61 replies to this topic

[EdoHart]

You guys are going to make me scan my pics aren't you? You wouldn't believe my story otherwise.

I'll believe your story without pictures, but I want to see your pictures anyway. I wish I had a picture of the look on my dog's face when I rolled my Scout II in slow molion. The look I got from her said "Dude? Really?" She was belted in, didn't suffer any injuries and tonight will sleep at the foot of my bed. I smile whenever I remember the look on her face that day.

[Lighthawk]

One my stories of breaking down happened in Mexico

The year was 1983 and my friend Marc and I were heading south from a border town called La Rumerosa ('tween Tecate and Mexicali) seeking a fabled rock climbing area called Canon Tajo.
We had been climbing partners for about a year and had been visiting Joshua Tree, Idylwild, Mt. Woodson and were ready for some wilderness climbing in the Sierra Juarez, a 5000' plateau in northern Baja.

We had a hand drawn map and I had been there a year before, so how hard could it be? Twenty miles of dirt past various ranchos on the old spanish trail to Ensenada. Problem was that it dumped an inch of rain the night before.

Marc considered himself something of a rally driver and in his 2wd Ford Ranger we were flying. We crested a blind rise and did a nice splash into an oversized puddle and killed the motor. A quick drying of the distributor cap whilst slugging a beer or two fixed the problem.

Next the turn-off from the main dirt road to a lightly used double track seemed to match my memory and the granite domes nearby were tantalizing. The track got very muddy and Marc just kept gunning it until we went about 50 yds. too far and sunk. The little truck was buried to the axles.



We spent six hours and were successful at moving his truck about six inches
We stacked rocks and put his little jack on top and watched as the rocks sunk into the muck.
Finally as the setting sun called it a day we decided we needed to find someplace to sleep.
I grabbed an armload of sleeping gear and some food and walked to a nearby high spot, above the swamp. That night was the inaugural night of Andy's Famous Grilled Cheese and Tuna Sandwich. Funny how a spot of hot food can lift your spirits.

The next morning was not very happy. We were still stuck and had seen no one. The main dirt road was about a mile back, so we decided to put up some signs. Two guys in the twenties stuck in the middle of nowhere --- go figure!



Just as we hiked back, here came a beater pickup with a bunch of locals in the back. I spoke some spanish so I told our story. They agreed to drive up and help and Marc said he would go retrieve our signs. I jumped in the back of the truck with the braseros. They had gunny sacks with pinon cones, trunks from century plants and a variety of locally sourced items.

When we got to the mud hole our driver wisely stopped about fifty yards from our truck. The locals jumped out and with a word from the driver, they pulled out machetes fabricated from leaf springs. Marc wasn't back yet and as I looked at this machete wielding crew I thought, "They can have whatever they want." Instead they chopped brush and stacked it on the road.
Next they pulled out a Hi-Lift Jack (first one I had ever seen) and popped us out of there in no time. They wanted to use our climbing ropes to tow us out, but we had to explain that we were alpinistos and our ropes couldn't be used this way.

I was so happy I promptly passed around our limited supplies of beer and at 8:30am we all toasted our success. Later Marc asked me why I had been so generous with our beer! The Mexicans were also very interested in why I had boxes of closet rod dowels. I brought them for firewood (left overs from a commercial project) and had tried using them under our tires. They just laughed and said they would be better for making tortillas. So I gave them a box of dowels too.

Just a few photos from the archives:

[DLN]

I've gotta say you guys and your stories make me glad the worst thing I've been stuck in is snow, up to the doors but at least it shovels easily.

[ski3pin]

I just noticed this subject and have been enjoying the stories. I'll add this one about a wildlife encounter. I had to dig back into the albums and scan a photo.



This is a favorite story the Lady enjoys telling. It happened in April 1988, spring break. It was early evening and we were in the northern part of the Alabama Hills driving south on Movie Road. We had been married for several years and most of our adventures had been mountain or alpine related, this was one of our first desert trips.

