Bridge Mountain. It is called so because this bridge is located nearly top of the summit. The peak elevation is 6940 feet, about 7 miles round trip hike. This was listed as class 4/5, difficulty 4/5. This was a bit challenging for me because this hike was listed as one of the difficult ones in my hiking group. Well I did it though!
Getting to the trail head, you MUST have 4-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle! We drove almost 45min to 1hr on rocky road, REALLY ROCKY road. At some point I swear we were all tilted, thinking the car was gonna tip over. The trail is pretty visible, easy to walk on, and that goes on for a couple of hours. I see the summit on the other side of the valley!
Once through with the easy user-trail part, there is an observation point to where the edge is straight down to the valley down below. Just being careful on our footing by the edge, we had a snap shot together with my good fellow hiker, Steven!
The Bridge Mountain is the other side of the observation point. We descend a bit, walking across the lower sandstone mountain top that leads us to the bottom of the Bridge Mountain. There is no visible trail you can see since it's just wide open space in this area, but you will find some carens that you can follow. In this area, any direction will get us to the foot of the Mountain. It's just right in front of you.
Then, here comes the class 3 climbing. Using hands, basically climbing on one surface of the steep wall of the mountain to gain more elevation.
Believe it or not, descending is harder than ascending. Going down on the same route, you will have some torn pants because there are spots where you have to slide down on your butt!!
The Bridge shows up in front of you once you get done with the climbing with hands. I had never known that such beautiful bridge exists so high up in the mountain. It looks as if it is made of bricks because of the stone texture and its pattern. Very neat.
The bridge is not the end of this hiking. We passed it going further up to the summit of the Bridge Mountain. Less steeper, but still using hands..
On the way up we hiked by the green oasis in the middle of the sandstone.
Snap shots with everyone at the top!
The green pool on the summit was interesting too!
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