Hello! And, a very happy Mid-week to you!
I've been meaning to share this experience with you guys, and I just now got into the right head space to relive it in order to share it. So, I hope you enjoy...
Recently I went on a road trip to Crested Butte, CO. I took a side kick for a quick day trip to walk around Downtown Crested Butte and find a nice nature hike to take some sunset pictures. Colorado has been experiencing some nasty wildfires, so we were hoping for some decent visibility in the mountains. The trip from the front range to Crested Butte is filled with surreal scenic beauty.
We arrived downtown around 2 p.m. and explored visiting some local art galleries and a museum. We grabbed some street food at this tamale place (I cannot remember the name, but these burritos were seriously GIGANTIC and delicious!). Anyways, I asked the cute tamale guy where we could catch the most amazing sunsets in Crested Butte. Without hesitation, he said: " Oh Ohio Pass in the ski country is where you wanna go." We grabbed some coffees at a local coffee shop and decided to get on the road to make it for the sunset.
I parked right up right at the trail head. We met some campers who had set up camp nearby who asked us if we didn't mind relocating for their friend's car, as their friend would be showing up later. We chatted with them briefly and moved our car. And, then we said goodbye. They were the last people to see us. The point I'm making here is that these campers would see us for the first and last time that night Expecting a short hike and expecting a fabulous Rocky Mountain sunset around 6:55 p.m., I packed my water bladder with a long sleeved SPF sun shirt, in case it got chilly on the other side of the mountain. My friend took a larger pack for a our short excursion (and, I'm so glad as you will soon find out).
The beginning of the hike started off super technical and was a real thigh burner. I remember thinking, "Wow, maybe I should have specified more of a nature hike to the tamale guy!" And, then, switchback after immediate switchback directly up the mountain, the hike got more and more technical. And, the dusk got closer and closer. The trail mostly consisted of large loose rocks with narrow passageways with straight 50-80 foot drops. There were parts of the trail where, if you took one misstep you would meet a pretty quick and serious death. Struggling with a fear of heights all my life, I was hugging up next to the mountain during a few moments of this trek.
I remember glancing up at the top of the mountain, and we were about 3/4 there when I said (after my intuition gut punched me), "Dude, we're not gonna make it. Let's just go back to the car and maybe we can catch it next time." That's when my friend turned around and emphatically said (as if we had hit the point of no return), "Oh no way, we have plenty of time!" And, don't ever try this, but I ignored my intuition. And, I guess I partly blame this on being an English Major, but words actually mean something to me. So, when you directly and confidently express with eye contact that we have enough time to get to a sunset and back down safely, I just assume you know what you're talking about.
We finally got to the peak and it was getting darker. We had missed the sunset. These are the last of pictures taken from the peak of Ohio Pass before things went to shit. Suddenly, almost in a panic, my friend looks at me and says sternly: "Look, we're going to get back down from this mountain, but you have to be quick and we can't lose a minute of time here, are you with me? And my friend takes off and while I'm trailing behind him, while seemingly minutes pass before the sky turns completely pitch dark. My friend was so far ahead of me and I couldn't see the trail in front of me. The moon wouldn't be out for another hour. I was calling out to him, and he was panicking pretty hard at this point. He had lost the trail.
The only light we had was his iPhone, which was already on mid-battery. When I finally caught up to the light, we were both standing at a cliff and all sides were a steep ravine. I'm from the South and used to Appalachia. And, let's just say this was the Big Leagues. He started freaking out and talking to himself about how he was going to backtrack to the trail and get off the mountain. I would have honestly loved to have seen the expression on my face when I explained to him that I had no intentions of dying on that mountain. The very last thing you want to do in situations like that is panic, act off of fear, and be irrational. To be honest too, I was a little miffed that a man from Texas would go high tailing it down a mountain leaving a lady way behind. Note to any fellas reading, but if you get a girl stuck after dark out on a trail, try holding her hand and making sure she's safe, instead of taking off in a panic. Panicking can be contagious if you have emotionally unintelligent people involved. Additionally I my cell phone was in the car and I had no light.
SERIOUS QUESTION
Ever traveled or spent time with someone who is so damn irritatingly stubborn and headstrong, you can't talk sense into them? When it's not just your life and safety at stake, you can't just think about yourself. And, you have to start making your way out of your own head space. So I had to sit through a hot minute of "a man at war with his own ego". First, I got blamed: "This was your trip and your idea and I thought you were a pro hiker and knew what you were doing!" I had to really bite by cheek on that one. Which by the way, when you're in survival mode, blame games get you on a short trip to nowhere. But, convincing that guy to call 911 was probably the hardest thing I've had to do in terms of communication with a stubborn man. And, never again will I leave my phone in the car, even if it's for a short pee in the woods. Yes, lesson learned there. Because when there is one phone, apparently you're at the mercy of other person. Additionally, always have a LED flash light on a key ring.
