Bachelor Party on Kings Peak

Nick was looking for an unconventional Bachelor party, so we suggested maybe a 34 mile hike to the top of Utah’s highest peak, Kings Peak. Game on, says he!

So a week before his wedding, we gather the best men and do a practice hike in the hills behind our house:

Nick’s big toe found a nasty cactus … not as bad as the nasty bolder it would find a few days later:

The next day, the real hike begins. Beautiful country in the high Uinta mountains. Some of the most remote mountains in the country and the only mountain range in America that defies tradition and runs East-West instead of North-South:

Nick bunked with Zack:

And I with Scott and George … it got pretty cold at night:

Zach was our do pretty much everything guy. Here he is cooking breakfast:

And here is saving Scott’s foot with moleskin:

And if you got stuck on a snowfield, Zach was the guy to call for rescue:

He could filter water to re-fill all our containers when the rest of us would poop out after only one or 2:

We saw moose:

And mosquitoes:

And pretty rocks:

And lots of VLMs (Very Large Marmots):

This guy kept popping up next to our tent to see if we had left, presumably so he could raid our food supply. There were no trees to hang it from, so Zack rigged up a rope system off of the rocks:

That is Kings Peak, on the far right. We camped just on the other side of the pass on the left:

The crew as pretty spent after that first day:

But got a second wind the second day:

We made sure the rivers would not run dry:

This is the final accent, with one of several false peaks showing along the ridge:

First Nick, then Zack, took a small detour to climb out on a picturesque rock pillar … you can’t see it from here, but it is a long ways down:

We thought Scott died at several points on the ridge:

But when you feed him water and Snickers and he gets back up and keeps on going:

And we achieve victory!

Along the way, Zack bet the others beers that there would be no cell phone reception on the peak. This is Zack loosing that bet:

Going down was a bit faster:

We got back to camp, mostly in one piece. Nick squished his big toe on a rocky rock, George got a nose bleed, everyone except me (high altitude native) got altitude headaches, and Scott fell, but thankfully caught himself, off a cliff: