We found a few geocaches in the area near Blue Lake and the WPA Ponds, then drove back north across Twelvemile Canyon and worked our way to the South Fork of Sixmile Canyon. We found one more geocache at the Sixmile Ponds, then headed back to Twelvemile Canyon and to Mayfield. The sun had set by then, and I was kind of disappointed that both times we’d driven through Twelvemile Canyon (which had the most colorful aspen of anywhere we’d been that day), the sun had been behind the horizon. Chris was nodding off for most of the drive down the canyon, having been awake for well over 24 hours, and he slept quite a bit more while we headed north on US-89. I dropped him off at his car in Mt. Pleasant, and while he headed home toward Sandy, I drove back to Price with the window down and the heater on. I got home and showered and went straight to bed. It had been a long and full day, and I’m sure it will be my last time in the mountains until next summer.

Photo Gallery

GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Earth .KMZ Format)

GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Maps)