We have always encountered rattlesnakes and we still do. We find them fascinating creatures that have a valuable niche in our earth’s web of life. We’ve always practiced, “If we don’t mess with them, they won’t mess with us.” Like dealing with any creature, you never box it in and you always give it a way out. When a snake doesn’t feel threatened, it shouldn’t have any reason to deal with you. All of our encounters have been this way, except for this one.

In distance in the middle of the road I saw a familiar movement. The Lady had never seen a sidewinder before and the wonderful way they move.
“It’s a sidewinder.” I said as a stopped the truck about 25 yards away. The snake was continuing to slowly move in our direction.
“Look how he moves, that’s wonderful,” she added.
“I’m going to take a picture.” I reached behind, grabbed the camera, and climbed out and moved to the front of the truck.
“Don’t make him mad,” the Lady cautioned.
The sidewinder was still a good distance away, in the middle of the road, with ample escape routes in almost every direction. As soon as I moved toward him, he put it into high gear right at me.
“You made him mad!”
“I have no idea why he should be coming at me like this.”
“Get back in the truck.”
“I think I can get a quick photo.” I did but as soon as I took my eye off the viewfinder I realized this snake was really moving and almost to me.
“Slide into the driver’s seat and back the truck up, now!” The motor was still running. “We don’t want him under the truck.”
The Lady was quick and almost immediately she and the truck were backing down the road with me following, running sideways, keeping an eye on both the truck and the rattler. When we had made enough distance between us and the angry reptile, the Lady turned the truck around and said, “Get in, I don’t want you making any more snakes mad!” She was laughing. “That sidewinder was chasing you and you were moving sideways too!”

In a day or two I'll add a story about what happened the next day. It is a really scary story.

[ski3pin]

April 8, 1988, it was the day we didn’t die. Yes, I remember the date.

This was our first desert trip together. I had run around this area with a buddy in the late 60’s so this trip was chance to look back, remember, tell the Lady stories from when I was a kid, and make new discoveries, the two of us.

I hadn’t been up this canyon with my buddy, but we had looked at it, talked about it. There were stories about a small settlement that dated back into the 1800’s. At one time there had been a road. It had been continuously washed out and destroyed. It was now about an eight mile walk up this canyon, hard to get to, maybe untouched. Who knew what the Lady and I would find? The adventure of it all called to us.

It was a beautiful cool spring day. We saw sheep. The small settlement was tumbling down, old. We were surprised to see a couple of sixties era vehicles and a small newer shed. At one time someone must have tried to make a new start up here but the wild debris flows and floods had stopped them too. It looked like the new inhabitants hadn’t even made it back to retrieve anything.

The main workings were high up the mountain side marked with a trail of rusted cable and remains of tramway towers. After poking around the buildings we decided to make the climb. We followed a steep switch backing road that was washed out at every crossing of the gully. It was cool as we sat outside the main tunnel. No, we don’t take chances going into these mines. We enjoyed our perch in the sun, looking for warmth, and took turns poking around. Just off to the side was a smaller opening with a swinging rusted plate steel door. It was partially open, no lock. I stepped inside.



The entering shaft of light first hit the boxes of dynamite. This caught my interest. As my eyes adjusted, I could see more, much more. This was a serious explosives cache. In the shadows on pallets were stacks of blasting powder. The pile was as tall as I was. There was a big pile of long narrow plastic covered packages like sausages. I figured this was explosives packaged up, ready to slide into drill holes in the rock. There was detonating cord.



This was scary, but not scary enough.

I walked over to the dynamite. One box was lying open. Most of the sticks were in an open clear plastic bag. There were several outside the bag lying on top. There were also about six on the bottom of the box outside the bag. These looked old. There were crystals growing on the outside of the tubes. This looked bad, really bad. I am not knowledgeable about dynamite but I had grown up on a diet of westerns, especially Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti western days. I had heard about dynamite sweating, the nitro coming to the outside, oozing out and forming crystals. At least that’s what all the movies and stories told me. I was not going to touch those. I picked one stick up from the top.

