I hope TBMs and apologists don’t get offended. But…
if I had just been “caught up into” Ben Lomond Mountain, like Moses in The Pearl of Great Price, it wouldn’t have meant as much. No thank you, angels, I needed to get there under my own power, and I needed to go there alone.
Ben Lomond is neither the tallest mountain in Utah, nor the most difficult to ascend. It would be a foothill in the Himalayas. But if I told you the complete story of what it took for me to get there, you’d understand how it became a sort of Everest experience for me. Only a year ago, I wasn’t even seriously considering any trip.
The bad dreams will begin soon…
the ones where I fail to reach the summit, or where I must return to climb against my will. Like those irksome dreams where I am back out on my LDS mission. It makes me nervous thinking how close I came to never even attempting the mountain.
The night before, I sat in a parking lot at dusk across from Weber State University. I was waiting for a tow truck to rescue me and my malfunctioning rental car (side note: yay, computers! Engine, brakes, steering, all fine. But tell that to the computer 😆). I stared forlorn up at Ben Lomond Peak in the distance. Of course, travel reservation snafus would thwart my goal! It took me over a half hour just to admit I needed to call for help. Alas, I started believing the summit bid I’d been training all spring and summer for would never happen. It felt perversely appropriate to fail this close. Yet…
the tow truck came.
The driver took me back out to Salt Lake International Airport. I arranged a new rental car from a kind employee at the counter. Then I hustled back to my North Salt Lake motel. I transformed my backpack from an airplane carry-on bag to a proper day-hike pack. I set two alarms, putting the cellphone on the opposite side of the room so I would have to get out of bed to silence it. I slept about 2 hours, then I drove out to the North Ogden Divide. I started hiking at about 3:30 AM.
I needed to beat the sun…
because North Ogden had a 97° F forecast for Thursday afternoon. No temperature worries getting to the summit, but as a Michigan hiker, I had no desire to bake myself in the desert air during the 8 mile hike back down the mountain. The experienced hiker I’d consulted with expressed concern about rapidly depleting my water in the heat, and doing 16 miles at altitude, given I hadn’t been that high since college. So I stepped onto the trail two hours before hikers usually do. And let me tell you…
climbing Ben Lomond in the dark is spooky fun!
Here are links to my Instagram reel trilogy. These are short, high-energy, admittedly self-indulgent videos, but the film music I chose is great! These are public and you do not need to be a member of Instagram to view them. You may need to unmute the videos when they open.
Ben Lomond 1 of 3: Into the High Place
Ben Lomond 2 of 3: Summit Fever
Ben Lomond 3 of 3: Babel’s Lovely View
Questions for Discussion
So, W&T readers, what literal or metaphorical mountains have you climbed to test yourself? What peaks, actual or symbolic, do you yet hope to reach? Why?
Wheat & Tares 
Mt. Rainier was both 40 years ago. But lately it’s been the lava beds
Lava beds are scars th
A little known bit of trivia about Mt. Ben Lomond, that mountain was supposed to have been the model for the Paramount Pictures logo. At least according to the traditions surrounding about the mountain.
that was so cool! The videos were great to watch. I haven’t been hiking in years and seeing the trail and mountain plants just took me back to my more active years.
In my 20s, I had a group of friends that hiked. We summited Mt Timp two or three times. We went to Zions National Park and hiked Angels Landing in the time before you needed a ticket. We hiked to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. Those are such great memories. Thanks for the nostalgia. 🙂
This summer while my family enjoyed the beach I drove to Mauna Kea and summited the 13,800 ft peak. My family couldn’t figure out why I’d intentionally choose pain over beach pleasure. I don’t know either, but I predict I’ll remember that solo hike in 5 years more than they remember the day at the beach.
When I was a TBM bishop the high water mark was probably when I took both the YM and YW Rim to River to Rim after months of training. It was the most difficult thing many of those kids had done and even 7 years later, even after leaving the church I’ve heard a couple of kids brag about their hiking the Grand Canyon.
@raymond
I learned this fact of Paramount when traveling in Peru. Then they add the local spin that in 1951 when paramount elongated the mountain, it used Mt. Artesonraju in Peru as the new model and took away the Utah fame.
