one of these kids is not like the others...

so the sad reality hit me the other night. i never receive phone calls from my lovely sisters-i can't imagine why. their blogs are the only connection i have with them it seems. anyway, i admire my sisters so very much. they are such talented, domestic, classy, beautiful, fun, kind, motherly girls. it makes it hard for a man to find a girl he likes when he has such a high standard as my sisters. so i sat on the couch and looked over their blogs. ashley recently moved and has very aesthetically decorated her kitchen. she made some delicious looking homemade grape juice not long ago. kathryn recently made a tshirt for maggie with no pattern and sewed a halloween costume for cash. erin has quite the green thumb in her garden and just blogged about her wonderful recipes. sarah is quite the seamstress herself with the new fall edition of her baby bibs and is always in style with her clothing and hair. then i clicked on a link to my blog, and hung my head in shame. indeed, one of these smith kids is not like the others.

at least its a post...

so maybe you didn't want to see this. at least its a post. one day brian randomly decided it was jbear day; the day everyone in the ward was to call me jbear. the counselor in the bishopric decided to announce it over the pulpit, and well, for some the name stuck. my halloween costume, well, it never really did come to fruition; i wore the wig, but not the outfit. if you can't guess, i am supposed to be fabio. of course i wouldn't go out like this. we were joking around and eric snapped a photo. before i knew it he had created this image.

so he sez to me, "come on little bro, whats wit this jdawg, what kine a name is that for a curley headed noodle like ya self?" so i sez to 'im, "hey there buster i am cool. i wear sunglasses. i am a basketball player." but the truth is, i dont even play basketball. but the truth is, im not even gangster.

So, I just lost everything I had done. Anyway, I have several more pictures, but these are all I am able to post. The first picture, I believe, is one I took of myself while sitting on a shelf overlooking the beautiful valley below. I am not sure if you are able to see Heber City in the photo, but I could see it from where I was sitting. There is also a picture there of an old lodge. I think they call it a refuge lodge or something like that. It is sitting at the base of Timpanogos' Peak. There is also a picture there of a small avalanche coming down the face of Timpanogos. It wasn't large at all, nor was it dangerous. We purposely maintained a safe distance from the walls in case anything like that might happen. I might add parenthetically, directing my comments to mother: nothing we did was dangerous. We took all necessary precautions and we followed someone else's tracks the whole way. They were wearing snow shoes so they were able to make it up the face and we were not so we would sink to our waists. There is also a picture of me with some mountains in the background. This is just after we decided to turn back.
I must also say that the TImpanogos Wilderness area is absolutely gorgeous. It is teeming with life. Even on the snow field. As we hiked in the snow, all up past the lodge and to only two hundred yards from the ridgeline, there were hundreds of bugs in the snow. There were large ladybugs, flying ant type bugs, moths. It was weird. We were above the timberline. There was no vegetation anywhere near. What were those little bugs doing? I was a little bothered by their presence. Several times I would urge in an audible tone, "Come on little guys; I don't think you are supposed to be here. You will never find food in this snow. I think you should return from where you came." But my admonition fell on deaf ears. They perished there in that barren tundra, their lifeless, congealed corpses littering the snow. How cruel mother nature can be at times. How stupid bugs are always.
We also saw a cute little marmot being devoured by a raven, and later the bones of another unfortunate marmot soul.
So, we turned back and pretty much skiied with our shoes the rest of the way back. It was the most fun. It took about 6 hours of hiking to get to our last point at which we failed and only two to get back to base. I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

The Timpanogos blog continued...

Ok, so here are some more pictures. You can see the valley below us as we hiked up. You can then see a dome shaped peak, thats not the peak of Timpanogos. You can also see a ridge, a bowl shaped looking rim covered in snow. We hiked for a few miles in the snow. See, we were on a trail but due to the snow we kind of lost that trail after a while. It's not easy to hike in the snow when you are in shorts and have cruddy shoes. Each step would put us up to the top of our shins in snow. We began to hike up closer to the rock faces so we could may hike between these huge sheets of snow and the rocks. However, we soon learned this is impossible; there is a space between the snow and rocks but it's more like a chasm and we just felt it was dangerous so we steered clear. Anyway, we ended up getting to where we needed to go.

To Top of Timpanogos, Trial One

So, I told you I would never use this thing; but here we go. So my friend Willie and I made an attempt to hike to the peak of Mount Timpanogos. We got close but due to deep, soft snow we were unable to quite make it. The second attempt will be shortly underway, just as soon as some of that snow melts off. So, I am totally foreign to how this will all turn out, I am just posting pictures but I don't really know how to tell you what is going on in which picture. Poorly laid out, this blogger thing.
Well anyway, you can see that less than an hour into the trip my shoes, yes both of them, were busted, cheap fake hiking boots. I found them out in the garage and they died. Anyway, so I had to tie my shoe laces around the soles of my boots before tying them. It was bothersome at first but I soon couldn't tell a difference.
I can't really see the pictures so what else do I say?

my cool sister sarah is helping me figure out how to use a blog. since im so blog illiterate.