Thurston Peak, 7/5/2017

Thurston Peak is a two for one!  It's the high point in both Davis and Morgan counties.

 You start the hike at the huge soccer ball looking things you can see from Davis county. They sit on top of Francis Peak.  Thurston Peak is five peaks north of the "soccer balls".

 Right off, there were snow banks blocking the path.

 The views were amazing from the ridge.

So we were just walking along, enjoying the views, and I hear this rattle....

There was a coiled up rattle snake in the middle of the trail about 2 feet in front of me!

 We got him to leave the trail...but the whole time he was still shaking his rattles!  He went about 2 feet from the trail under this bush.  We were really nervous about how close he still was to us.

 We used our hiking poles to hopefully block him if he decided to strike, as we went around him.  After we had passed the bush, Dean tried to get a picture of him tucked up under the bush.

 Now back to the original problem...all these snow drifts blocking our path to the peak.

Luckily, my hiking boots have no traction, so I was able to ski down the snow.

 Yep, that's the last we would see of our path for a while.

 We came upon this super steep snowbank.  There was no way I could make it across!  (remember, no tread on my hiking boots) I started across it, and ended up clawing my way back to where we started going across.  I had to go up and around the snow bank, Dean was able to cross it.

After much more hiking than we had anticipated, we reached the peak!

 It was very hot, and hiking across these five peaks had been a little more of a workout than we expected.  We had gone through all our water by the time we reached the peak.  We filled up our water bottles with snow, and ate snow anytime we crossed the snow banks.

 We needed to cross over those 5 peaks to get back to our car...that's all.

 ...but it was very beautiful.

 Here is Dean trying to cool off.

 Cheesey flower pose.

 We took a short cut back to our car...not the safest way, but definitely shorter. 

 See that steep mountain behind me?  I crossed that without dying!  

 Six hours later, when we got back to our car, there was this awesome storm coming in.  The clouds over Farmington were awesome!

There was another rattlesnake in the parking lot.

To anyone thinking of doing this peak, may I suggest that you wait until the snow is gone!? (and watch out for rattle snakes!)
I'm tired!  Planned to sleep in the next morning...but Dean had this great idea when he woke up, let's go bag another peak.
So the next morning, we headed off to summit South Tent Mountain.  The highest peak in Sanpete County