A Peak With A Winter Personality

I have experienced several mountains across the West in my life - either by traveling through them or recreating in them or observing them over all Four Seasons, year after year. This experience has taught me the profound lesson that every mountain has it's own personality. This character is informed by the terrain and weather most obviously, the history and the flora and fauna more subtly. The Wasatch Mountains have always been my home range and they remain so to this day. While I have the most experience with the peaks that look over the Salt Lake Valley, there is one peak with extra allure, extra beauty, and extra ruggedness to me that overlooks Utah Valley: Mount Timpanogus 

Where does this interest in Timp come from? Perhaps it is because it is the most prominent of all the peaks in Utah Valley, rising to 11,752 feet above sea level. Perhaps it is because it is a rite of passage to hike for all BYU undergraduate students at midnight to observe dawn from a peak. Perhaps its the stunning wildflowers, the glacial cirques, the silvery waterfalls, and the icey lakes. Perhaps it is because of its striated, horizontal cliff bands that make it so easy to recognize from anywhere. Put simply - perhaps it is because it is full of personality. 

Like the most popular kid in your high school class who easily makes friends with everyone in all clicks, people identify with this beautiful personality and are drawn to it. So this hike is unbelievably popular from April through October. It only seems to be growing with each year. You would be hardpressed to find a single day when you can go a single mile without seeing at least 20 other hikers on the trail. The allure of Timp is real - and growing. I truly hope we refrain from loving the Wasatch to Death, but that is a subject for another day

This personality shows a new side in the winter. During this season, the human traffic up there is minimized yielding a solitude that is maximized. This is wilderness - to be so alone you feel like you're in Alaska. This is beauty - to have the winterscape be distilled down to 4 colors on a perfect weather day: deep blue from the cloudless and clear sky, white from the mammoth blanket of thick snow that is at least a few building stories deep, rust from the raw exposed cliff bands, and golden yellow from our star that we call the sun which I refuse to take for granted when you're outside on an icy winter day and its your only true source of external heat. This is Timp - without hoardes of hikers of all ages and abilities, trampling its well-worn trails 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and 6 months of the year. 

The mountain breaths a sigh of relief and rests from the crowds in the winter. And a new side of it's personality emerges - the side of diversity in all its phases. 

The weather is diverse. It started off 25 deg F at 7:30 am at the Aspen Grove Trailhead. My Honda was surrounded by snowdrifts at least 15 feet high, a sure sign that the winter of 2022-2023 has been, and will yet be, record-breaking. Thankfully, the sun caused a sweat after 30 minutes of warm-up skinning up the summer trail on my trusty Black Diamond skis. The juxtaposition between cold and hot always feels so rewarding during vigorous outdoor exercise on a cold winter day. And to me there is no more vigorous-or rigorous- wintertime exercise than hiking uphill with skis on your feet and gear on your pack and in the various insulating layers necessary for back country skiing. The shade froze that sweat and caused a chill, only motivating me to exercise even harder. And the wind up on top of Primrose Cirque caused a chill that no amount of exercise or weatherproof layers could repel. 

The view of Primrose Cirque from the Aspen Grove parking lot. Look at the deep blue sky!

 The snow is diverse. Utahns say that if you don't like the weather in Utah in the Spring, wait a day or two and it will change. The same could be said for the snow on this mountain: if you don't like the snow pack, wait 10 minutes and it will surely change. I experienced all types of snow up here. First of all was a layer of ice for the first mile. This came from the recent "rain-on-snow" event that put a shiny layer of water on all the existing snowpack, which of course froze that night. There is no worse snow to ski on than ice on top of snow. Next came the avalanche debris. I have never skied Timp and not seen evidence of slide paths - seemingly in all directions. Some slides were wet avalanches, others were storm sluffs, others were slab layers. This mountain is alive with the seemingly constant movement of snow and air. Given that it was rated as a "Moderate" day at the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center's website, I felt good about continuing onward. Granted, I have never skied Timp when it was a "Low" day. The green light on Timp is rare indeed.

