Me, being diverse.: Rattlesnake Creek

This is the tale of 5 girls on an epic journey.

Let's start with introductions.

Ashley

Me... Laurel

Staci

Hilary

Heidi

I know, real women of the wilderness.

Thanks to Heidi the photos of this incredible day are plentiful.

So I guess I'll just make it a journey through photograph.

Captions included.

This was the first beautiful view of the day. Cedar Breaks, I believe. We hiked through some snow to begin this journey. Were we in shorts? Yeah. Was it worth it? Yeah.

Here I am looking cool. And feeling cool. Everyday extreme.

Heidi being excited about nature. Not sure what's going on with that awkward spot near her head, probably just her angelic light shining through.

The legendary Rattlesnake Creek we had all been anticipating for the first 4 hours of hiking.

The perfect break for lunch. So what if we all sat awkwardly spaced apart, looking different directions, eating in silence.

What a lovely portrait of the whole group about to venture into the longest, windiest, rattlesnake-like creek you could ever imagine.

And the first alcove creeps upon us as we manuever between rocks avoiding the water until, as Heidi says, "you're ready to fully commit."

A beautiful leap by Hilary.

Marching in an incredibly orderly single file line, unintentionally. I don't know if this is a sign we're all brainwashed from lining up in elementary school or what, but I like it.

If you look closely at the bottom middle of this picture you can see a nice footprint about 6 inches deep in mud. Yes, that was my footprint. Yes, similar experiences happened to me multiple times throughout the day. Apparently I'm a terrible judge of how sturdy the ground is as I leap off of rocks in the wilderness. That made for some graceful landings.

Staci loved to power walk through the creek. Possibly in an attempt to prevent her feet from losing feeling.

Hilary preferred to wade through nice and easy. Better safe than sorry perhaps.

This is by far my favorite picture of Ashley & Heidi. Look at this picture and then try to imagine how much fun I had spending a day in the mountains with these two hooligans. If you can't tell by their neutral colored shirts, hats, backpacks, and sunglasses... they knew belonged out there with mother nature.

A tree growing out of the rock? Witchcraft.

Around every bend there was another beautiful cliff. Sure, by the 100th bend I got over it, but looking back I can't get enough.

Another great example of an elegant landing by yours truly.

Risky log crossing.


INCREDIBLE! Look at those yellow leaves.

Basically we went through one million different terrains during the hike.
How do rocks even get like that?
I should have paid more attention to my Geology of National Parks class...

Did we choose the perfect time of year to hike with all the changing autumn leaves?
Yeah, we did.

I love the yellow trees. Really, how could you not love that?
Maybe if you were Satan and hated all things good and beautiful.

Shout out to Heidi and her crazy good photography skills. She's the real deal.

Unfortunate for whoever was driving that truck. As you can see it cleared a nice path as it crashed down the whole mountain.

Turns out someone else made the same mistake of driving off the mountain.

This is where we ran into a problem. That gorgeous turquoise pool, didn't use to be there. The way back to the road was definitely on the other side of it. We had an important decision to make... to swim or not to swim?

We decided to scale the mountain using the path the truck had created years before. This picture really doesn't properly depict the steep, treacherous climb that decision led us to. Loose dirt, sharp glass, poky bushes.

War wound. You didn't do it right if you didn't bleed.

Now you're probably assuming the journey is over since Ashley is clearly standing on road with those bloody legs. The only problem is there was a landslide in Cedar Canyon a couple of weeks before and we happened to come up the mountain just yards above it.

In my head a landslide was just a pile of dirt on the road that could simply be swept off.

OH how wrong I was!


The pile of dirt definitely wasn't on the road, the pile of dirt was the road. You know the Shel Silverstein book Where the Sidewalk Ends? This is where the highway ended. I thought things like this only happened in those end of the world movies... Sign of the Second Coming perhaps?

And off we went, trekking along all 1,700 feet of that 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt, rock, vegetation and debris.

What choice did I have but to face my lifelong fear of the road splitting apart and me getting stuck in the middle not being able to choose which side to jump to?
I seriously had nightmares about that as a child.