provo bucket list: snow shoeing

this past weekend we passed off another TWO bucket list items!

can i hear a "woot woot!" from all you peeps out there?!

#3: go snow shoeing.

the landscape management major/aboriculture class on campus organized a night for anyone who wanted to to go show shoeing up to the largest white fir tree in Utah.

my overall feelings of snow shoeing in five words you ask?

 hiking with 100 pound legs.

ha, i'm not going to lie, it wasn't my favorite hiking experience ever, but i'm still glad i did it.

there were 45 of us who went and strapped these snow shoes to our feet and hiked about an hour and 45 minutes to the tree.

regardless of the minimal snow utah has received lately,

we had wonderful,.sparkling, fresh powder in the mountains  that made it much nicer.

we began the hike at 6:00 pm, excited to  be going!

at about 6:30 i thought/complained to casey "how much longer"

at 6:45 we began the much steeper part of the trail

and about every 5 minutes i said to casey "i want a break."

did we break very much though?

no, because i felt peer pressured into not stopping from all the 43 other people around me.

i was NOT going to be deemed the most out of shape person on this adventure.

soooooooooooo,

we kept going

and we kept going.

let me tell you the basic experience of snow shoeing:

each foot becomes about 6 inches wider with the inside and outside added together,

and then sometimes on the steep parts your snow shoe doesn't claw into the snow nice enough and you totally start tripping up,
casey had good laughs about every 10 minutes watching clumsy kimber trying to not fall with huge clown shoes on...

and my tree hugging professor, phil allen, (literally he LOVES trees and is obsessed with them, that's why he teaches the tree class) would say "oh you're about 20 minutes away from the meadow"

45 minutes later we reached that dang meadow.

and then at the meadow he said we were "5 minutes away from the tree"

15 minutes later we reached the tree.

LUCKILY, that tree did not disappoint.

the pictures don't do it justice but it was a rather large tree,

i was glad i made it.

love this picture my friend chase took after climbing up the tree a little ways

the way down was awesome.

it took us maybe 35 minutes?

you could take a giant step and slowly glide with that foot a little more.

the snow made the pounding on your knees/toes not bad at all.
i'd go snow shoeing down hill any day :)


ps- don't forget to enter the giveaway below if you haven't already! there's pretty good chances you could win since only, like, 8 people read this here blog!


pps- i read the conference talk from Pres Monson called "Charity Never Faileth"
it is indeed an incredible read.
reminds us of the importance of not judging and just loving.
i needed that.