Gobbler’s Knob and Mt Raymond

Having road biked up Guardsman’s pass and ridden horses around Silver Summit, a wanted to squeeze in another big day before she had to hop onto a flight back to Portland to return to her real job as the house breadwinner.

We’d originally planned an even bigger day, but after multiple night shifts and 4-hour naps, I was feeling pretty crushed, so we toned it back and decided to tag two peaks I’d seen often but never visited, Gobbler’s Knob and Mt Raymond.

The trail up Gobblers and then over to Raymond is really superb, despite a gruelingly steep start up a dusty path. Once up into the aspen groves and onto the ridgeline, it’s pure alpine cruising, with some good vert to keep things interesting.

Little did we know that the descent would be less choice. Instead of returning up and over Gobbler’s, we descended some nice trail into Bowman fork before taking a connector through the woods back to the valley in which we’d started. We were perhaps the only people to have used this trail recently, as evidenced by the insane alder overgrowth and miniscule footpath. We were both out of water and ready for the trail to end, which it eventually did.

Not to waste a minute, we spent some of Taylor’s last hours in Utah out on the Middle Provo, teasing brown trout with Tenkara rods. To really bring things full circle, I managed to land the same trout that Taylor had triumphantly snagged just a few days prior, its identity confirmed by peculiar spots over its gills. Two runners, one trout.