Feb 3, 2011

YW 4^th Year Hikes

4th Year Hike: Box Canyon Les Long

I have had the opportunity to be a Priesthood leader for several years as my girls were growing up on one of their yearly Young Women activities. It is a requirement for their certifications for the fourth year at Girl’s Camp that they go on a separate hike from the week long girl’s camp. So either their ward or the stake as a whole will get all of the girl’s in their fourth year and plan a special hike for them. Typically the girls go on one 4^th year hike but Tia had a leader , Wendy Dahle, who was a camper from her youth and taught Tia to love it as well. So Tia went on at least 8 of them and I went on 7 of them with her and still regret having not been there on the other one when she went to Green River Lakes in Wyoming with Bob and Wad (Bob Dahle and Dennis Wadsworth). 

The first year that I went I was able to go with a great camper Les Long as the other Priesthood leader. I have long respected his ability when it came to camping and enjoyed that camp with him. We traveled to the Boulder Mountains in Southern Utah. On the south side of the Boulders there is a canyon called Box Canyon which starts near the top of one of the main tributaries and goes 8 miles before you can get out of the canyon.  We start at the top and then take all of the cars to the bottom of the canyon and then drive back in one canyon and after the hike we take one car back to the top and pick up the other car and go back to the bottom. 

So we started at the top and all of the girl’s waited there for us until we got back in the one car. We then took a picture of the group and started down into the canyon.

It was a narrow trail at the start that often crossed the stream and then later went to the side as the canyon opened up into a larger base.  About four miles into the canyon we stopped to camp for the night.  The trail also went down for a long part of it in sand which made the going pretty hard especially with a heavy backpack. Several of the girls really struggled and would stop quite often making it harder to get to where we wanted to camp four miles into the canyon.

We were able to enjoy a relaxed evening after we set up our tents and had supper.

We had a good nights rest as far as sleeping on the sand allows anyway. We woke up and started breakfast and then as we were packing up to go it started to snow. The girl’s were ready to go in record time and they hiked out without hardly even stopping. I was so impressed by their speed but I guess when it’s snowing on you and you know you have to go four miles to get out of it then you can dig deep for the ability that is already there and make it happen. It was a great hike.

4th Year Hike: Box Canyon and the scouts Danny Raymer

This was a fun year for hiking because of the difference in attitudes caused probably by harmones. We went down a day earlier on this trip to Box Canyon and decided to stay over one extra night so we could go into Escalante and receive the training for wilderness hiking provided by the Forest Service there in town. We went to the training and enjoyed the sites that were in that small southern Utah town. Then traveled back up the canyon to a campground near the start of Box Canyon.  We started to set up camp and decide where all of the girls and leaders were going to be during the night. About halfway through the setup a carload of scouts drove into the campground. I could tell that it was a group of boys that were varsity Scouts and thus the same age as the girls. I went over and talked to one of the leaders who looked very familiar to me and as we talked I realized that I had worked with him in Varsity Scouting several years earlier. He was from American Fork and his boys were indeed Varsity Scouts. We decided that it would not work to well to have them in the same camp so Brother Kitchen decided to take his group to another camping area.

We did our usual activities around the campfire that night and then retired to bed. Well around 1 AM a couple of boys showed up in camp and little to their knowledge did they realize the quick plans they had made with the girls to came back when the leaders would be asleep wasn’t a real smart thing to do. We caught them fairly quickly and very soon after that their leader showed up in a car and told them to get back to camp. They started to try to climb into his car and he mearly stated “You walked here, you will walk back.” It was around a mile away from our camp.

The next morning we were eager to get into the canyon so we could spend a relaxing hike and several hours at our campsite halfway down the canyon. We shuttled the cars down and back and were just getting ready to start into the canyon when the boys showed up and were also going to hike through the canyon. They still had to shuttle their cars however so we were quite a bit ahead of them when we started into the canyon. The girls were hiking pretty good except for a couple who just couldn’t hike through the sand, it was so hot and difficult. About an hour later the boys however caught up with our group and then those girls didn’t seem to have a problem at all. They chatted with a couple of the boys and we hiked right along until we got to out camp without a word of a problem the whole time. It took us about an hour though to get the boys to move on down the canyon after we had stopped.

