Over Labor Day weekend I climbed Mount Nebo, highest point in the Wasatch Range at 11,929′, with Dave Hanscom and Bill Stenquist. Dave has run me into the ground before and Bill came close to winning the Wasatch 100 a couple of times — so I should have known something was up when we met in Mona, UT to set up a car shuttle, instead of meeting nearer to one of Nebo’s established trailheads. It turns out we were starting and ending the hike at the valley level, leading to a climb with 6000 feet of net elevation gain and probably well over 7000′ total gain.
We started at the mouth of Pole Canyon and walked up a jeep road for a couple of miles, gaining about 2000 feet. Then, we bushwhacked another 3000 vertical feet until we ran across a good trail on the shoulder of North Peak. From there we climbed to North Nebo and then started the exposed, mile-long class 2/3 traverse to South Nebo. After that it was a pleasant but long walk out Willow Creek to the other car. This was an awesome hike, but strenuous and four liters of water was barely adequate.
5 responses to “Mt Nebo”
Sounds fun- but grueling, relentless, ruthless, exhausting, etc. That’s a lot of elevation change, coupled with a pretty good chunck of mileage. Props to you!
Btw, “nebo” in russian means “sky” 🙂
How long did the hike take?
Hi Kevin, this took us about 11 hours. But we were moving slow for a variety of reasons. Hanscom said he’s done it in 6 hours; I think he must have been running much of the time.
11 hours is reasonable. That’s on par with Half Dome here at Yosemite.