I probably shouldn't have climbed that mountain

Figured I'd break up the meme wall I left with a true story since those are easy to write. Idk if I'd call this horror but It was weird.

This happened in the early summer of 2018 or 2019 in southwest Utah. I finished work early one day and had a big ole feeling of wanderlust that only summiting a nearby mountain could satiate. I'd planned on climbing it for awhile but I decided that day would be the day and luckily I brought my hiking gear to work that day so I drove straight to the foothills of the mountain and followed an old overgrown two track road until it became impassible, unfortunately the road didn't go near as far as I hoped so I had a few miles to hike before I even started climbing the mountain. I started around 11am.

To set the scene, Utah has two kinds of mountains. Cool, lush and green mountains(lush and green for a desert state anyway) and arid, dry juniper, pine and rock dominated mountains. The latter of which tend to be smaller and is the kind I was climbing that day.

To make finding my truck easier I used a lensatic compass to triangulate my trucks position based on landmarks, wrote down the readings and went on my way. It didn't take me long to reach the base of the mountain, it was pretty steep but it had a ridge that jutted out a little that was less steep so I went up that way. I took a break about halfway up on a rocky outcropping.

As I neared the top I realized that the peak was ringed by large rocks that followed the outside of the peak like a crown which would make it difficult to actually reach the summit but I didn't come all this way to miss the summit by 50 feet so I stowed my pack and fishing vest which I had tied on top next to tree so I could do the hard climbing unencumbered. I followed the peak's crown around the edge, minding the steep drop off to one side as I followed a rough, narrow ledge around the base of the crown. After following the edge I found enough of a break in the crown that I could climb up and through.

Once I was on the summit, which was actually quite large and covered by more large boulders and juniper trees, I got this really bad feeling that I shouldn't be here. Which I decided to ignore long enough to fully explore the summit and snap some pictures. My memory is rusty but I think the summit was a similar size to a football field and you couldn't see across the whole thing because of the trees and boulders dotting the top which is part of what fuelled my unease. After getting my pictures I hurried back down, grabbed my pack and vest and climbed down to the halfway point as the bad feeling faded.

After taking a break at the halfway point I walked down to an old stick fort me and a friend made near the base of the mountain and continued through the foothills where I stopped to take a break after a quarter mile of walking and while taking that break I noticed my fishing vest was no longer tied on my pack, which wasn't good since it contained my keys and wallet. So traced my steps back to the stick fort and I swear I still had my vest when I visited there earlier but it wasn't in-between where I noticed it missing and the stick fort. I followed my tracks to the base of the mountain and I still didn't see it. I was pretty confused at this point because I should have lost it in the foothills, not on the mountain.

Anyway it was starting to get late and it would be dark in a few hours so I decided to just head back to my truck and use the spare key in the truck to get home. As I was walking back I started hearing what sounded like someone banging two sticks together. I listened thinking it might be a woodpecker although I've never seen or heard woodpeckers in that specific or nearby areas before and it just didn't seem quite like a woodpecker. I'm not saying it was bigfoot but stick knocking is something commonly reported in bigfoot encounters, it's just a thought I had.

Again it was getting late and I was getting a little unnerved so I kept going and stopped once in awhile to listen for the stick knocking but it stopped shortly after I started moving. I made sure to steer clear of the general area I heard it from.

It seemed to take forever to get back to my truck and I found it to be locked and the back window latched, which I usually leave unlatched in situations like this so I can still get in if I lose my keys or anything but apparently I forgot this time. I had a friend pick me up on the county road a few miles down from my truck and he took me home then helped me break into and recover my truck the next day. I rested a few more days and then went back to the mountain to find my vest, keys and wallet. Mainly my wallet.

I scoured the foothills again just in case but eventually headed back up the mountain to see if it was up there. About two thirds of the way to the halfway point I see something tan and uniform sitting off to the side of some boulders, I hurry to it and sure enough it's my vest. I grab it and leave.

Now you're probably thinking that wasn't weird at all, but the weird part is the vest was neatly folded on a rock and it was in a place I distinctly remember not walking because it was near a bottleneck of boulders but off to one side of it. I had zero reason to walk where I found my vest and I remember walking straight through the bottleneck, I didn't go off to either side for any reason. My keys and wallet were all there. I checked for footprints but it was too rocky there to see anything.

I don't have a real explanation for any of this but something about the peak specifically felt like it was forbidden and hard to access for a reason. I'm not sure if the rest of it was even connected at all, even Though finding my vest where it shouldn't be and hearing someone or something slamming sticks together was way weird, it's the feelings I had on the peak that bug me most.

I have more to say on this area but I'm saving the rest of it for a discussion post. Thanks for reading if you got this far!