I never intended to be a peakbagger. Yet, here I am.

In fact, when I bagged my first peak, I was like “meh”, and set my sights back on waterfall and lake hikes.

But the thing about peakbagging is that when you first reach the summit, you feel good and accomplished.  A little while later, you start to feel exhilarated.  Before long, you feel like a rock star.

Years ago, I rode with my 90-something year old grandad as he drove me through some desolate backroads of southern Utah. He would randomly point to the hills “I worked out there” and at another hill “I delivered gas over there” and at an invisible road “there used to be an old mine out that way”. He pointed and pointed at things that his memory held on to so well and all I could think was “I want to know the land like this one day.”

Because of hiking, I know the Wasatch mountains in the same way my Grandad knew the area around Green River Utah.

Because of peakbagging, I find myself constantly pointing out random mountains, “I climbed that. It has a great view of the valley.”  “I summited that peak, it’s a beast in the winter!” And when I point out Grandeur Peak, I can now say, “I climbed to the top of that, it’s loveliest in late Spring.”

This hike was a nice 7.8 miles with an incline that worked my body, but didn’t wear me completely out. I had one freak out moment when my phone fell out of my bag and I had to backtrack to look for it, but thankfully I didn’t have to travel back down too far before I found it. The weather was 100% perfect, we couldn’t have asked for a better temperature. The flowers were showing off and the clouds gathered to dance around the mountaintops and gave us a beautiful backdrop.

The view from the summit was worth the effort. Grandeur Peak was good to us today.