Experience 3: Wilderness Whammy
My next run-in with death occurred when I was about 16 years old. My grandparents own some land in Spanish Peaks, CO, and we often go there to enjoy the mountain views and/or do some hiking. My dad, brother, sister, and I decided (stupidly) that we could climb the main mountain in one day. Now, this isn't like hiking in a national park. There are no trails, no guides, and definitely no other people you may bump into along the way. It's pretty desolate. I'm going to mention all the things we did wrong so that maybe you won't make the same mistakes and will be better prepared for adventures such as this. We packed a bottle of water per person. This was our second mistake. Grand Canyon National Park recommends that people drink 1/2 liter to 1 liter of water per hour of hiking. We were going to be hiking all day, and we didn't even have a liter of water per person. We only packed a few granola bars and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch - definitely not enough food for four hungry hikers. Anyway, off we went. By the time we reached the summit, it was dusk. By nightfall, we hadn't made much progress back down the mountain. We had no compass and only one flashlight between the four of us (mistake #342). It was very cold during the night and the only clothing we had was the clothing on our backs, which happened to be damp from sweating throughout the day. We stopped at a clearing to attempt to sleep. We had run out of water and food only a few hours into the hike. My siblings and father spent the night dry heaving from dehydration. I wasn't affected by it because I was running cross country at the time and was accustomed to dehydration. I don't think any of us actually slept. After a couple hours, we decided to start hiking again. We followed logging roads but didn't really have any idea where we were or which way we needed to go. We walked and walked and walked and came upon a series of ridges. We hiked over several of them and came upon a glistening stream. We knew that drinking from it would be risky. We could get Giardia or a whole host of other organisms and infections, but our only other choice was to become more dehydrated, which could lead to death. We took our chances and filled our water bottles with the stream water. After a bit more hiking, we spotted a dirt road. Go left or go right? We arbitrarily chose left. After more walking we heard the most glorious noise ever. A remote-controlled airplane was flying in the distance! We found the entrance to a huge farm and walked over to the man flying the plane. After explaining our situation to him, he invited us into his home and had his wife fix us the biggest breakfast I've ever seen. She made eggs, toast, pancakes, coffee, juice, everything you can think of. This couple was so incredibly nice! As it turned out, this man owned the logging company whose roads we'd followed for some of our hike. He had one of his coworkers drive us back to our property (which was quite some distance away) and invited us to a party the following weekend. If we had chosen to go right on that dirt road, we wouldn't have seen anybody or anything for another 13 miles. Lots of luck and three very generous people are the only reasons we emerged unscathed.
There was also the time my family did a 30-mile hike in the Grand Canyon when my sister got stung by a scorpion and my brother became hyponatremic and nearly died, but we'll save those family adventures for another day.
Basically, if you go on a trip with us, be prepared for disaster, and if you're near me for any significant period of time, you should probably know how to deal with my choking episodes.
I'm really glad you haven't died yet!
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