Bill and I had awesome plans to go backpacking over the weekend with our friend David, up Twin Peaks in Big Cottonwood Canyon. But then Bill and I couldn't get up there until 7:45 PM. And then when we were following David up to the parking lot, which I was sure I knew exactly where it was, we missed it and spent the next hour trying to find each other since there's no cell reception in the majority of that canyon. Then, while getting my backpack together, I dropped my chapstick and shut my car door in order to retrieve it. I stood up and tried to open the door and realized it was locked with my keys inside, nicely stowed away in my pack. So there we were, locked out of my car with my pack inside. If I had it, we would have just gone and figured it how to open the car when we got back, but no luck.
So instead we went camping in David's front room on a pile of blankets. :) That was actually really nice. And we got up fairly early yesterday morning with hangers, intent on going to unlock my car and get on the trail early. Yeah, hangers don't work on Hyundai Elantras, in case your wondering. So we went to try and flag down a cop, which we did. Turns out slim jims don't work on Hyundai Elantras either. But never fear, we have USAA insurance and we finally remembered we had roadside assistance through them! So we called and they said they'd be there in 45 minutes. Awesome! 2 1/2 hours later, they did arrive and open my car and we were ready to go!
Our awesome backpacking trip started about 15 hours late, at noon yesterday. Sorry Twin Peaks, you'll have to wait for another day. You're too long for a 5-hour hike. Enter Devil's Castle! It's in Little Cottonwood Canyon, is quite a bit shorter hike, but very technical. There's lots of scrambling and clinging to rock ledges with large drop offs on the side. In Bill and my terms, that equals awesome. Some that read this may not agree with that, but we sure like it. :)
Here's a couple of pictures of Devil's Castle, looking up at it and then back down on it after we'd crossed the whole thing.


It was an AWESOME hike! Really steep on the way up, then scrambling along the knife-point ridge line you can see in the second picture above. It was incredible! This is Bill and David on our way up.

Here's a picture of Bill and I at the top of one of the many high points on it.

Here's a couple shots of the view from the top. And yes, the second picture has a huge drop off about five feet away from me. David, Bill, and I are all much more comfortable with large drop offs like this when we're a few feet away. It was seriously beautiful though. If you live in Utah and have never been up to any of the canyons, you're really missing out.



For the most part the hike wasn't too exposed. We were definitely on a knife edge, but there was usually a decent path or it was wide enough that we could walk without fear of tumbling off any big cliffs. There were just a couple places that made my heart beat pretty fast though. Here was one such place.

All in all, it was an awesome day and an incredible hike. Thanks to David for sticking around to work out the locked out issue. It took FOREVER, but he was so nice to help out. The hike was just great. Now that our marathon is over, it's so nice to not have long runs every weekend taking up all our time. I'm so excited to start doing all the other activities that got shorted because of running 30+ miles a week for the last 5 months. This is going to be a fantastic Fall!