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April and I arrived at the Aspen Grove trail head at 9:30am ready to backpack up Timpanogos. We checked in with the TERT folks and started up the trail. We were hoping to beat the heat with early start but seemed as if we had failed.

First waterfall.

As we made it up to the Heber switchbacks the elevation made the temperatures more tolerable.

We took a break at the first waterfall above the talus slope to filter some water.

After our nice long break we were back on the trail

Hidden lakes area.

We made it to Emerald Lake at 2:00pm, There were about 30 people at the lake when we arrived including two tents pitched on the little “island” on the lake. This was very inconsiderate of them to pitch their tents in the middle of Emerald lake, on a saturday afternoon, on the most popular trail in northern Utah.
We hiked to our normal spot to set up camp, eat lunch, and get ready to summit.

As we started getting ready to head towards the summit we notice the goat herd was about 100 yards from our camp.

After checking out the Mountain Goats we hiked back to Emerald Lake to filter some more water for our hike to the summit of Timpanogos.
These guys tired to sneak up on us while we filtered our water.

We took a few photos of Emerald Lake then headed off for the summit.

Looking towards cottonwoods and the Timpooneke trail.

Crossing the snow and talus fields

We reached the saddle and started getting wonderful views of the valley below. We took a short break and hiking up the summit ridge.

At 5:30pm we reached the summit.

We spent about 30min on the summit and then started our hike back down to Emerald Lake.
Interesting cairn.

We made it back to the lake and took a few moments to watch the goats and enjoy the solitude of that area.

We hiked back to camp to eat some dinner then hiked back to the lake to catch the last of the sunset. We were all alone on Emerald lake.

This is where I lost my lens cap ….

After it got dark it started to rain. We crammed everything into our small backpacking tent and listened to the rain fall for about 30min.
We woke up around 7am ate some breakfast and started packing up camp.

After packing up we hiked over to the lake to filter some more water, say goodbye to the goats, and start our hike down to Aspen Grove.

We left the lake at 8am and made it down the car parked at Apsen Grove at 10:45am
The last photo of our trip was of the two Mountain Goats that refused to leave the trail .. 5min later.. they moved aside and let us pass.
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