Scaling New Heights:American Fork Canyon

Fifteen years ago, John and Jen fell in love... 

For our 15th anniversary on August 14, 2012, we went up American Fork canyon for our milestone anniversary date!  Since we love the great outdoors, we thought it would be fun to explore some new places and go hiking.  We packed a lunch, camera, sunglasses, sunblock, camel backpacks, etc and headed towards the rocky mountains.

  First, we stopped at The Timpanogos Cave Visitor's Center to purchase our tickets for the breathtaking (literally) 1,092 feet hike later in the afternoon.  Then, we went to Cascade Springs. Wow, what a gorgeous place!  There was a lovely board walk path nestled around the natural springs.  John was most impressed about seeing a brown trout swimming in two and half feet deep clear water.  

Next, we pulled over and ate our sack lunches (sandwiches, carrots, celery, and apples). Around 2:00 PM, we headed down the canyon to the Timpanogos cave entrance (elevation 5,638 feet).  Little did we know, we were in for a crazy HIKE that nearly wore us out! We had to stop a lot to catch our breath several times.  At one point, I didn't think I was going to make the 1.5 miles due to almost passing out. I kept telling myself: "I can do hard things!" Luckily we had a lot of ice cold water to drink from our camel backpacks while hiking up the mountain trail.  Also, many people along the way encouraged us as we reached closer to the cave entrance. 

Finally we made it to the top of the trail 58 minutes later (elevation 6,730)... We refuelled our bodies with granola bars and dried apples while we waited for our tour guide.

We explored the magnificent limestone caves without a jacket, which was okay for us during the summer since we were sweating from the hike, although next time I will bring one just in case I get chilly. There were many interesting cave formations (helicities and anthodites).  My most favorite rock shape was the dazzling "Heart of Timpanogos", which is seen in the bottom right photo below! Hiking Timpanogoes trail and exploring the caves is definitely a wonderful summer bucket list activity to do in Utah!

The hike down the mountain was a piece of cake and I am glad we survived the trip up to Timpanogos Caves! It has been over 18 years since my last hike up there! We had a lot of fun and were extremely sore for several days after our adventurous hike!  We look forward to embracing the future together sharing more laughs, tears, triumphs, failures, joys, fears and so on. "Life by the yard is hard but by an inch, it's a cinch" -Thomas S. Monson