High Uintahs 50-miler — July of 1994
I participated in a high Uintah backpacking trip during the summer of 1994. I was serving as an assistant advisor to the Priest Quorum, and we planned a 5-day 50-mile trek through the Garfield Basin area. There was a lot of interest and enthusiasm initially, but we eventually took only 4 priests and 2 leaders. It was a memorable trip, both in its positive aspects and its negative aspects. On the positive side, I enjoyed the camaraderie and brotherhood. I felt a great sense of accomplishment as we hiked 52 miles in 3 days. [We had originally planned to hike for five days, but one of the young men missed his girlfriend so much that he begged us to shorten the trip to 3 days.] I especially enjoyed our ascent of King’s Peak, the highest point in Utah, and I enjoyed the beauties of the high mountain areas. I was also grateful and proud that I was the only one of the 6 who did not get blisters and sore feet (and yet I was the only one who didn’t have expensive mountain/hiking boots). On the negative side, I was plagued with terrible esophagitis and heartburn during the trip due to our iodinated water and the fatty beef sticks which were our staple food. We were incessantly tormented by hungry mosquitoes during the hike, and they made it extremely hard to enjoy our “relaxing” time in camp. I “slept” with the other leader in a one-man tent both nights, and they were the 2 worst nights of my life. My tent mate’s snoring and the claustrophobic quarters eliminated any chance of a good night’s rest. As we made our ascent to the summit of King’s Peak, the other leader developed acute altitude sickness. He began to struggle for his breaths, became dizzy and disoriented, and lost all physical strength. I had to leave the boys sitting on the trail as I assisted this leader back to our base camp at a lower elevation. I then had to leave him laying on his sleeping bag and ascend the moutain again until I reached the boys. Gratefully, they had stayed in place as directed. We summitted the mountain and quickly went back to make sure the other leader was doing well. Gratefully he had recoved from the altitude sickness, And finally, I was stymied in my efforts to catch fish in the Uinta lakes. I will need a few years to let the memories of this trip fade before I attempt a similar one. It was gratifying, however, to hear one of the young men give a sacrament meeting talk about a month later in which he compared our journey through life to our 50-miler through the Uintahs. He was very emotional as he expressed gratitude to the other leader and myself, and he said it was one of the memorable experiences in his life. That made it all worthwhile.
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