Obvious PSA incoming. Don’t do it. Despite the fact, I have had a little bit of fun getting lost in the wilderness, there is no need to try and replicate it as it is very dangerous and can lead to death, so live vicariously through my experiences that I will share with you.
Once you spend as much time going on adventures as I have and are as obviously stupid when you are around friends as I am, there is a very high possibility that at least one trip included getting a little lost along the way.
Being such, there are a total of eight times where either the trail has completely disappeared from view, leaving me wholly lost, or on the wrong trail and consequently the wrong place, or half lost.
Luckily, I always pack prepared and would’ve been able to survive for at least a whole day of being lost in the woods, but nonetheless, I have been lost several times, making for a couple of stories and some learning opportunities. So, let these couple of stories about getting lost serve a warning and entertaining purpose.
The first escapade was the more dangerous one, as I was all by myself. On a night hike that I went on by myself, already a dim decision, I ended up losing the trail in the darkness. Over on the Monument there is a trail called Old Gordon’s trail, right next to Devil’s Kitchen, and on that particular night I ended up taking this trail.
It is an easy hike and provided no challenge. The only aspect that could be considered difficult is that the trail is mostly on hard, flat rock, meaning there is no natural path for hikers to follow.
As a remedy to this, there is a line of smaller rocks outlining a general direction to follow along trail. In the daytime, it is already fairly easy to lose the line and end up off the main path, but paired with a dying flashlight and a short attention span, it is practically impossible to follow.
Now to give me some credit, I didn’t lose my way once on the way up; however, once I had finished taking pictures of the full moon and was on the way down, I lost it a total of three times. The first time I lost the trail, I hadn’t even realized that I was off of it until I bumped into the side of the rock line like a bird flying right into a window.
After the first departure, I made a mental note to pay more attention to the path… Not even 10 minutes later was I not only off the trail once again, but I had run into a barbed wire fence that I had not seen on the way up, signifying that I definitely wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
The fence then became my guide as I hoped to happen upon the trail and be on my way before whatever shotgun-toting hermit that put that fence up found me. About twenty minutes later, I finally wound up back on the correct path and with the attention span of a goldfish, forgot to follow it and was lost again in under five minutes.
I eventually found my way back to the trail and to my car, making the total way down 50 minutes, when compared to the 20 that I had spent on the way up, there was a little bit of added time in the several deviations.
This taught me that it is significantly harder to see at night and unlike Batman, I can not see in the dark like I wished for from my birthday candles. This was the most recent example of getting lost, but it wasn’t the most dangerous.
The most dangerous was due to insufficient planning and impatient hiking partners. There is a mountain by the name of The Castle, (Google it if you are so inclined to have a better visual), and on a trip with four other dudes and three dudettes, we all got lost and the boys nearly died.
The goal was to get to the top of the mountain for that perfect Instagram post, but getting there proved to be harder than we had anticipated. I was hanging back with the three girls, because I am a stud and total lady-killer, not because I wanted even groups or anything, and soon the four other boys had left us in the dust.
When we reached the end of the trail, they were nowhere to be seen, the only possible way up that we could see was through a tiny crevasse that required climbing to safely scale. We had none, so naturally I did it without it.
The girls didn’t have enough upper body strength to climb up, so I went solo. This path was made for mountain goats, so in much the same fashion I was leaping between rocks and wedging myself between more crevasses until I made it to the top and found the deserters. Going down was easy for the two dumbest of the bunch: myself and my friend Kyle, while the others had to use ropes to get down due to a fear of falling to their doom.
Kyle and I eventually met up with the girls at the bottom, and apparently some rock climbers had seen us hooligan males without the proper attire and told the girls to have 911 on speed dial because one of us would get broken in some capacity.
Luckily no one did and the five of us began our descent, leaving the other three slowpokes to catch up later. Unfortunately, we lost the trail on the way down and had to follow the river that we knew eventually met up with the waterfall that met the trail.
Hopping over twigs, climbing over rocks, and tight rope walking across fallen trees crossing the river took another 30 minutes longer than going up. We even managed to meet up with the rest of the group during the path finding since they had gotten lost too.
We all eventually made it back to the car and tiredly returned home, all severely tired. This experience taught me the importance of planning, because without it, 127 hours is a much to real possibility.
Despite being lost, there were some fantastic takeaways and lessons that I received from doing so. Both times I managed to keep a clear and level head, probably since there isn’t much going on up there most of the time, which is the most important part to finding safety in these types of situations.
It was fun and challenging for me to experience offering a great slice of life to store in my repertoire and I enjoyed them both overall. With that being said, I wouldn’t do it again if presented the option. While stories are fun to tell, I would much rather be able to tell them myself.
