Went hiking, wish I hadn't come back

(a view of the actual top of Buckley from the "summit" we got to)

Earlier this week a friend of ours invited us to go hike Mt. Timpanogas from the front side. It's called Everest Ridge and it's pretty insane. It's way out of our hiking league at the moment, but we said yes anyway. :) Thankfully, the plans fell through due to weather constraints with the sun melting the snow too much for it to be safe to climb. (keeping his ojos from getting snow blindness)

Anyway, instead Bill and I decided to hike Buckley Peak, which is just south of Y Mountain and has been on our list for months. We didn't start until about 9am and it took 6 hours. What an awesome hike! (pretty mountain view we saw on the way up)

Buckley doesn't have a trail to the top, so we planned to go up a chute on the north side. We thought we had gotten there and headed up this awesome but incredibly intense chute. It was quite the experience. The chute was full of snow, progressively more so as we got towards the top, and it got a whole lot steeper than we expected the last probably quarter of it. Bill was breaking trail at one point and the snow got super powdery. He ended up to his waist in snow nearly every step. It was super scary since we were on probably a 60 degree angle, but he was a total champ and made it through the incredibly hard part. I took up the lead after that and we made it to what we thought was the top not too long after that section. Much to our surprise we weren't really at the top! We had gone up one chute too early and were probably a thousand feet below the actual summit. It's all good though. It was such a crazy and fun ascent that we didn't even care.
(a view of the chute we went up. It's steep)

Like I said, Buckley doesn't have a trail to the top. There was no way we were heading back down that chute, so we ended up picking our way down the forested side of the mountain through deep snow all the way back down to the trail and then back out the canyon. It was tons of fun. If you've never hiked down a super steep hill in powdery snow, you've really got to try it. You sink in every step enough to feel like you can't fall down, and it is just fun. We were able to go super fast. We did kind of get stuck in a scrub oak part and had to pick our way through low branches trying not to scratch ourselves too much. Bill came away with some war wounds on his hands from hitting them in the snow a bunch on the way up, but otherwise we we got down safely.
It just felt great to be out hiking. Both Bill and I have really struggled to find time to work out this school year with all the time constraints we have with school work, and our weekends are usually pretty full so we haven't been outdoors nearly as much as we would like. I know I feel a million times better when I work out on a regular basis. There's just something about pushing my body hard makes me feel really good all around. It's great.