We had a good evening and did some hiking up some of the side canyons and I took lots of pictures. The next morning was just opposite of the last time we had been in the canyon and was somewhat hot. Again the girls were having a difficult time hiking out that morning. We had gone about 3 of the 4 miles and the boys showed up. They gallantly took over the backpacks of the struggling girls and we hiked on out to the end of the trail where their bewildered leaders had been wondering where they had gone. I think they had a pretty good idea however. They had actually spent the night at the end of the trail at the request of the boys.

Well the girls talked to the boys while we went and retrieved the other vehicle and then we finally pried them apart so that we could return home. I found out several years later that two of the girls and two of the boys had continued relationships for a couple years after returning home. I don’t know however if any of the relationships continued into a marriage relationship. I still remember one of their young men though that I had a great deal of respect for after that hike. He had one leg that has been removed due to cancer and hiked with an artificial leg the entire distance. It was obviously not easy but he never ever complained either.

4th Year Hike: Green River Lakes

The second time that Tia went into the head of the green river in Wyoming I was lucky enough to be able to go. I knew it was a beautiful area because Tia had shown me some of the pictures that she had taken the first time when she went in two years earlier. It was a long drive into Wyoming to get to the trail head but only about a mile and a half back into the camping area. We ended up hiking a good share of that in the rain also. This was my first time into any of the lakes in Wyoming and it was indeed a very beautiful area. The hike went well and the other Priesthood advisor was my brother-in-law Scott Jeffers who had brought horses along to carry in some of the gear. I personally had all of mine in my backpack but was glad we had horses to help a couple of the girls that had problems with their packs.

We set up camp on the first of the two lakes reminding the girls to hang their food in between two trees since we were in bear country. I never saw or heard a bear the entire trip but was always glad that we were cautious anyway. It was actually the second lake that we hiked to but the first one at the base of the mountains, truly where the river started. After doing all of the setup of the camp we had some time to do some hiking around the second lake and just having some fun. It was early in the year and luckily before the season where the mosquito’s were hatching in full volume.

We had a campfire and spent some time around it before retiring to bed.

The next morning, after a rough sleep on the rocks, several of us went for a hike around to the other side of the second lake. We saw a moose and I was able to take several pictures of it and we seemed to have hikes almost the entire trail back to the parking lot where we had started the day before. We had to hike clear back to  camp and pack up then walk back out. It was along walk but well worth it. There were no real problems on this hike but it did seem like the trail back was a lot shorter than the one going in the night before in the rain.  I was glad that I was able to be on that hike with Tia as well as all of the others that I did with her through the years.

4th Year Hike: Days Fork

When we did the Days Fork hike, up Hobble Creek Canyon, the Stake had asked that we keep all of the hikes within the Utah County area that year. So Marie, Brother and Sister Dahle and Sister Jones and I decided to try out first a hike that I had heard about form scout troops. Wendy Dahle also had known about it and wanted us to hike it so that we would know if it would work for the girls. Well we went up early one morning and I really enjoyed the hike. Going up I was quite concerned about Bob Dahle though since he was way behind the rest of us. He commented however that we were not to worry because even though he was slow he was steady. Bob was quite over weight but did indeed make the hike on a slow but steady pace. (That was a lesson that would serve me later in years when I was out of shape and asked to climb a mountain with a stake group.) It was a beautiful hike and we decided that we would take the girls on it in a couple of week following that day.

Well we did and it was a fun but rather hard hike after we put on back packs full of camping gear. I don’t remember how many girls we had with us but it was probably around 8 to 10. We hiked up to the top where the trail crossed over the ridge and then part of the way down the other side when we started to find water again before we stopped for the night.  I had a number of the girls begging me to stop but it wasn’t until the hike was over the next day that they were glad I had left all of the last days hike on the downhill side of the event. We did experience something that last day though that we had not experienced on the hike as leaders two week earlier. This time as were going down the trail we came to a part of it where an elk had died and there were flesh worms strewn along the trail for several yards and we had to get off of the trail to get past and even then we were unable to miss or skirt the smell that accompanied it. I doubt any of the girls will ever forget it. Another year, another hike and another special experience teaching young women how to hike and camp. Each time I was able to do it with Tia and that made it even more special.

4th Year Hike: Wardworth

Tia had been called as a Stake leader this time and was asked to plan the hike with any help that she wanted. So she came to me and asked me to help decide on a place to go. We decided to go up to Wadsworth in the right hand fork of Hobble Creek. It was near the Days Fork area only a little higher and went to the left side of the canyon rather than the right side where days fork was located.

