Mt. Nebo - Three Summits

North summit of Mt. Nebo. 11,928 ft.

On a hot Friday afternoon the Utah Climbing club and I left the Cedar Ridge trail head East of the tiny town of Mona. Our goal for the day was base camp at 10,000. So, with winter overnight packs we tromped up the rocky, dusty trail toward the cooler pine laden forests above. After lots of dirt, scree and bush-whacking we finally made it to the pines and snow (8,400 ft.) and put on the snowshoes. I was quite happy, not only to be done with the scree and brush but to get the weight of the snowshoes off my back.  After about a thousand ft. we paused to watch 6 bull elk, most looked to be 4 point bucks, cross about 50 yards in front of us. It was pretty cool watching them bound through chest deep snow as they crossed over to a different mountain ridge.

David and his tent he kindly shared, surrounded by walls of snow

At around 9000 ft. my usual nemesis leg cramps cropped up making me stop for a few minutes here and there to let my legs relax and regroup.  Dropping my knees and legs deep into the snow seemed to help with a little natural icing down of the muscled. I was on the tail end of the first group of 5 to make base camp. By the time I got there my tent partner David had found a suitable spot with trees to the South that would help block the forecasted 50 mph winds. We didn’t get much of a break, but I did get to take off my 40 lb. pack, as we started digging out the snow to make a level spot of ground and build up a nice snow wall that worked well as a wind break.  Slowly the rest of the club straggled into camp. Lots of calls to borrow shovels and Steripens were heard as people dug out pits and melted snow for water. My Steripen was the champ of the night and my JetBoil stove was not. The JetBoil works great to boil water, but quickly slows down after a few liters when melting snow for water. The fuel just gets too cold and inefficient burning to deliver enough heat.

At around 10 pm we finally got our food cooked and enough water to get us through the summit march the next day. As is usually the case we found out that our flat base, wasn’t that flat. I had a big lump under my back making it impossible to find a comfortable position to sleep and David had his head on the downhill side of his feet, making his night less than idea. After an eternity I checked my watch to see that the time was 2:38 am, with a wake-up time of 3:00 I wasn’t thrilled. I managed to fall asleep for 15 minutes then it was time to get up and get to it. I dug into my usual Pop-Tart breakfast, cheap, easy and lots of calories, but found later that they didn’t really have enough substance to keep my stomach from wanting more pretty quickly.

Lone climber on the top of middle summit

At 4:00 am four or five of us got started up the ridge to the South summit, the 2^nd tallest of the Nebo peaks at 11,877 ft.  My summit pack was nice and light but my lungs were still feeling the altitude. We crept up the 1800 or so feet to the south summit in the dark. I paused for a moment on the bump on top then turned to the north to start down the ridge toward the middle and north summits. When we got to the low point between the south and middle summit we found a very narrow rocky ridge with lots of exposure on both sides. Working across this ridge, using my rock skills was a little scary in the dark, but we got it done and headed up the steep middle summit climb.

Matt nearing the top of the north summit

Once on the middle summit (11,824 ft) I saw the sun was about to peak over the distant mountains so I paused to watch the orange rays come up and illuminate the lower mountains and hills below. Not much better in this world than being on top of a mountain watching the sun come up.  I couldn’t stay long as my hands and feet were getting cold so I continued north to the final summit. Between each of the summits the ridge drops a couple of hundred feet. The descent is a nice break, but starting the upward climb was a lot of work.  I was a few minutes behind 3 of my faster cohorts, having had to stop a couple of times to stick my hands in my armpits to get the feeling back in my fingers. I made the true summit of Nebo, the north summit at 11,928.  I snapped a couple of quick summit photos then headed down before the snow started to turn to slush.

Me on the north summit of Mt. Nebo

After getting back to camp, packing up and heading down on snowshoes the snow had turned to crap, really slushy and slippery making it difficult to keep my balance with my heavy pack.  After getting through the trees there were some great stretches to glissade. My butt got pretty soaked from the wet snow, but it was worth it cut out about 1000 ft.

The champ of the weekend was my Grivel Air-Tech Evo ice axe. It’s pretty light, about 1 lb. but it has a really strong shaft in case you need to belay off of it and it comes with a great leash that has a rubber cover for the shaft pick.  I’ve used this a few times in the mountains. I like the curved shaft near the head of the axe. It makes it nice and comfortable to carry and use. The head is forged and really tough. I used it for a bit of dry tooling here and there and there are no signs of use. I’m 6’3” and the 66 cm length is perfect for me. I was a bit worried that it might be too short, but I’ve found that any time I’ve needed it longer the slope is mellow enough that the axe isn’t all that needed. It’s on the steep stuff that I really like having it. Little nicks have come off the bright yellow paint from banging balled up snow and ice off my crampons, as well as knocking around on the rocks when I need to use my hands for a bit of climbing.  I like it so much that I keep it by my bed for both the good mountain memories as well as a home protection weapon. Can you imagine being an intruder and facing down someone wielding an ice axe. I wouldn’t want that buried in my skull, would you?

Big props to the climbing club, you’re all a lot of fun to hang out and climb mountains with. 

Buckley Mountain - Awesome Mountain You've Never Heard Of

2:30 AM Saturday morning, the alarm goes off.  I dragged myself out of bed expecting to have a fairly mellow day climbing 9502 ft. Buckley Mountain. The Utah Climbing Club was scheduled to do Loafer Mountain and Santaquin Peak but extreme avalanche conditions forced a chance to smaller, less exotic, Buckley Mountain. Buckley Mountain sits right at the Provo – Springville border. Buckley, along with Y-Mountain and others are the shorter peaks that sit in front of the taller more well-known peaks like Provo, Cascade, Timpanogos, etc. I haven’t yet met anyone that has ever heard of Buckley mountain or paid any attention to it, despite the fact that it sits right there in front of everyone that lives in or drives around Provo.

