Indian Trail

Prior to yesterday it had been a good 2 or 3 weeks since I had worked out. It's funny because for the most part, I have been sticking to a work out schedule quite well for the past year or so. But in the last month I have been under a lot of stress which = the NEED to get exercise. So naturally I didn't do it when I needed to be doing it the most. It seems like a lot of things go that way and I'm not sure why.


Anyway, it hit me yesterday that if I don't get back into the habit of exercising, I will quickly get back into the habit of NOT exercising. So I texted John and told him I wanted to do the Indian Trail hike here in Ogden, which is kind of hardcore and really gets your blood shooting through your veins within the first 3 minutes and hardly lets up until the end. He was down with the idea as usual. I almost tried to back out at the last minute since it was 98 DEGREES, but we decided to just go for it.


We have done this hike once before, but we only went for an hour and then turned back around. When we did this, we figured we had almost finished it... or that we at least had made it 3/4 of the way... so ever since then I was really wanting to go back and do the whole thing.


So off we went! It's incredibly steep at first, and there are a few spots where the trail is really narrow and gravely with a serious cliff hanger drop off on the side. Like one trip or slip of the foot and you are without a doubt tumbling down the mountain side hundreds of feet to your death.

According to my heart rate monitor, we made it up the first part in 46 minutes, as opposed to an hour the first time. Then we thought here we go... lets finish! Surely it's all downhill from here!


And it was downhill for a couple minutes, and then started to have switchbacks heading back up the mountain side. And then it would go down for a while, and have more switchbacks going up again! And then for a while it was really steep going down. After about 20-25 more minutes of that we were incredibly confused as to how the trail would be ending anytime soon. We stopped to debate our options. Either turn around and go back the way we came. Or keep going, because surely we had to be really really close to the end. And somehow find a ride back to our car that was parked at the trailhead where we started. John wanted to turn around and go back the way we came, but I figured finishing the trail would be pretty quick and easy.


We continued on our way for about 30 minutes (which somehow managed to be uphill again) and thought we must be getting really close by now. We finally came to our first sign. Telling us that we had gone 2.6 miles total, and still had almost 2 miles to go! I about died!! We knew the trail was 4.5 miles long, but for whatever reason we both thought we had gone much farther than we actually had. We stood there for a few minutes wondering how we could have been so clueless, and continued on our way. Luckily from this point on was all downhill. We jogged part of it and we finished the entire trail in 2 hours and 12 minutes.


And then there we were. In the canyon at one trailhead, while our car was at the other trailhead about 5 miles away. I thought about calling and asking someone for a ride, but we took our chances and hitch hiked. It literally took about 20 seconds for a car to stop, a friendly looking young guy, and he was heading in our direction so it worked out just great! He was Dave. Worked for a window company, not in school because he couldn't decide what to study, and spent the last couple summers driving tour busses in Alaska for cruise lines. Definitely my first and most likely my last time ever hitch hiking. But it was quite the adventure!

We were about a .75 mile from the end when we were suddenly in this meadowy forest area. It was soooo pretty and I regret not taking more pictures. Until next time!