Glen Gunnell

Last weekend began a grand adventure with the boys - the goal: to conquer Kings peak in Utah - the highest point in the Beehive state. Kings peak sits somewhere nice at 13,500+ ft. I hate to spoil the surprise, but yes we made it. It’s a good l-o-n-g hike. We broke it up into 2 nights. Backpacked in on Friday 8 miles. At the trail head I asked a group who had just come back how the mosquitoes were. They replied “real bad” and then they told me the forecast was snow for the night. Sweet! only prob. is I forgot my snowboard. Ha! But seriously, was I afraid of a wee bit of snow? Forget-about-it!

 We boogied up the trail with our 50-70lb. bags on our shoulders. It took Dale and his cotton socks about 12 feet to get blisters. He had fun tapping them up the whole trip.  We went 8 miles to the camp site and were excited to take a load off. The mosquitoes weren’t really bad at all (those crying whimps!) We had a grand encounter with Mr. Park Ranger. Apparently we were too close to the lake to have a fire.

The trip was planned by Adam as it was his last bachelor hooraa. The first night was a tad cold but no snow :( So we ate our cereal and pop-tarts and began our day hike to the peak. Poor Phil had back spasms and gave up after 1/2 mile. The 3 of us continued on …  Up the pass, through alpine meadows and across a mighty many rocks. I can’t think of anything else dramatic - we passed up quitters on our left and on our right and then we got to the top. Sucking wind for a while. Adam and I flashed our gang signs and yodeled, rapped and ate some lunch. Sitting on the top we wondered how we would make it back down to camp.  Dale came hobbling up after a few minutes and then we went back to camp - it was so l-o-n-g, I thought we would die packing home the next day. But we didn’t die! Once again man conquers nature!