Needle Falls Hike Day 5 (fun at the falls)

         Day five was pretty great. We didn't hike at all! Well thats a lie, we did, but we didn't during the day, and when we did sort of hike during the day, we only had day packs on, not all of our gear and huge packs. We spent the day at the falls. Or what should have been the falls if there was enough water flowing through.

        Most of us tried to sleep in. We knew we had no where to be so we could get the extra sleep we needed. Paul, is not a sleeper in-er so He got up pretty close to when the sun started hitting our campsite. I rolled over and tried to get some more zzzz's but this stupid bird kept cawing. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard! Okay, maybe not, but it was so annoying. I tried pretty dang hard to sleep through it but I couldn't. So I got up maybe 15 to 20 minutes after Paul. I wish I would have waited it out another 10 minutes, because I am pretty sure that as soon as I was sitting down at the fire ready to heat water for breakfast, that dumb bird finally stopped squawking. 

       After breakfast we all slowly got ready for the day, then headed down to the falls. We didn't play in the water along the way, just mostly went straight to the edge of the cliff where the falls should have been. From there we back tracked just a few yards to the cliffs. There are some great cliffs for jumping in. They really were even better when there was lots more water in there. But there was enough water that we could jump off and have a bit of fun. So we did. It wasn't just as easy as jumping off though. We had to have two people on a lower level of the rocks to pull you back up. The water level was too low for you to get a good grip on anything. I did not jump first. I was too chicken. Not really, I just needed to see how cold it was going to be by watching other peoples reactions to it. It was cold. Brytt screamed, and whelped quite a bit. I should have filmed it but I didn't' know how the recording worked on my camera. I jumped maybe 5th or 7th or something. I went before Paul, if that counts for anything! The fall was great! Exhilarating! The water was cold! Not as cold as the water I cliff jumped into that still had ice floating in it. But it was pretty chilly. I just told myself breathe and swim, breathe and swim. 

         Once the cliff jumping thing got old we moved a little further up the river and washed our hair, and played in the water and around the rocks for a bit. I quickly washed my hair and took my bath, then Paul, Lena, Dad and I played hand and foot. We always try to get a game in when we can. We always play on the same teams, and are super competitive about winning. We got half way through our game, and everyone was ready to go. So we packed up and hiked back through the water a ways. When we found a fun place to play, we would stop and mess around for a little bit. Then keep going, and hike a little more, then stop and play a little more, until we eventually got back to our little spring of water where we filled up our water bladders, then headed back to camp. 

      Along the way we did see a few fish, a water snake, and some tadpoles. Deven and Kyler got into a pretty lengthy discussion about tadpoles and how Deven thought they might be a new species of something, and Kyler thought they were just regular old tadpoles. I kind of followed the conversation but not in depth. From what I remember about it, and what I attempted to look up after the hike, they were just regular tadpoles. 

       Once we were all back at camp, Uncle Tim and dad posed a question to us all. They said, hey, tomorrow we have to hike up, up, and up over a saddle. We will be above tree line, we won't have any shade, and it will be pretty rough in the hot hot sun. They said it will be a full moon tonight, and we are all rested from playing and relaxing most of the day, so what if we do a night hike, get over the saddle, then sleep into the later morning and go from there. Everyone put in their two cents about the idea, and we all ended up agreeing and deciding that this would be a good plan. We had dinner and planned to be packed up and ready to go by 8 that night. 

      We must have been in a really big hurry or really excited because we were totally ready to go just after 7. We hit the trail and left. We revisited our horribly lovely switch backs, then had a lot of flat and down hill from there. Deven kept the back of the pack happy and entertained-ish by playing the game "I'm going on a camping trip" with various themes, like restaurants, and Thanksgiving dinners and so on. I am pretty sure they played that game for lots of hours. The entire time we hiked actually. It was annoying, but also smart, because they were loud enough to keep wild animals away from us. It also kept the younger kids from getting too sleepy on the trail. Once we had hiked for about 4 miles we hit an outfitters post. We pumped water, and chatted with some cowboys who said something about not missing the split off. 