We decided to use some help also from someone who would become a new member of the family. Hayden was dating  Cheyenne Palmer from Payson and we asked her to go along and do some things to help us stress first aid. Hayden also went as the second Priesthood advisor since we couldn’t find anyone else. We had with us that year a young women that we knew to be very hard to work with and one who didn’t obey the rules very well but she was a hard worker to some degree and we found out that it would play into our favor later on.

After we set up camp about a mile and a half from the start of the trail we had decided to take a hike further up the canyon so we could do some compass work and also teach the girls some tracking skill’s. Hayden and I left first leaving a trail that was quite obvious at first and then difficult to ward the end. The girls did a pretty good job until they were almost where we were hiding but when they found it difficult to find anymore tracks they were about to give up thinking we had fooled the and gone back to camp. We finally stood up to show them we were even close enough to hear them talking. It was a good chance to teach them that people, especially children, will hide so they can’t be found because they are scared that they don’t know the searching person or that they will get into trouble for it somehow.

We then started back down the trail with Cheyenne about in the middle and Tia and I at the first with Hayden following up at the end. At a certain area in the trail that Cheyenne had picked while hiking up she faked an accident and went rolling down the hill. (She later admitted that she wasn’t sure she was actually going to be able to stop before going all the way to the bottom. I was down the trail a pretty good distance and Hayden was a good distance as well. So the girls had to go into action, they called for us to do it. I called back and told them to get down and help her till I got there. So our problem girl, who is also a born leader, started to get things done and to get help down to Cheyenne. We were able to get her back up to the trail and she did a great job faking a hurt ankle. I helped the girls fashion a makeshift stretcher and they carried her back the ½ mile left to camp. About twenty yards before camp she had them stop, then she jumped off the stretcher and walked on into camp by herself obviously not hurt at all. The young lady really got mad then and all I could do was laugh. She calmed down and the with all of the girls around we talked about what had happened and what they had learned from it. The young lady then commented I was wondering why Hayden wouldn’t help us when it was his girlfriend and he should have been right there.  It was a good camp.

4th Year Hike:  Big Springs

Big Springs was a little bit different hike from the others in that we only carried the packs for 1 and a half miles to where we set camp and then hiked to the top of the pass overlooking Utah Valley. So it was a tough hike but luckily without backpacks. There were also some girls that struggled just to get to camp who elected to stay behind and not go to the top. Another girl had major problems just getting to the Big Springs camp area and Tia and Hayden had to take her back to the main camp. They then hiked back and caught up to the rest of us before we had gone hardly another mile. I struggled to make the top myself and Hayden and Tia were both there long before I made it. Another girl decided to stay in the bowl just below the ridge rather than try to make that last 100 foot climb. Sister Allen made the climb all the way to the top and we had about 10 girls also make the total distance.

We stopped and took some group pictures at the top and stayed there for several minutes while enjoying the view over Utah Valley. The top is just behind the Rock Canyon camp area East of Provo. We met a group of scouts who had hiked up form that area and were headed down into Big Springs. They had full back packs on as they were hiking. On the way back down from the top we all slid down on our coats on the snow banks. Sister Allan was headed straight for a stump and I was able to stop her before she got there. It was a pretty good hike and had one other surprise for those who did the climb. There is a large pine tree that smelled just like butterscotch that we were all surprised with as we stood close to it and took a deep smell of the bark.

4th Year Hike: Rocky Ridge

This year the hike was incorporated into the Stake Trek over Rocky Ridge. I suppose it was probably harder in many ways than most of the hikes in that it was a lot longer but maybe a bit easier in that they didn’t have to put on back packs. Pulling a cart probably made it more challenging in the long run. We had a three day event where we went to Martin’s cove one night then to 6^th water the second night. The actual hike was when we went from 6^th Water over Rocky Ridge which was a 21 mile trek with the hand carts. This was a good hike and as usual on a trek it was a very spiritual experience.

The one interesting thing that came from this year was that I was asked to take pictures on this trek for the stake. Another member of the stake had a Canon 60-D Digital camera that he had me take since he was going to be doing video during the trek. So I took my Canon A-1 and 40 rolls of film and then his digital camera and one card. I exposed 16 rolls of film and then added to that 800 images with the digital camera. It was a camera where I could also change lenses as I did on the A-1 and it was an experience that would change my life in photography forever. I went home form the trek and ordered my first Canon 10-D digital camera and have not used the film cameras since that time.