Hiking Mount Nebo

We have visited the Mount Nebo that is mentioned in the Bible when we were in the Jordan a couple years ago.  After looking out our motor home window at Utah's Mount Nebo for a couple days, we were ready to take the hike to see it up close. There is a Nebo Scenic Loop highway that was recommended to us that starts right outside the town of Nephi.  The instructions to get there are simple--turn east at the only stop light in town.  The road heads straight up into the mountains and the views were great.  That's Mount Nebo peeking from behind a shorter peak where the maple trees are already turning red.

Just like Denisa was enamored with wildflowers last spring, she can't get enough of the fall foliage we are already seeing in the mountains.

It was a beautiful blue sky day, and this was one of the views from the scenic byway before we even got on the trail.  We were able to drive up to 9,000 feet in elevation, and this would be a great drive for non-hikers to get to see the mountains up close.

It was after 11:00 when we got on the trail, and it was 60 degrees.  Denisa has managed to misplace her jacket, so she was glad that Mark had an extra in the car.  She would peel that jacket off when the exertion of the hike heated her up, and put it back on when the temperatures dropped as we climbed higher.  We took a picture of the only wildlife on the trail--a couple of angus cows.  Not as exciting as a moose!

It was at this point that Mark got a text message from his past co-workers.  We are always surprised when we suddenly get a phone signal while on a hike in a very remote area.  But we have some of the most beautiful office views when we take care of some consulting issues back home.

Many times we mentioned that this hike must have been beautiful earlier this summer.  We saw that most of the wildflowers here have gone to seed.  Except for a few late-blooming blue-bonnets, we had to just imagine flower-filled meadows this time.  Some plants are beautiful even after they finish blooming.  These rose hips were swollen to a beautiful shade of red and we saw lots of them along the trail.  After doing some research, we find that we should have been gathering them.  A great source of Vitamin C, they have a long list of other health benefits.  Besides, we found a great recipe for rose hip syrup and jelly.

This is a very steep trail, and we were at almost 11,000 feet when we took a break to look down into the valley below.  This is a birds-eye view of the little town of Mona and the agricultural area just north of town.  It reminds us of the views from an airplane, where the sprinkler circles and section lines can be differentiated.

From that altitude we can also see North Peak (right behind Mark), and Mount Nebo to the right.  When we decided to take this hike, we read reviews of the trek to the summit of Nebo.  We had decided that we wouldn't go all the way to the summit, because only hard-core hikers do that.

But we did decide to go over the ridge in front of North Peak.  We're 2.5 hours into this hike, and the winds are brisk on the ridge, so Denisa has donned her jacket again.

Traversing the side of North Peak wasn't bad, so we kept going.  This was one of the few flat parts of this entire hike.  We're finding that this is one of the most undulating hike we've been on in a while.  There is "only" about 2,500 feet difference between the trail head and the summit on Mount Nebo.  But because this trail keeps climbing up and then heading back down, it will take a total of 3,800 feet of ascent to get to the top of Mount Nebo.

There is a saddle between North Peak and Mount Nebo where we could see both east and west.  It has taken us over three hours to get to this point, and this would be a good place to turn back.  At this point the trail gets crazy steep as it zig-zags up the last portion of Nebo.

We've always had a hard time stopping before the end of a hike, and that was going on again today.  So we kept going up that steep trail until we were well past the tree line.  This is no longer hiking.  This is scrambling up a 45 degree incline in the loose rock. The picture below is our view from our resting spot 3/4 up that last mountain side.  We are sitting on the steep side of Mount Nebo, now looking back at North Peak and the saddle far below.  In the bottom right hand corner of the picture is that dreaded loose rock, called scree, that is often found at the very top of mountain summits.  We hate the way it slides down-hill when we are trying to walk on it.

As we sat and rested, we finally got sensible and decided to head back to the car.  We had seen the views from 11,500 feet, we were tired of this loose rock, and we had trekked further than we had ever intended.  That was when Marvin and Anna caught up with us on the trail, and encouraged us to push on to the summit.  We fell for the encouragement and pushed on to the top.  At 4.5 hours into this hike, we got to the edge of the trail for a great view of the summit.  Mark was standing in that scree with the summit just over his shoulder.  As Denisa clicked the shutter, she also saw a flash of lightning from those gray clouds right behind Mark.

That's the worst thing a mountain hiker can see.  We were way above tree line, so we were the tallest thing in the area.  For once, Denisa was glad to be short.  But we had to get ourselves out of this very vulnerable place as fast as we could.  The only thing harder than going up that terrible scree, is trying to go down it quickly.  We have developed a method that makes us more stable by linking up arms and heading down sideways.  We have found our four legs used together make both of us more stable on this unstable surface.  No pictures of our quick descent, because we were hurrying as fast as we could.  We had to stop to put on rain gear, and Mark did take a picture of Denisa scurrying back across the mountain saddle.

We were out in the open for a good mile, and we made amazing time on our trip back down to tree line.  As so often happens, after the storm pelted us with rain, the sky cleared.  Now we could look far back to see that summit of Mount Nebo again.

We are six hours into this hike, making our way home through the forested part of the trail.  There were many fallen trees in this section, and a forest service crew had recently cut many of the logs to clear the path.  This is the first time we had ever seen a crew sign a large log.  Thanks to "Trail Crew 2015" for making this hike so much easier!

In the same section that Mark had gotten a text message 7 hours earlier, Denisa's phone rang.  It was our friend, Bev, calling to check on us.  So Denisa had a seat out of the wind on the side of the mountain and had a nice conversation.

We were really tired by the time we fell into our seats in the car!  This was a tough hike!  We went almost 8  miles, and it took us around 7 hours.  That's really slow hiking, but just evidence of how steep up and down the trail was today.  We drove the rest of the Nebo Scenic Trail to Payson, Utah, then headed back to Nephi on the interstate.  Too tired to cook, and too hungry not to eat, we stopped for a great meal at Oriental Garden.  While we ate, we wondered if we would be able to stand up from the booth when we were finished.  This was a great hike, but we're going to need a day off from hiking tomorrow!