Hiking Mt. Timpanogos (11,752 ft) is one of the higher peaks in Utah. I hiked this route through the Timpinookee Trailhead. It's 14.5 miles and the Aspen Grove one is about 17 miles. The Timpinookee trail is a gradual climb and we took about 4 hours to climb to the top and 2.5 miles coming down since we ran down before it got too dark. You can also camp there if you decide to go later in the day. We did the hike at 1230 pm and it was a great day, the hike has some shade and some of it's in the direct sun. We ended at 830, and we ran some of it and coming down I fell on a rock and hurt my ankle, so be careful when you run around that area.
If you are looking for a tough hike this one is one of the tallest mountains with mount Nebo and mount Olympus. It's always great to do these once a year since there are so many hikes to do in Utah. I would do this hike in August since there won't be any snow. You can still do the hike in June or July, but there might be snow and you will need spikes to get up. We did this hike on Labor Day September 1st and it wasn't too crowded. Some people just go to the waterfalls and walk back which we ran into a lot of people coming down, but once you get closer to the saddle there is not a lot of people up there.
If you are a beginner of hiking and want to attempt this mountain, just go early like maybe 730 am so you have enough time to hike all the way with stops. It can take about 6-8 hours round trip to do it or longer if you haven't done hard hikes before. I would definitely bring a backpack with 2 liters of water and 3 extra water bottles, a sandwich, protein bars, and energy candies to do the trail. We did stop a couple times to rest and take our shoes off for our feet to heal from the walking and running.
I still need to do the Aspen Grove Trail, but I'll probably do that next year since it started to snow already up there. So I will talk about my experience next year with the aspen grove part.