I walked back out into the sun and called to the Lady. “Hey, you’ve got to see this.”
She popped up and came over. We walked together into the cache.
I handed her the stick and said, “Have you ever held a stick of dynamite before?”
“Oh, so this is dynamite?” She really wasn’t that interested and I didn’t get the jump I was expecting.
And then she threw it.

This is still a vivid memory. I can still see it, the stick in slow motion cart wheeling through the air, end over end, on a direct trajectory into that open box of dynamite. It was a direct hit. Nothing happened.

“My god, you don’t throw dynamite! There’s a bunch of unstable sticks in that box. This whole place could have blown! They would have heard the blast in Vegas! Nobody would have found even a little piece of us but they sure would have found the hole!” I unloaded. I was shaking.

With complete calm the Lady said, “I don’t know anything about dynamite and I expect that you would not hand me anything that was not safe.”

The Lady has a knack of getting right to the point, a quality that I have grown to love.

This ranks up near the top of my list of stupid things I’ve done. It was just luck we didn’t die this day.

[chnlisle]

Holy **** Dude!

I've come to the conclusion the we're all living on borrowed time based on our pasts.

[RJones]

[busboy66]

Best quote of the day for sure!

Holy **** Dude!

[busboy66]

These are great stories linked to great adventures. Thanks everyone.
Man, it makes me went to get out there and have some fun myself. (without blowing my ass up)

[ski3pin]

"We're fvkt!!"
My true story of, if not horror then at least serious anxiety during a truck-camping-travel adventure.
I guess it's also kind of a trip report, so bear with my very long story...or not – just look at the pictures.

The year was 1995, early June it was -- June because we had to wait for one of the 3 of us to be done with his community college teaching job for the year. We were headed to remote, little-visited, Smith Creek Canyon on the east side of the Snake Range in extreme-eastern Nevada, about 20 miles north of 50/6, accessed (for the first 25 miles) by a good-quality graded gravel road that takes off from US 50/6 in Nevada then crosses over into Utah for most of its route north, parallel to the NV/UT border.



Taking off the this gravel county road, the Smith Creek road then crosses back into NV to head up Smith Creek Canyon along the creek, the valley walls rising up to limestone cliffs. It was late spring, the valley floor was green, yucca were in bloom.



We were 3 guys in two Toyota/Nissan 4x4 pickups with canopies/caps. Since it was spring, the creek was running pretty heavy, and there were several fords required as the road crossed back and forth. The next-to-the-last stream-crossing wasn't a ford; the stream went through a big culvert -- maybe 20 feet long and 3+ feet diameter, so it was a flat crossing on dirt.
If this was a movie, one of the characters would have said at this crossing, "Man, I sure am glad this culvert is here!" (cue ominous music).

We spent a couple of nights camped at the end of the road, near the edge of a wilderness area. We did a great hike up the canyon, one with many stream-wades as the trail (a former jeep trail at first), constrained by the narrow canyon's steep walls, wound back and forth across the creek. But since it was sunny and warm we didn't mind the wading.
Sunny and warm...so there was a lot of snow melt. In fact, on the second night the creek rose enough that it almost touched the bag of the guy who was sleeping next to it. During that night around the campfire we thought we heard boulders shifting/rolling somewhere nearby downstream, moving under the force of the spring flood. (cue more ominous music)

Our trip out began with this stream ford, Jim leading in his truck, the ford deeper than it had been on the trip in...(more ominous music) :





We went a couple hundred yards further, round the bend to the culvert-crossing...that is -- (cue "Psycho"-shower-scene-like shreak-music)-- where the culvert had been!




That big culvert had been completely washed out, away, downstream! That had been the “boulder” noise we’d heard the night before!

