This is the first entry for our Endeavor 2029. This means that my brothers Matt and Justin and whoever wants to join us will attempt (and hopefully summit) the highest peaks in each of Utah's 29 counties. I years past I've only done King's Peak so we are starting over. Signal Peak was our first choice as it seemed to be one of the harder climbs on the list and we had better hit those hard ones early on. I arrived with my family at Dean Gardner campground on the Pine Valley side of the mountain range. This is a new NFS campground that is well maintained with great tent spots and tables, even cooking tables. No showers for those who need one. We enjoyed the campfire and hanging out. My brothers Matt and Justin arrived at the site at 2am since Matt was getting in from a business trip but didn't want to miss this first hike.
We woke up casually and hit the trail at 9:30am. Jakob was planning on hiking the whole time but Tanner decided last minute to join us - that meant extra water for me to pack. Brown's Point trailhead is easy to find but as we started ascending, we soon found out why this hike is rated difficult. It was relentless unhill with few if any flat spots for relief. Justin was just getting over a cold so he was struggling a bit but did well. I was impressed with Tanner and Jakob - both getting valuable hiking experience. Near the top of Brown's Point, we lost the trail and the snow was getting in the way. I knew it had been a big winter in southern Utah but was not prepared for what we were about to encounter in Nay's Canyon. At the ridge over Brown's Point, we marked the trail with a cairn and started the 300 foot descent into Nay's canyon. This is where the snow really started to give us troubles. Drifts 4-5 feet deep were fairly easy to walk on but Matt was leading most the time up and postholed several times. We followed some faint tracks and made it to the junction. At this point, we decided to go on since the snow had faded from the area. We were not following a trail, just waypoints and coords on my gps. We cross a large meadow and descended down into Further Water - a very large mountain meadow about 0.5 miles from the summit push. This was a beautiful area - I always love the high mountain meadows. We followed the obvious trail up a drainage for about 1/4 mile, then headed straight up the south facing slope to the top. Lots of snow and heavy breathing but the summit push was on. To be honest, reaching the top was a bit 'anticlimatic' as Matt put it. Unlike the peaks I'm used to hiking, reaching the top here was just finding the highest rocks pile and making sure my gps was tracking well. We enjoyed the summit for about 20 minutes, signed the log, found a geocache at the top as well and began the hike out. It was actually fun going down the snow. Tanner was in a very good mood and was really enjoying the sliding down, just like skiing. The hike down was uneventful until we made a serious mistake. We did not want to deal with the snow in Nay's Canyon again - so we followed the contour back to the cairn we placed at the top of Brown's Point ridge. Major mistake. It was slow, arduous work and even tougher for Jakob and Tanner. The most frustrating part was the gps telling us we had 0.8 miles to go to the cairn but it seemed to stay at 0.8 miles for 2 miles. We then hit a very steep slope that almost proved to be too much. Jakob took a small spill but was okay. Matt was tracking, Justin was helping Tanner and I stayed with Jakob. I kept beating myself up about making such a poor decision. At long last, we were just 300 yard from the cairn, I sent Justin with the gps to find it. He found it at the exact same time we finally found the trail heading down. Much relief. But now we were very tired and had a steep descent off the ridge. We were going fairly fast and my team held up most impressively. At the car, we realized the hike just took us 11.5 hours to complete. Not good timing, but what a hike and great memories. We thought about driving home to Provo and SLC that night but with the late night for Matt and Justin, I was the only driver and my eyes were as heavy as books. After a much needed hamburger in Cedar City, we slept in Beaver. This was a tough 14 mile hike that felt more like 20. We learned one good lesson, stay on the trail no matter what you think the gps is telling you. But overall, this was a good hike to start out Endeavor 2029.
Steve