We had a brief conversation, mostly about overcoming his embarrassment of having to call search and rescue, and then I sternly asked again, for the final time, for him tocall the authorities and tell them we were out in the wilderness. The thing I'll never forget is when we finally found a weak signal, the call into the switch board operator. She took an enormous amount of time getting our information before placing us on such a lengthy hold, it severely drained the battery. Further, while on hold, we completely lost the signal. Even with the weak signal, I asked my friend to text at least two people and drop a pin for our location. He texted his sister and his mom before the phone went dead. And, there we were. In the pitch dark, lost, at a cliff. His mother and sister were able to take over from there and communicated our pin location to authorities.
Little did we know at the time, four men were stranded in Crested Butte that night at a peak. And, search and rescue were tied up with that. So, we were pawned off on the Sheriff's department. I had my camera, but the flash would not work and I couldn't see well enough to figure out why the flash wouldn't work in the dark. The next thing that happened was the temperature started drastically dropping. I was wearing hiking shorts and a sports bra, because it had been hot that day. Luckily I had the long sleeve sun shirt. And, that's it. That's all the clothing I had. We started climbing back up to the outline of a tree you could see. We laid our packs down at the base and used the tree to block the wind. Also, we were down-wind, which was apparently good if you don't want to become dinner for a bear, bobcat, or mountain lion in Colorado.
As I stated earlier, Colorado has had some serious wildfires throughout the state. So, we hard discussed making a fire, even though there were signs everywhere saying: "NO camp fires." We waited on search and rescue for about an hour while using body heat to keep warm. Allow me to state here that this is so not fun when deep down you're pretty pissed at the person you're cuddling with.
This tree I called "The Giving Tree" because she supplied us with so much. I felt so safe next to this tree. I took some pictures of the her the next morning so I would never forget how grateful I was. This beautiful tree was more than likely hit by lightning because, there was so much dead clean breaking, and making manicuring and starting a fire in the dark pretty easy. Now, the moonlight was out. And, we started peeling away at the dead limbs and bark. We dug trenched area with our boots and placed dead leaves and debris under the dead sticks. And, then we sparked the fire.
Ahhhhhh, the warmth. For the first time in my First World problems life, I said, "I'm so grateful for fire." Honestly I cannot express to you in words the warmth and love of that fire that night. And, for the next seven hours, we stayed up and closely supervised and fed that fire. Because it dropped down into the teens, we had to "Brokeback Mountain" cuddle facing the fire. Mostly we stood, and found more sticks and limbs, and did jumping jacks. We couldn't really make the fire too big, since the winds off the mountain were so strong. I recall, at one point, I wanted to just sit on the fire so the warmth could shoot up into my entire body.
That night, we were never rescued. We saw the flashing lights of rescue cars on the road way down below. I also saw flashlights coming down a trail, and then they stopped. I yelled out as my voice echoed into the ravine "HELPPP" but my friend took his hands and covered my mouth and told me he didn't want "bad people" finding us. Yes, another thing I was pissed about. He started saying that there were probably "The Hills Have Eyes" locals in the mountains. And, that does not help your overly active imagination in the pitch dark.
Lying on my back, I watched the moon cycle across the sky from one mountain peak to another. I saw the Milky Way and the stars like I had never seen them before. Absolutely awe inspiring star gazing ensued that night.
And, finally, after 7 hours, the sun peaked over the mountains and I took these moody dawn shots. We were able to relocate to the trail and make it back down to see these two moose eating breakfast by this tree. We also ran into the campers from the night before. And, they looked so happy to see us: "We were SO WORRIED about you guys! The Sheriff's Department came out and everything!?" We told them the whole story and as we parted ways, we could hear them laughing on down the trail. And, then we laughed. It's much easier to laugh once you've survived. And, it's actually a quite liberating feeling at that.
I didn't have much to say on the car ride home. I didn't even have much of an appetite. When you're on no sleep and looking all around at the sound of every leaf crunch and limb snap, it's weird how food is the last thing on your mind. You're maybe coming down off some mild PTSD. I don't know. Also, I really needed to take a shit.
Regardless, the next day, this guy texted me thanking me for talking sense into him. And, he finally, a day later, came to his senses and agreed we both would have died had we continued to try to hike down in the pitch dark. Not sure why it took that guy 24 hours to process that. But, he also said he couldn't wait for the next adventure and how epic the entire trip was. So, I guess another item of interest is how two different people from opposite sexes can have a totally polarized recap of the entire experience. As for me, I have no immediate plans to go out into the wilderness with this guy ever again. And, Jesse, if you're reading this, consider this a passive aggressive way of letting you know that. I take with me several lessons on this one. The game of life: You learn and you grow. ALWAYS trust your gut.
I hope you either learned something, were mildly entertained, or belly laughed on this one. Enjoy the rest of your week, and thanks for supporting this blog and your valued readership.
Kimmie
No comments:
Post a Comment