The Outdoor Adventure Thread

I'd like to start a fun little thread on everyone's outdoor adventures. I like to go on hikes and do a lot of outdoor activities, often ones that lead to various unexpected experiences or views unlike any I'll see elsewhere. Sometimes these things can lead to influences in my writing. Afterall, most writing lends a bit of its believability to personal experience.

I'll go first, naturally.


Very recently I completed the El Cajon Mountain Trail to the peak of El Cajon Mountain by my house. I was going for my longest trail and highest elevation gain in a single trip on the same go around: an 11mile trail with 3,700ft of elevation gain. I'm not in the best of shape at the moment, so it was bound to be a beast.

The weather was a calm 70F and partly cloudy. Basically, perfect for t-shirt hiking. The first five miles up were rough, naturally, with a lot of small peaks before the main mountain, but nothing I couldn't handle. The peak trail end was a monster though of scrambling and bouldering to the peak. But I made it. However, the weather turned on me.

Just before the peak, some dark clouds rolled in and it started to sprinkle. Winds kicked up and temp dropped by 20 degrees. It was rough. But I was nearly there, so screw it. Right? Ehhh...

The peak was nothing more than me being blasted by gale winds and droplets like needles. I spent a whole 20 seconds enjoying it before loudly proclaiming "God, it sucks up here!" and making my way back down. My bad. Sorry God. Higher powers decided that wasn't what I should have said.

For 5.5 miles it down poured the whole way back. I was soaked through every inch of my clothes and starting to panic because hypothermia was setting in. I couldn't type on my phone to call home. I just had to run as best I could back on a trail 3 miles longer than I had done before at max. And the small peaks were a nightmare on the already used up legs.

I made it. Barely. Drove home at minimum speed so I wouldn't crash. Sat on the shower floor and soaked but couldn't get warm. Then finally went to sleep in the middle of the day for three hours. It was really that bad.

But I made it.

11.06 miles, 3,615 elevation gain over 4hours and 13 minutes. (Tracked by AllTrails app)


I look forward to hearing what anybody else has. I love hikes. Every one is a new adventure. Sometimes even the same trails are too.

Spoiler: A few images. The proof!

 

Great thread initiative!

I went up and down Kebnekaise, Sweden's tallest mountain, back in 2015. It's around 2000 meters high and the hike took around 10-12 hours. (I have a shoddy memory, but something like that.)

My buddy made a film of it, but its only shared among friends on Facebook. It was great fun. Like you, we ended up in a cloud at the top, it dispersed a little so we could see the sights.

Spoiler: Kebnekaise

 

One of the few times I actually spent the night outdoors I went with a friend and his girlfriend out to an old abandoned quarry where there was a huge cliff you could see from the highway. It was about an hour drive from where we lived (felt like it anyway, might have just been 20 minutes?). We wanted to climb around on that cliff, and we brought sleeping bags and a tent. I was used to climbing around on dirt bluffs, because there were two of them pretty close to my house that I could just walk to anytime I felt like it, but this was totally different. You can't just dig the edge of your shoe into a rock wall and create a foothold. It's hard to believe now that we did this with backpacks on, but we walked along this long ledge that got really narrow in places. For a while it was only like—I want to say, two inches wide maybe? We had to face the cliff and just edge along with only our toes on it and try to find good handholds all the way. That was far and away the worst part. I think each one of us had a moment (if not several) where we just thought we were gonna die, right then and there. We were really high off the ground at that point too. So high it was really terrifying to look down and see little toy towns down there. We had to keep reminding ourselves not to look down. It was all worth it though when we got to the top and turned around and looked out across all that vast space. Like being up in the abode of the gods or something. We sat there and talked, probably drank some beer or something, until late afternoon, and then we found a nice spot to set up the tent and crash out. That was a little below the absolute top, there was a small rise behind us, maybe ten feet high or so with trees along the edge of it. We figured we were way out in the middle of nowhere and there was nothing but wilderness up there. But when we woke up in the morning (stiff and sore from laying on the ground all night, we didn't have any air mattresses or anything) we heard people talking and car doors closing up there. I climbed up and took a peek—it was the parking lot behind a restaurant or bar or something, and people were showing up for work! There was just a thin strip of trees and beyond that businesses and houses. Blew our minds! Coming back down that cliff face was a lot harder than climbing up was, because when you're going up you get a close-up view of where you're going to be stepping next, and can scout hand-and-footholds etc, but going back down you have to find them just with your feet, blind. It was a lot of fun though, and I'm really glad I did it.

 

That's just like the mountain on Miyajima island in Japan. You could take tram up to the top of the mountain, but you'd lose the adventure of climbing the multiple centuries old steps through thick forests and alongside waterfalls. Where's the fun in that? Or the achievement?

 

I grew up in a small town in the south western part of Namibia. There was a massive restricted area along the coast due to prevelance of diamonds, and the area remained wild and untouched. Sometimes poachers would push over the fences to allow large herds of Gemsbok or Springbok to escape so they could be hunted.

My dad loved the outdoors and we slept in the wild many nights. I remember quite a few times being woken by the dogs whining and a Leopard roaring in the dark, outside the reach of the fire's light.

In any case, after one such night we scanned the area to see if we could spot the Leopard tracks, but then noticed vultures turning. We found part of a Gemsbok carcass that was killed in the night, along with many tracks, so we realised there was a herd, which was unusual due to hunting having reduced their numbers so much.

In any case, we followed the herd back up to the mountains on foot, walking the whole day tracking them. Then finally as the sun was setting behind the mountains, we caught up with them. The herd, silhouetted by the setting sun crossed the ridge right in front of us, their long horns like the spears of a marching army in the orange light.

The next morning we found the place in the fence that had been pushed over, and where the Gemsbok had passed back into the restricted area and tried to lift it as best as possible. Poachers were known to unload on herds with automatic weapons, and even though my dad was a hunter himself, coming across such a scene was never good. He had worked at Etosha national park for many years so it was concerning to him.

I grew up wild, hunting gathering, digging for water, navigating by the stars. I've seen the raw coldness of nature, where cuteness and personality disappears when you are just food in a predators eyes. But I've also seen beauty. How a desert transforms in mere weeks into fields of sweet smelling flowers. How dusty riverbeds become torrents after rains in the mountains. How beauty can be found in a selfless human heart, though that may be more rare.

 

Almost 50 years ago a friend and I hitchhiked from Omaha Nebraska to Rocky Mountain National Park, and spent several days in the mountains. The "high" point, pun intended given the pot we carried and was shared with us on our various rides, was climbing Long's Peak, the highest one in Colorado. In my blog I detailed the night before the climb, when a series of storms blew through and our tent collapsed. Nonetheless it was an intriguing climb, in places I remember having the thought, "they really shouldn't people like us out here on ledges like this," but we made it, stood and looked around. Snowflakes began to fall (even though it was June) so we quickly made our way back down. A glorious and memorable ten days, when we were young, stupid and adventurous.