Pine Valley Adventure

     I have been put in charge of the over night back packing trip for girls camp this year. Normally that wouldn't be a huge deal, but this year girls camp is stake girls camp. I have been asked to find a place where I can take a HUGE group of girls on an over night back packing trip. In the beginning I was stoked. There are SO many great, beautiful places to go back packing in Southern Utah. But as I started researching everything I found that all of the good places were national forest land and  basically that means the largest group size that I could take was 12 people. That wasn't going to work for me so I did a lot of talking with my dad and finally found a place that may work.
     We found a couple trails in Pine Valley Utah. Don't ask me where it is, I really don't know. It's out in the middle of no where really. Like west of Beryl, but East of Enterprise. Not quite St. George South, but just in a really weird no where spot. Before I took a huge group of girls on this over night hike, I really wanted to make sure I knew the area and know that it would be safe to trek on. Paul and I planned a fun camping weekend where we could go out to Pine Valley, check out the hike and make sure that the hike was going to work.
     Friday after I got off work, we threw everything in the car, and hit the road. We drove to New Castle and Enterprise and kept following the road until we got to Pine Valley. It was actually a gorgeous place once we got there. We drove around trying to find the trail head, and pretty much couldn't find it. So we drove around trying to find a place to sleep, we also couldn't find anything. The campsites were all still closed for the winter. We drove around for probably an hour just looking and decided what we were going to do now that we were here. We did find the trail head, but it was located in a closed camp ground which we didn't think we could get away with sleeping in. In the end, we pulled off to the side of the road and set up our tent. We camped just off the road, but hey, it all worked out. We set up Paul's camp chef and cooked us some hotdogs. Since we didn't have a place for a fire to keep us warm, we just jumped in our sleeping bags and went to sleep.
         In the morning we had breakfast and hit the trail. The goal was to hike it quick to make sure that there was water, to check out the trail, and to prepare myself with the terrain so I wouldn't have surprises. After reading the signs at the trailhead, I did get a few surprises I wasn't prepared for. As I was planning the hike, I was told there wouldn't be bears in Pine Valley, so I hadn't been preparing the girls for that. But when I got to the trail head there were signs posted all over about it being bear country and to prepare accordingly. Also there were multiple signs showing that there were mountain lions and to keep small children in larger groups. Yikes! I wasn't ready for either of those. All morning I just prayed that the bears were still in hibernation, (we didn't have any bear mace with us), and also that we wouldn't encounter any mountain lions. We did see some tracks, but no real animals, so it was all good.
    The trail in the beginning wasn't half bad. It was just flat with a few small ups and downs. About a mile in we realized we had reached the true trailhead, (we couldn't get to it because the road was closed off). So we started hiking and it wasn't bad, but then we hit the switch backs. We went up and up and up. If Paul and I weren't trying to run it, I don't think it would have been half bad, but we were cruising. We went up and up some more and realized we were pretty much climbing up the spine of the mountain. Then we hit some snow.  At first it was just patches here and there and didn't deter us too much. But the higher we got, the deeper the snow got.

     Pretty soon, there was no trail anymore. It was just all snow. We tried to trek around in the snow,
and we were able to re-find the trail several times, but it go to the point where the whole side of the mountain was just snow. We couldn't really go anywhere, and it was dangerous for us to go and not know what we were looking for. A little stressed and discouraged we turned around and headed back down the mountain. We had a little trouble at first because we couldn't remember exactly where we had gone. We had to follow our tracks in the snow, and that wasn't exactly easy.
     When we got back to the bottom we checked out the trail signs and realized that there is another trailhead that leads to the same place I wanted to take the girls. This trail looks like it is less steep and not as hard. So Paul and I decided that we are going to come back in a few weeks and try this other trail. Hopefully the snow will be gone, and we can see what the mountain is actually like.