Hiking Mount Timp: The Drama

I've lived in Utah for 9 nears.  A month after I moved to Utah friends of mine hiked to the top of Mount Timpanogos and I have wanted to ever since.  So finally, the last possible month I could, Scott and I made the attempt.  It was July 5th.  Scott climbed the mountain two years ago around the first week in July so we planned our hike based on his experience then.  We didn't plan on crossing large fields of snow before we were even half way up the mountain:

But it was a fun adventure.  The air was warm even though the snow was so prevalent.  We continued up the mountain and saw some amazing views.
At one point we crossed a snow field following footprints of previous hikers, but when we got to the other side of the snow, there were no more footprints and no more trail.  We were lost and this is what we saw:
Vast patches of snow dotted with islands of dry land.  While we were lost we stopped on a hill to eat a snack.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.  I felt like I was in the opening scene of the Sound of Music and I flung my arms out and belted "The hills are alive...."  Scott just laughed at me.  We also saw lots of new varieties of wildflowers when we were lost that weren't on the trail, but more about that later.  It was obvious which direction we needed to go because we could see the saddle and the summit, so we headed off towards it confident that we would find the trail again.  And we did find it!  So we followed the new footprints in the snow that lead to the top of the mountain.  This is what the snow looked like near the saddle (can you spot the two hikers?)
So we followed these new footprints until we came to a point where the footprints stop.  It turned out that we were following footprints of people who had come down off the mountain and we were at a point where they had slid down on the snow like a slide on a particularly steep part.  We knew this couldn't be the right way to get to the top.  It was way too steep.  But for the life of us, we couldn't find a trail of footprints that led to the top.  So I foolishly decided to backtrack a little, then zig zag my own way up to what looked like the trail above us.  I felt pretty comfortable in the snow, even though it was steep.  With some caution and a little adrenaline, I made it back to a solid part of the trail that was peeking through the snow.  When I looked down to find Scott, he was still about 100 feet below me and not as comfortable in the snow.  With every step he felt more and more uneasy and I felt more and more foolish for leading us up this way.  Well, with more adrenaline and a few scrapes and bruises, Scott made it to the trail with me, but we were both a little shook up.  We sat on the trail for a little while as we watched a few tiny dots of people who were on the trail behind us find the correct way up to where we were.  Eventually we continued up to the saddle where the view was awesome.  Here we are:
We could see the whole valley, even our little apartment!  Even with the drama in our hike, I'm so glad I was able to hike Timpanogos before I left Utah.