My snowshoes and ice axe were already strapped to my pack. I just had to cram some oatmeal down my gullet and put some Carbo-Pro and Nuun in my water bottles. When I hopped in my truck the local radio station KRCL was playing late-80’s/early 90’s hip hop. All the stuff I listened to in Jr. high and early years of high school:  Humpty Dance, Buffalo Stance, Mama Said Knock You Out. It was a good morning.  This was my first outing with the Utah Climbing Club so I popped into the Mountain Works climbing shop to meet everyone else. Everyone looked as bedraggled as I felt. We drove in a procession to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail head in south Provo. We headed south on the trail for a few minutes then turned and headed strait up the mountain. It was a steep grassy slope with no trail in the dark for about 1000 ft. until we got to a ridge saddle and turned north to where we topped out on Toad Rock. Toad Rock, apparently looks like a toad when viewed from some angle, but I couldn’t see it. We were hoping to head north off of Toad rock to the ridge connecting us to the route for Buckley, but a 50 ft. drop off a cliff turned us back.

Utah Climbing Club in action

After we dropped down below Toad rock and did a lot of bushwhacking we made it to the ridge and started a meandering traverse upward. Just when I thought we’d start working up through some rocks we cut down across a wide gully and strapped on the snowshoes.  Soon we were headed up, strait up. Luckily the snow had a pretty hard crust so the snowshoe crampons dug in and we worked out way upward. At one point we had to do some small bits of low angle 5^th class rock climbing. I let my poles hang from my wrists as I used my hands and the front points on the snowshoe crampons to climb up the short sections of rock. This was easily the most technical route I’ve ever done in snowshoes.

Summit of Buckley Mountain

Unfortunately the hard crust was not as consistent up higher and much of the going was through several feet of powder snow.  Stepping very gingerly sometimes helped and other times I plunged through the snow with a depressing slide back to my last step. After what seemed like an eternity I finally made it to the top of that section and turned to follow the ridge to the final summit ridge. Before continuing though I figured I’d better get some nourishment in me. I pulled out the peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, which was now nearly frozen. The sandwich turned out to be the tastiest thing I’ve ever taken with me on a hike or backpacking trip. I wished I had made two of them. Oh well. By now the wind was howling pretty hard and the temperature was dropping. I put my thin down jacket on under my softshell and worked up the ridge through deep powder, over rocks and logs and trees. Finally the summit ridge was there. The snow was wind-blown hard and crusty making the last 100 yards pretty easy.  I snapped a couple of quick summit pics then started heading back down before my fingers froze off. Temps on the summit were probably around 0F, colder than anything we’ve had all Winter.

Tricky section to descend

Usually when snowshoeing the descent is pretty easy and fun, this was not. There were all sorts of boulders and rocks hidden under the snow so that if you slipped on your snowshoes you could fall and gash a knee or hip and make the rest of the 4500 ft. trip down very hard. After some time a lot of the tracks had become a narrow powdery gully, perfect for some glissading now that we were past the rocks. The sliding sections were fairly short, but sure helped take off some of the knee strain and add in some fun. 

I connected up with about 4 other people from the club and we decided to head down a gully instead of heading back the way we came. This allowed us to keep on the snowshoes and slide, plunge step down the snow instead of working back up to the high ridge and back down the steep grassy slope to the bottom. Still it took about 3.5 hours to get down the gully and hike the BST back to the trail head.

Black Diamond Epic 45, packed up and ready for
Mount Timpanogos on this weekend

Through the whole ordeal was my trusty new-ish Black Diamond Epic 45 backpack. I bought the pack last Fall specifically for ice climbing and winter mountaineering.  The driving features for winter use are the ice tool pocket and crampon pouch. Instead of the usual ice axe loops that many packs have, the BD Epic has a nice pouch that you tuck the ice picks into from either side, keeping you from ripping up other gear with point parts. The ice tool handles are secured with a simply cord that is snugged up near the lid of the pack. The back of the pack has an extra tough layer of nylon that when coupled with a couple of straps and  a 3 inch strip of nylon make a great pouch that you can stick your crampons in. Making it both easy to retrieve or put them back as you’re moving across varied terrain. So, not only do I not have to dig through my pack to find them, but they aren’t ripping holes in my favorite light down jacket either.

I found out doing this trip that the cinch straps on the side are perfect for strapping snowshoes to the pack. The size is nice and versatile. I’m not an “Ultralight” backpacking kind of guy so an extra  2 oz of fabric doesn’t bother me. This allows the pack to be big enough to stow a 70M rope and ice climbing gear.  I could probably get away with a 30L or 35L for most day trips to the mountains, but cinch it down and you don’t notice the extra material anyway. Black Diamond packs have an awesome hip belt feature that pivots behind the lumbar support. This enables the pack to move more naturally with you as you move. No hip straps shifting around, or stiff body strapped to a pack unable to maneuver normally. I wish my other packs had this feature. All of the other features are well thought out. The shoulder and hip straps are padded nicely and keep the load supported comfortably. The lid has a top pocket where I like to keep food and headlamps. There is also a pocket on the underside of the lid.

After all is said and done. Buckley Mountain should be a tick on everyone’s list. It really was an alpine adventure. It may not have required crampons and an ice axe, but it had just about every other type of terrain you could expect in a mountain trek. Though I may not have paid any attention to Buckley before I know I’ll look up at it from the valley with fondness from now on.