Journeys: Deseret Peak, Utah

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Deseret Peak, Utah - Hiking

Instead of doing one of the usual Wasatch Mountain hikes, Jake and I headed west of Salt Lake City to try hiking the highest mountain in the Stansbury Range - Deseret Peak. The Stansbury Mountains are located between the Tooele Valley and Skull Valley. Deseret Peak reaches a height of 11,031 feet and has the fourth highest prominence in Utah. The views from the top were awesome - Tooele Valley and some of the Wasatch peaks to the east, the Great Salt Lake and islands to the north, and Skull Valley and the Salt Flats to the west. I have never been in the Stansbury Mountain range before, and I was completely surprised how green and forested it was. There were also tons of places to camp near Willow Creek - so I hope to get back there this summer to do some camping.

The sub-peaks of Deseret Mountain

Jake at the trailhead

Me - Deseret Peak to the left

Jake taking a break at the saddle before the ascent to the summit

Me at the summit of Deseret Peak

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess