This is such a beautiful city. I live a block away from Temple Square which is amazing! I can look out my window and see a handful of historical church sites.
Today I wanted to get out and explore, so I got in my car to head to a nearby rock climbing gym, but almost as soon as I started driving I decided I'd rather go climb a mountain instead. I had no idea where I was going, but I figured I would just drive up the steepest roads I could find until I got to a trail head or something. I'm still surprised at how well my Subaru is holding up after 217,000 miles on it. True, I haven't had it for too long, but there's no denying they are great cars. There seem to be a lot more Subarus out west as well.
Anyway, I drove in circles for a bit until I saw a promising looking mountain. I pulled over in a rather affluent neighborhood and hopped out. As soon as I started scrambling up over the rocks I noticed how much thinner the air was, and how out of shape I was for such endeavors. After I had climbed up abut 300 feet I set my GPS and started my hike. I climbed up one ridge, and saw some cliffs off in the distance. It looked too far to get to, especially for how mad my lungs already were at me; it looked like a good goal though. We had just gotten a few inches of snow.
I felt like every vertical foot I climbed was harder than 20 feet going forward. Eventually I made my way around the mountains until I came to the cliffs. It was difficult with the wind whipping my face and my body not deciding if it was cold or hot. Often I would open up my jacket to cool down because of how hard it was to climb, but at other times I had to put my hood up and button up all the way to protect against the frigid mountain air.
As I got nearer to the cliffs I noticed that they were not just smooth sandstone, as I had supposed, but they were a strange pile of rocks of various sizes and colors all held together by a natural concrete. It was very dangerous climbing because every time I thought I had a good solid handhold or foothold it would break away and the stone would go tumbling hundreds of feet into the valley below. I tried to take pictures and get video, but they never seem to do it justice.
The trek back to the car was every bit as exhausting as my hike out. I did see a few deer hiding in the dogwood thickets. They would wait and stare at me until I attempted to get closer, then they would go bounding off. I was amazing how easy they made it look. Here I was sliding and scrambling not knowing what kind of surface was under the snow cover, and they could practically run down the mountain and think nothing of it.
All in all it was about a 3 mile hike with a vertical change of 1,066 feet.
I drove back into town and grabbed a Gyro from a local burger place. It's the closest version of a kebab I've had since I was in England. When I got out of my car I noticed that I had left my camera on the roof of the car for the whole ride home. I'm just glad I stuck it into the pile of snow on top; if it had slid off at any point I'm sure I would have never found it again.
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