Climbing Lone Peak In The Brutal Heat Of The Summer

6 strenuous hours

I set out on the morning of August 8th, 2012, with my brother and two friends to climb lone peak. We had a pretty late start and arrived at the Jacobs Ladder trail head around 8:00am and started hiking. Around the second mile or so we found out why the trail was called Jacobs Ladder because it literally went straight up the mountain side until the trail hit draper ridge. We were glad to be done with the toughest part Jacobs ladder after reaching draper ridge and continued down through some pines to the first granite field. The trail through the granite fields are marked by rock cairns and took us a lot longer than we though to cross due to many boulder fields and some wrong turns but we finally made our way to the start of the class 3 and 4 sections at the base of the summit ridge and took a good rest before starting up the ridge. Once we had rested we started on some fun scrambling up to the saddle were it becomes class 4. the class 4 section was pretty straight forward and not very difficult but could be a problem for anyone who isn't comfortable climbing around boulders with some pretty big exposure in some spots. At the end of the class 4 section we reached the summit block and I got a overwhelming sense of accomplishment and one heck of a view. 6 hours of hiking had finally paid off and I wasn't really looking forward to the decent.

descending Jacobs ladder in 100 degrees with no water.

After starting our decent from the summit I soon began to realize how hot it was getting and that i was the only one with water left. I gave my water out to the others and by the time we hit draper ridge we had no water left for the steep decent down Jacobs ladder. With the temperature hitting 100 degrees and no water I found out why Jacobs ladder can be brutal on a hot summer day. As the hours passed on our decent down Jacobs Ladder I started to feel the symptoms of dehydration setting in on me. By the time we only two miles of trail left to go everyone was near the collapsing point, by this time things were getting pretty bad for me, my head hurt and was extremely dizzy and it was getting difficult to coordinate myself. That last mile never seemed to end and when i finally saw the car it was almost a better feeling than standing on the summit. We drove to the nearest gas station and drank lots of water and compared lone peak to other mountains we had climbed. We all agreed that lone peak was the hardest mountain any of us had climbed in the Wasatch range and that this mountain had taught us a good lesson, you never can bring enough water.

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