"We're fvkt!!", Jim exclaimed, as we got out of our rigs to gape -- shocked -- at the sight! It was a >4-foot drop with straight-walled sides down to the stream -- no way to ford this former culvert-crossing.
We wandered downstream a bit – found the big culvert where it had been carried almost 50 feet from where it was supposed to be, walked down further and proceeded to try to build a ford in a low-banked spot. But every rock and boulder that we threw into the stream – those small enough that we could lift or even roll – was immediately carried away by the force of the water. The canyon walls came in next to the stream, so there was no way to go very far upstream or down that would have led “out”. No way to drive out without crossing at the former-culvert spot, which our trucks couldn't do. We were indeed “fvkt”!!

So, what to do?!?! We realized that we could walk out to “civilization”…maybe take a bus home… but neither Jim nor I considered abandoning our rigs an acceptable option. (Larry, passenger, didn't have that concern -- lucky him. )

Jim decided that he would ride his mt bike down to the main road, find someone...see what they might suggest, get help somehow. With some old climbing rope we put Jim (with bike) on belay to get across the rushing stream, after that he was on his own as he rode down the canyon. (He later told us that at another crossing downstream he had been knocked off his feet by the water and almost lost the bike!)

A few hours later Jim returned with, as it turned out, the perfect guy that he could have found – a Mr. King who was a deputy sheriff (in Utah’s Millard County) as well as an employee at Great Basin National Park – a guy with the right connections. He surveyed the situation and told us to sit tight where we were overnight, that he’s send some help up the next day. I was still mighty worried that night about what was going to happen with my truck.

Next morning we saw coming up the road on the other side of the creek a big front-end loader with two guys from the Millard Co (UT) road dept., who regularly work on the main gravel road on the Utah side, though we were in Nevada. Their plan was to use the loader to scoop out the banks of the stream where the road crossed to make it a ford.
But before they would do anything they threw across the stream a clipboard with a statement for us to sign absolving them of any responsibility if the USFS got mad about someone doing unauthorized road/stream work in the national forest. While we were surprised and a little concerned by this legal angle, it was a reasonable request – and really, what choice did we have?

So, we signed the waiver, threw it back across the stream and the front-end loader went to work. In literally a few seconds – a minute at most– the loader had carved out a ford. But the water was still too deep and too fast to ford in our light-weight rigs without serious risk of being swept away by the flood. So, using a long chain that I happened to have in my truck, the loader towed us across; We were saved!







The water actually surged clear over the windshield!! Being somewhat clueless about really-deep fords I didn’t think about the possibility of sucking water into my engine while the hood was submerged, so I had the engine still running at this point. But, apparently, no water got sucked in anyway. The two guys with the loader towed us through one more deeply-flooded ford, too.

We were so relieved and very grateful! We offered these Millard Co road workers a case of beer for their trouble, but they declined – either because they were on duty or (we assumed) because they were devout Mormons. So, we relaxed with a beer (or a few) for a while, then headed south towards the UT/NV border and the wonderful/funky Border Inn.
Funny thing: a few miles south on that main gravel road we came upon one of the road crew – the younger of the two, by himself this time. He walked over to us and said, “Do you guys have any herb?" (Hmmm…"no thanks" to beer, but “herb” is OK with his religion/job?…or maybe he was able to ask now because his boss wasn't around). Well, we didn’t have any herb (surprisingly), so we said, “No, sorry, but thanks again”, and we were on our way again.

For several months afterward I had the dread that I’d get an angry/official/legal letter from the USFS about the unauthorized “procedure” that had been done to Smith Creek….but we never did. Two years later I revisited the same spot, and there is still no culvert – just the deep ford cut by the Millard Co Road Dept – to rescue us, a crossing which is actually quite ford-able if not during spring flood.

MarkBC, on our last trip into the Great Basin I told the Lady about your story here. This one really captures the terrain and local folks that you meet out there. It's a good one!