      By now it was dark outside. But our eyes were adjusted enough that we didn't really use our headlamps. Our spirits were pretty high, nobody was really tired, and all in all we felt pretty great, so we continued to hike up. We hit a set of switch backs and slowly worked our way up. We came up with a signal to warn others when there was an obstacle in the path. We would yell rock, or it gets steep, dig in, or root, step up. The front of the line would call it and it would pass down to the back of the pack. We had Paul in the front of the line with Levi next, then me. After me came Kess, my mom, Leanna, and then I don't remember after that. I remember that we kept the people with the slower pace in the middle and the faster paced people near the back so that we could all stay together and not get to separated in the dark. We hit a ton of splits in the trail that turned out to be little forks in the trail made by horses that end come coming back together just a few yards up the path. In day light this wouldn't be such a huge issue because you would be able to see that the two paths eventually come together. At night, however, it was a different story. The first few times it happened, it was a big ole ordeal. We had to stop the train, and send the two front boys ahead to check out the area and decide what they thought was the best course of action before we could resume our journey.
          At some point we came to a pretty obvious split in the path, not just a fork that would join up again, this was a legitimate fork that one path would take us where we needed to go, the other would take us who knows where. We stopped to think about it for a minute. We looked around for a sign on the trees that would tell us the direction we wanted to go, but found none. I am not sure if Dad actually pulled the map out, or if he went by memory, but we ended up going left at the fork, and continued on up the path. We hit more switch backs, and lots of steep steep stuff, and lots of rocks, and lots of roots, and kept work our way up and up until we ended up on a very thin single track trail right up against the side of the mountain that slowly fizzled out into nothing. Seriously, one minute the trail was there, five steps later, there wasn't a trail at all. We stopped the train again, and sent the big boys to look around. Both came back with very confused looks and let us know that they couldn't find a trail. We sent the boys at the caboose for a look see also to see if they could find a potential switch back that we missed. A few minutes later they cam back saying they had found a switchback that we needed to take. So we all turned the train around and headed out. Paul and Levi Scurried to the front and left me all alone at the back. In the dark. I kind of had a freak out moment that I was going to be picked off by a werewolf or something, and asked if someone courageous man would come take the back back so I didn't have to be the caboose. Deven came to my rescue and pulled up the rear for a bit. We continued on our new path for a ways then ended up losing the trail yet again. The trail just disappeared again. Once again, we looked around and found a missed switchback and continued our journey. This happened a few more times until we realized we were now going completely in the wrong direction of what we wanted. We were going up like we needed to, but it was up and away from where we really wanted to be. By this point its 2:30 AM, we are now exhausted, thirsty, tired, sore, and really have no clue where we are at. We decided to say a prayer and go from there. After the prayer we came up with several ideas, to bush whack it to the top of the mountain to get a vantage point and head the right direction from there, bush whack across the hillside in the direction we needed to go and hope that we got lucky enough to find the trail, keep going the way we were going with hopes that they meet up, or back track until we found where we went wrong. Because of the tiredness and stress of the situation no one could make up their mind everyone had conflicting ideas, so some bright soul just said lets sleep. Lets sleep until the sun comes up, orient ourselves, then go from there. So we did.
         We threw our sleeping bags on the ground hill side, steep hill side, and tried to get comfortable. For the most part we tried to keep everyone close together so that we could 1. Keep warm, and 2. seem like a big group of something to fend of scary creatures in the night. We didn't take time to put our bear bags up, we didn't do anything but try and get comfortable. I was so cold that Paul pulled out our rain fly and threw it over us like a little tarp thing to keep some heat in. It was great, but it also made everything so stuff. I had to sleep with my head outside of the tent anyway, but I do feel like it kept the warmth in for my toes and the rest of me. Some people fell asleep so fast. I seriously don't know how they did it. It took me forever to let myself relax enough to fall asleep. Then not long after that I had to get up and pee. My mom sleeping next to me had to do the same thing so when she got up I jumped up and followed her to the bushes. A few hours later the sun started to come up over the mountains. Really, only 2 maybe 3 hours tops and we were up again. We all woke up and looked around at where we ended up and were surprised any of us got sleep. Half of us were sleeping on rocks, most of us slid down the hill at least 1 if not 3 feet. And the hill we were on was much steeper than we remembered when we put our sleeping bags down. Slowly we all started getting up and out of bed so we could decide what we wanted to do. (Rest of the story continued on day 6)

The slot canyon. Just beyond the back of the picture is where the "eye of the needle" is to Needle Falls. But there really isn't much water down there.

The infamous cliff jumping spot. Look how pretty and clear that water is!

Supposed to be a cute little water fall, now its barely a trickle. 

Lena posing so cutely on a rock

Brytt was our first jumper. I totally wish I would have filmed him. He screamed like a baby the whole time! It was hilarious. 

Tallus, again, trying to look so cool

Nayeli posing with her husband Deven as they wash their laundry.

Tallus making his way to the spot where you climb out.

Dad and Lena showing me their brave faces before they jump.

Paul and the little-uns just chillin

Lena was so brave! She jumped in!

She did so well! Dad and Kyler are below to help get peeps out of the frigid water.

Thumbs up. He says he is ready to jump

And there he goes!!! Such a brave daddy!

Me getting helped up by all the awesome manly men. 

Yay, I survived!!

Washy washy my hair! The water was cold, but it was so refreshing!! And clean hair never felt so good!

Hair washed and feelin clean!! 

Dad decided to take a nap while he waited for all of us to finish washing and doing laundry. 

Just a fun little view of the rocks and water pools. Imagine how awesome this would look with 3 times as much water in there! 

It was a little mini water slide! Not as good as Kanarraville Falls in Utah, but still pretty fun. 

One of the little pools we stopped to play at on the way back. Kyler is planking, and Paul is holding a trekking pole that he broke when he slipped on a rock. Sadly, it was my trekking pole, but on the bright side, the pole broke his fall a whole lot more than if he hadn't had it. 

Lena, Lincy and me just being goobers.

This was an even better waterslide! It was wider, longer and more slippery. 

I told Paul to snap a picture proving that I slid down into the cold water. 

Our day five picture. We took it at the end of the day right before we started our crazy night hike. 

You can't really see it well in this picture, but if you look at the back of the picture where it looks like brown is oozing out of the cliff, that is what Needle Falls looked like this year. The water comes out of a little hole in the rock and falls down below. But there wasn't any flowage this year. Just drippy drips. Kind of sad. Below I have a picture of Needle Falls 5 years ago so you can see what it should look like. 

Needle falls 2010 in all its glory. The water falls to a super awesome pool below with great cliff jumping. This year there wasn't even a pool at the bottom so we only got to jump off the cliffs in the slot canyon. Paul really was uber bummed when I showed him the differences in the pictures. That just means that we will have to come back some day. 

A picture of the dry river bed to compare it to what it looked 5 years ago. 

So this is us playing in the river in 2010 verses the above picture which was this year. Pretty sure this picture is in almost the exact same spot as the above just from different angles 

 This was what we looked like when we woke up at 5:30 with the sun. See the incline of the hill? not crazy steep, but not flat by any means. 

Here is a view from the other side of the group. It was so cold that I really didn't want to get out of my sleeping bag. Notice the rocks to the left of me? I rolled onto those a couple times during the night. Not very comfy I will admit! 

As much as it sucked to have hiked all those extra miles the view with the sun coming up over the tops of the mountains was really quite pretty.