We sat under that cliff face freezing and wondering about those three BYU students. Were they okay? Were they sitting in the tin shack? Hopefully they knew better than to stay in that. About twenty minutes later all of our questions were answered as those three BYU students came around the corner.
One of the boys looked at Andy and said, "I have never been happier to see you." He then asked what we should do. Andy told the three of them to sit down and turn off their phones, there was just enough room for the five of us to fit under the ledge of the cliff.
We sat under that cliff face for about forty minutes and watched the storm in awe. I have never heard anything so loud in my life. The thunder sounded like bombs being dropped and echoed as the sound traveled.
As we sat there the three students told us that they were from Montana. The two boys had just come home from missions and they were really good friends. The girl with them was one the boys sisters. None of them had ever climbed Timp before and you could tell that they were not very prepared. One of the boys was wearing a light weight windbreaker jacket and the others were wearing sweatshirts. Their sweatshirts were soaked all the way through.
As we watched the storm going on in front of us we could hardly believe we had made it as far as we had. We were all incredibly scared and said silent prayers that we would live to see the next day. All any of us could really say is, "If the Lord wants us to live, we will survive. If it is our time to go then we will not live to see another day."
As I sat there and watched the storm taking place in front of me, I thought to myself, "I'm supposed to teach Gospel Doctrine tomorrow. I might not be there to teach." That thought made me really sad, I love teaching Gospel Doctrine.
Earlier that morning before we had left I asked Andy to pack an entire box of Access Bars. Andy thought to himself, "Why do we need all of these?" but he put them in his backpack anyways.
As we sat on that mountain in the freezing cold, we all huddled together and shivered. (I don't think I have ever been as cold as I was then). For some reason Andy suddenly remembered the Access Bars in his backpack and he pulled them out and told everyone to eat one. The Access Bars are patented exercise bars that kick your body in to fat burning mode. We had previously read that Olympic swimmers use them to stay warm when they swim in channels. We ate the Access Bars and our shivering started to subside and we started to warm up a little bit. If you want to try some access bars you can purchase them here. The Mint Chocolate Ice ones are my favorite.
Shortly there after, the clouds started to lift and we could see the ranger station down below. We all looked at each other and Andy said, "Now is our window of opportunity." We grabbed our gear and headed toward the rocky bowl area.
On our way up the trail we had a really hard time navigating through the rocks and we thought crossing though this area that was now covered in 3-4 inches of hail would be very difficult. Luckily, the hail fell in such away that it outlined our path and we were able to navigate it easily. We felt like we had been led by the hand of the Lord.
