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Tortoise went on an overnight hike with Benjamin and Josh, beginning at the Timpanooke trailhead, with an objective of passing through the Timpanogos Basin and camping at Emerald Lake so as to have a water replenishment source.  Tortoise set an extraordinarily slow pace, even by Tortoise standards, as the heavier pack (we carried at least a gallon of water each), the warm sun, and the long climb took their toll.  We left the trailhead about 9:45 am, and arrived at the junction of the Emerald Lake and Timpanogos Summit trails at about 5 pm -- so it took us 7 hours and 15 minutes to walk 5.3 miles and climb 2800 feet.  

It was a wonderful trek ... and a terrible one.  The views and the company were wonderful!   Benjamin was so excited with what we accomplished, however slow it was.  But drinking all of our 3+ gallons of water, having Josh volunteer to walk to the lake to get more, only to find it was too polluted to trust even after filtering was surely disappointing.  We will probably try other places for future overnight hikes and save this one for however far we can go and return in the same day, because of the unreliability of the water source.

We made all kinds of guesses as to what the tortoise rating of this trek will be.  I'm surprised myself that the rating comes in at -1.0 ... I was thinking this would earn a 00 triple beyond tortoise rating for sure.  The rating is calculated as follows:  All walks begin at a 7.0 tortoise rating.  You then deduct 1 tortoise for each 3500 feet of average elevation.  Our elevation range was 7350 to 10150, making the average 8750.  So deduct 2.5 tortoises for that, now we are at 4.5.  Next we deduct 1 tortoise for each 2% of average climbing grade.  In this case the average is 10.01%, so deduct 5.0 tortoises, which puts us at -0.5.  Finally, the trail has many rocky places.  Not as much debris to climb over as on the Brown Point Trail at Pine Valley, but plenty all the same.  Deduct another 0.5 tortoises for that to bring the overall rating to -1.0.

Footnote:  No walk August 14 or 15.  Miles walked since June 28 ... 88.17.

The heat and getting used to carrying our packs made it seem much more ... just goes to show we will have to keep practicing!  Click here for lots more pictures:

Cheerio!

Loading up in the parking lot to get started!

And now we're on our way!

Climbing a long shadeless stretch at about 9000 feet

A deer enjoying a lush grassy lunch lets us take a picture

The views looking back get more dramatic as we keep climbing

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These last 3 pictures were billed by my sons as the greatest pictures ever taken of the tortoise.
  Not sure I would go that far, what do you think?

The little black dot in the middle of the picture ... is Josh.  Thank you, kind sir!