Why Not Walk to Arizona?

There is a place called "The Wave" just over the Utah border into Arizona that I read about in Reader's Digest a long time ago. Only 20 people are admitted into the entirety of the parks listed above per day with only two options for getting permits: Gamble on a 4-month advanced purchase lottery OR drive all the way down to Kanab to camp out at the BLM office and elbow your way past two smelly hikers to get the last available day-of, walk-up slots.  The first time I went there the lottery system was just a dream.  Instead the option was to glue yourself to the park website three months in advance and not blink at midnight when the open slots were posted. After three months of lost sleep and clicking "refresh" on the millisecond, an available slot appeared and I grabbed up the five remaining permits for the far-off month of February.

Mountain Letters: Hiking the "G"

Utahns should never take for granted the unique navigational guides we have emblazoned on our mountains.  Look up anywhere and you're bound to see a big white letter waiting to tell you where you are (even if sometimes you've got to be really creative in figuring out what that letter is telling you) 

The first in our new ongoing Mountain Letters Series:

The Pleasant Grove "G" has been an important landmark for our family.  As a marker for home, we can point to it from across the valley when our little one asks how much longer until we get home.  He knows the closer we get to that letter on the mountain, the sooner we'll be home.  Along with the BYU "Y", the "G" has also served as an educational tool.  When Word World was teaching him his letters, our little one started spotting them from the freeway and hollering them out proudly.  And most recently, the giant white letter has turned into a fun game of "I Can See a G" as it moves behinds trees and buildings before reappearing a few moments later.  

We have intended to make a trek to the "G" several times.  The lack of clearly defined trail always dissuaded us, and once we discovered the much easier and well-marked BattleCreek Falls trail leaving from the same parking lot, the "G" was pretty much off our radar.  Finally this summer the giant "G" called us so scouted out a route to take us all the way there.  We left our excuses in the car and struck out on a trail that kinda sorta looked it was the right way to go.

The first part of the trail is really steep.  Our little one kept telling us it was "pretty steep," but he kept on trekking.  

 

It's interesting to get up close to a mammoth wild consonant.  On the way up we each took a guess what it would be made of-wood, rocks, concrete.  It's actually made with long strips of white-washed metal, and coming into full close-up view our little informed us we were all wrong....it's made out of chairs.  He could be right-if you think of the nylon weaving of a lawn chair painted white and giganticized, that is what the "G" is made of. 

 

We spent the rest of our time there having lunch in the center of the oversized capital letter.  It is beautiful to get above your regular life-all the traffic, the stores, and the noise; to look across the valley and realize how big Utah Lake really is, how intricately the roads are interlaced, how many reservoirs there are, and where all the dirt trails go. The opportunity to take it all in made the trip worth it, no matter the difficulty we had in getting there.  

Directions and Information:
The trails to the Pleasant Grove "G" originate in the same parking lot as the Battle Creek Trailhead located at the top of Battle Creek Drive, or E 200 S, in Pleasant Grove.  The road ends in a parking lot for Kiwanis Park.  A small bridge crosses a creek on the north end of the parking lot.  Cross the bridge, walk through the small pavilion and follow the fence line to the dividing trailheads shown above.  Either trail will merge together into the primary trail at the top of the first ridge.