William Wadsworth Hodkinson, the “father of hollywood” was the only non Jewish founder of the 5 major Hollywood studios. Too bad the LDS church can not claim him as a Mormon, then we would have more urban legends in our storybook.
There is a Ben lomond in Tasmania. It has a ski resort at the top, and you can see the southern lights from there. You can drive up to it on a switchback dirt road. Chains required to be carried, and there is a partly frozen waterfall half way up. The times we were there it was so windy the waterfall was blowing up over the top.
Thank you for the responses, everybody!
Toad, I LOVE the Grand Canyon video. What an undertaking and life-long memory you gave those kids. And the footage is fantastic, especially the changing moods. Ben Lomond starts out with a series of long, curving switchbacks that were so fun to do in the dark under a crescent moon. But on the way back down, I just felt tormented, because I could see the trailhead, and my rental car, maybe a couple thousand feet away (as the crow flies) but at least a mile or more via the trail. We Instagram hikers love to get laughs contemplating the buyer’s remorse one gets on the back portion of an out-and-back hike. There’s a good allegory in that for some new scripture 🤔
I think the Paramount logo story, ubiquitous, as it is, is lots of fun. And part of the charm of Ben Lomond, is how quintessential its features are. It’s worthy of being a logo, though I don’t know the particulars. But having worked in corporate marketing in the past, graphic design by committee makes it unlikely any natural feature will go unaltered, so as to become its own thing, whatever the original inspiration. There’s a good allegory in that for some new scripture 🤔
Janey, I too scored a hike up Angels Landing in the before-ticket times. Actually, I did it with the Evangelical campus fellowship group during my early post-Mormon religious explorations. Such a wonderful place!
Geoff – Aus I did not know about the Ben Lomond in Tasmania. It looks awesome. Of course there is also one in Scotland, to be expected. Maybe that will be my thing. Travel the world, to hike the various Ben Lomonds 🤔It is goal setting time for me in all seriousness. Need to center on a new goal
I hiked Angel’s Landing with a group of Principals when I was in the Utah Principal’s Academy. I had never hiked it and heard how hard it was but decided I wanted to do it. There were about 30 principals in the group and 25 said they were going to do it. Well, 20 showed up to start the hike and we started up. It soon became apparent that not all were going to finish. By the time we got to Wally’s Wiggles, we had lost 5. When we were at the top of Wally’s Wiggles and started on the last section with the chains, we lost another 5, so we had 10 left. When we got to the top, only 6 of us made it. It was beautiful on top. We spent about half an hour resting, talking, and taking in the view. On the way down all I could think about though was how many said they’d do it and how many did it. Some were out of shape, some had medical issues like vertigo, but a few just quit. Of course, since it was a Principal’s Academy, I related it to leadership, setting goals, and working until you achieve them but later I came to see a lot more symbolism in the hike having to do with our personal lives, achievement, effort, and excuses. Sometimes I’ve made it to the summit and other times I haven’t.
I just got back from hiking the Kumano Kodo Pigrimage with my wife and kids (it’s a sister pilgrimage to the Camino de Santiago). We backpacked it. It was our first time doing a pilgrimage. People have been doing this pilgrimage for hundreds of years. It was a tough hike, because it’s a pilgrimage of purification the trail goes up and over every peak, so there’s a lot of elevation gain and loss. A poet in the year 1201 wrote of one particular section we did “This route is very rough and difficult. It is impossible to describe precisely how tough it is.”
It kicked out butts, but it did purify us. We’ve done a lot of hiking, but hiking a pilgrimage… felt different. It really was a spiritual experience and it did… purify us in a sense. I highly recommend it.
From the green Scottish hills where the proud pipers play,
To the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch,
There’s no better clan, nor will there ever be
Than the Friendly Fighting Scots of Ben Lomond.
We’re proud of Ben Lomond and all that she stands for,
And though o’er the earth we may wander,
A part of our hearts will always yearn to be
In the memory-hallowed halls of Ben Lomond.
I was actually chosen to lead the school hymn – sung by the students – at the graduation ceremony for the Class of 1970. Wow, talk about a memory I haven’t thought about for decades.