Mt. Ogden

A couple of months ago, my mom and my brother hiked to the top of Mt. Ogden. Then, they hiked over to the gondola at Snow Basin and rode it down the mountain. My mom mentioned that she wanted to go one more time before it got too cold, and I said, I would go with her. Last week, she decided that it we still had time to go, so we drove up to Snow Basin to leave our car there so we could ride the gondola down the mountain. Well, when we got there we learned that the gondola wasn't running that day...so, we deiced to just hike up and down on the same trail. So we drove over the the trail head and started our journey. The sign at the bottom says that it is 5.6 miles to the top....I beg to differ! We hiked along a river for a while, and it was beautiful, we were surrounded by trees with their leaves all different colors. Then, we started our way around the mountain and we saw a dead deer....that just creeped me out, and I was totally on the lookout for mountain lions....I don't know what killed the deer...but it was probably a mountain lion(??).

Then, we got higher up the mountain and it was dry, and dusty with just little dry, dead bushes everywhere. The trail also got a lot more narrow, and the mountain got a lot more steep! After we had been going for about 3 hours we finaly got to the top of one of the mountains....but we still had a ways to go. We were on the side of the mountain that the sun apparently doesn't get to for very long because the trail was covered by snow. We were just trying to be careful and make sure we could get our footing in the snow...and then my foot slipped through the snow to nothing! That freaked me out quite a bit, and so I was a little hesitant to keep going. Luckily my mom was going before me, and she was very encouraging. She convinced me to just hold on to the side of the mountain and keep going....by the way it was covered in snow and my hands were numb! But I made it! Then there was still the matter of hiking up the steep rocky road to get to the very top. That took a while becuase it was really steep and you just had to go slow. Finally, after climbing up a "rocky ledge" we got to the very tip top! It was beautiful! You could see as far as there was to see in any direction...the only thing that blocked you from seeing any further were mountains....but they were down pretty far. It was great! Here is the part where I'm a HUGE scaredy cat! I didn't want to go back to the snow covered trail! I didn't want to go back down the really steep part of the trail that lasted for at least half of it....so I talked my mom into walking down the access road that goes through Snow Basin.....it's wide, and not on steep ledges! My kind of trail! So, we walked down the road.....we went the wrong way once, but figured it out after a few minutes, so we were able to turn back without too much trouble. We had to call my brother to come pick us up at Snow Basin since we hadn't left a car there.....and the big kicker....when we got to the bottom, the gondola was running!