| Nebo Trip Report |
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September 15, 2007 - Brian, Tony, and I met up pretty early and took off for Nebo. None of us had ever hiked Nebo and were pretty excited about taking on the Granddaddy of the Wasatch. I had done a bunch of research beforehand because my goal was not only to hike the tallest peak in the Wasatch but to hike North Peak, North Nebo, Middle Nebo, and South Nebo all in one trip so I could cross them off my list of Wasatch 11ers. We decided our route would be to start at the north trailhead and hike over all four peaks and then backtrack over Middle Nebo and North Nebo back to our car at the north trailhead. Sometimes I get big ideas in my head that I am this great hiker with endless energy and time and I set up plans that I usually end up altering on the fly. Fortunately Brian and Tony hike about the same pace as I do, slow and steady (at least on the way up). So as we hiked up the trail and got closer to North Peak we started discussing whether or not we would hit North Peak on the way to North Nebo or on the way back. As soon as we rounded the corner on North Peak ridge we were able to see Nebo for the first time. We also got a pretty good look at the trail over to Nebo as well as the faded trail heading up to North Peak. We decided since we would have to lose elevation between where we were and Wolf Pass that it would probably be easier to just hike North Peak on the way. Then I got this lame idea to stay on the good trail until it started to lose elevation and then route find up to North Peak. It turned out ok but we had to do a lot of zig-zags on the way up because it was so steep. We should have just took the faint trail from the fork. We soon found ourselves on the top of North Peak with a great view of North Nebo to the south. We couldn't find a trail leading to Wolf Pass so we just blazed down the south side of North Peak until we reached the saddle at Wolf Pass. From Wolf Pass the trail is steep until you get to the false summit. Then it levels out for a bit and then gets steep again for the last stretch. On North Nebo we took some pictures, ate some food, made some phone calls, and rested for a brief moment. Then we began the short trip over to Middle Nebo. The trail was not that great, and soon we were looking back at the steep pyramid of North Nebo that we just descended and decided that it wasn't going to be that fun to climb back up on our way back. Middle Nebo is probably not visited nearly as much as North and South Nebo. Took a few pictures and looked at the time and decided we needed to get moving over to South Nebo. From Middle Nebo we could see people arriving at both North and South Nebo. North Nebo is about three times farther away than South Nebo from Middle Nebo, so logically I thought it would be three times easier to hike from Middle to South Nebo. The guide instructions I had said to stay to the west side but from the peak the east side looked much more pleasant. So we started down the east side. The east side became very unpleasant and we got to a point where we decided we needed to cross over the ridge and rock climb down the west side to a faint trail at the base of the cliffs (the trail the guide book talked about). None of us are rock climbers but we managed to get to the trail. I took some nice pictures of Tony and Brian rock crying - er - I mean rock climbing. Finally we arrived at South Nebo. We took some obligatory pictures and then began to discuss our options to get back to our car. We basically had two options. Either hike back to Middle Nebo then North Nebo and back or we could hike off the south side of the mountain down the Andrews Ridge trail and try to hitch hike back to our car. Fortunately for us there were a lot of people hiking up the Andrews Ridge trail to South Nebo that day. In fact it was the whole Wasatch High School student body and staff. We opted to attempt the hitch hiking from the Andrews Ridge trailhead. So down we went. The Andrews Ridge trail was endless. I can only imagine how it was for Brian and Tony who both had their IT bands flair up causing major knee pain the whole way down. After what felt like months of hiking we made it to the bottom. Brian could barely walk. We talked a guy in to giving us a ride about 10 miles up to our car at the north trailhead. Then we talked about how awesome the trip was the whole way home.
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