Huge debris fields from wet "moving concrete" slides at the bottom of Eddy's Gulch.

 Then, after passing through Timp Falls debris field, came the hardpack, where the snow had slid leaving behind a solid bed, which can best be approximated as a "groomer" in the backcountry. These are challenging conditions. Finally came the powder, found mostly in slopes with tree stands, providing some much needed shelter from the wind. At most for me the powder was boot deep. But I don't go to Timp for incredible snow - I go there for the incredible terrain.

Mount Timpanogus Summit at 11,752'

The Timp Glacier, covered in several feet of snow.

The location of the Warming Hut in winter ( I think).

 Speaking of which, the terrain is fantastically diverse. You get a little bit of everything The trail starts in aspens, as would be expected with a trailhead name like Aspen Grove. Then comes scrubby willows near the river bottom leading up to Timp Falls. Then comes rolling hills with interspersed large pines. Then comes the steep climb up the Cirque, dotted with scrawny and battered small pines. After topping out over Primrose Cirque ridge, then comes...nothing. Literally. The snow is so deep this year that it is just fields of pure white up here. I counted 6 pine tree tops that were tall enough to still show it's head, but thats it. Other than that, it's the white blanket in all directions. In all the times I have been to Timp in the winter, I had never seen anything like it. It was mesmerizing and relaxing to have so little to focus on over such a vast upper glacial valley, yawning towards the cliff bands and ultimately the summit off in the distance.

Roller balls and avalanche debris

One of the best parts of this tour is that on top of Primrose Cirque, you are rewarded with a mile of very flat terrain, restoring the muscles, lungs, and spirit. So I continued onward on flat terrain in this upper glacial valley. I came over a large rise, remembering that this is approximately where I would come upon the warming hut and views of Emerald Lake I had seen in the dozen times I have been to Timp in the past. Coming over the rise, I saw....neither of these features! Nothing was present. I could  not believe my eyes. The footprint of the lake looked like a small meadow, draped in deep white. The hut had vanished. In summer, it must have been 20' high with the stone chimney, but not a single stone was now  visible. It's as if it was swallowed up whole by this winter's onslaught of snow, or, perhaps, abducted by aliens. Or a combination of the two, as this winter has truly created an alien snowpack in the high country in terms of depth and volume.  

Surprisingly flat terrain, once on top of Primrose Cirque.

While I fully intended to meet my original objective of skinning up to the top of the famous Timp Glacier when I started my trip, I chose instead to turn around at this point for three reasons. First, I was out of time as I needed to be all the way back in Salt Lake City for an appointment in just 90 minutes. Second, I wanted to slow down a moment or two to actually embrace the incredible 360 degree view here with some picture-taking and water-guzzling. Third, and most importantly, there were very fresh slides at the top of the Timp Glacier, as well as car-sized cornices protruding off the ridge that I didn't know how I was going to ascend when I got beneath them (and really didn't want to even be underneath them in the first place). 

Fresh slide below the cornices caused me to turn back at this point.

Descending from Primrose Cirque

So I took a few minutes to take in this piece of true winter wilderness, basking in the solitude and sun and Glory of Creation. Then I peeled off my skins, clicked down my boot buckles, zipped up the parka and turned the skis downhill. The next 45 minutes would be sheer high-speed bliss. To me it is a worthy pay-off for the 150 minutes of exertion, sweat, and grunts resulting climbing up to this point on skis. I get a question from others so often that I have learned to ask it myself first: was your back country ski tour this morning really worth it?  For me, I have done these tours often enough for the past 14 years to know the calculus between risk and reward, between effort and pay-off, between pain and gain, that makes back-country skiing so consistently alluring to me.   So the answer is always: yes. And it's a "resounding yes!!!" when you're doing it all bn   on a mountain oozing with personality like my old friend Timp.

But before I picked up too much speed I looked over my shoulder once more at the summit,  and simply reminded myself once more and out loud:  "I Love Timp In The Winter!"

South Mount Timpanogus under perfect weather conditions.