Hike to Timpanogos Cave

Today Corey and I hiked up to Timpanogos Cave. To get there, we rode his motorcycle up American Fork canyon, which was a lot of fun :) I love going on motorcycle rides with him, its one of our favorite things to do together. After we got to the station at the bottom of the trail to Timp Cave, we picked up our tickets and we had about 50 minutes to hike up to the cave. They usually suggest leaving about an hour to hike up, but Corey and I made it a challenge to walk up quickly :) The trail gains 1065 feet in altitude in 1.5 miles... So its pretty steep. Some parts of the trail were more steep than others, but it was definitely manageable, and wouldn’t be a problem for anyone, even children were hiking up and there are a lot of benches along the way to stop and take breaks. Corey and I only stopped once to situate my pack a little better. We made it up to the cave in 45 minutes :) At the top we snacked on cliff bars before going into the cave.

The cave was a lot of fun because we had a really energetic guide, a ranger named Molly. Timp Cave is made up of 3 different caves, which were all discovered at different times. The first cave was discovered by a man who was logging up AF canyon... something Corey and I decided would be really difficult because of how steep the mountains are. So this guy found the first cave, which was later mined and isn’t very pretty anymore. The second cave is cool because there is a really skinny part in which the original discoverers came down through and there is still a ladder that you can see way up above in the crevice. The third cave is my favorite though because it is the one with the most formations and has been preserved the best. There are a lot of stalactites and stalagmites, some that look like straws and others that look like popcorn. There was also an interesting formation that had a green tint to it because it contained Iron... So cool :) Corey and I were both impressed with the formations and found it really interesting watching the stalactites drip water onto the stalagmites below them, which will eventually form more of the rock/mineral compound and will eventually touch. There was a formation shaped like a huge heart and another shaped like the face and ears of a dog. We were definitely impressed with the cave and loved our guide because she answered all of our questions and told us neat stories. One of the stories include one day when a ranger found an old ticket stub from the 1920s in the cave but when they brought it outside of the cave it just disintegrated. 

After our tour of the cave, we hiked back down to the bike to head home. The hike down was much faster than the hike up because it was all downhill :) Overall, it was a very fun day for both of us and a great activity for a beautiful Friday afternoon in the summer :)