Most Epic Adventure of 2010?

[cliftongifford]

ouch!

[Foster]

I've got one. It's about getting lost.

Back in October my buddy and I were climbing Left Flank on a Saturday afternoon. We got our pitches in, then decided to start bouldering. Odd, yes, I know, but my buddy is an avid boulderer and brings his crashpad to the Red every trip. So we're screwing around and he wants to go over to Military and find some boulder. He claims that a few years ago he'd walked with some friends past Table of Colors, following the cliff line, and eventually ended up on the far side of Military, claiming we'd pop out near Another Doug Reed Route etc. I'd never been further than Nagypapa so I believed him that maybe the two crags actually horse-shoe'd together.

He forewarns me that this hike will be strenuous, but that it'd be good for us to "get our cardio on." So we strike out along the cliff line, circa 6PM, about an hour before dark. The hike lives up to his claim, and we're basically bushwhacking along this cliff line, tackling a trail-less traverse through intense undergrowth and dozens of downed trees, with one extremely epic downclimb that looked about V5 with slopey pinches covered in sand (I took the extra 5 minutes to bushwack down and around this one!)

So we've committed to this hike for about an hour, but we start to wear down, especially me. The hike is strenuous, we'd already climbed all day, we're hungry, it's gotten dark, and we're nowhere near anything that looks like Military. We reach a point where we're basically roadblocked by more blown-down trees, and I start to freak. From my buddy's description, I was still under the wrong impression that Left Flank horse-shoe'd into Military, but doubting we would ever get there, I panic and decide it's time to abandon ship. So I convince him that we should just descend from the cliff line, find the stream that flows between Mil and LF, and follow it out to the parking lot.

Prior to this point, everything was my buddy's fault, but the choice to abandon the cliff line (he argued we should just turn back) becomes my share of the blame. I'm starting to feel like I'm in an episode of the Discovery Channel, so in a panic I book it down the hill off the cliff line. Miraculously, we find the stream within 5 minutes of leaving the cliff, but unfortunately it ended up being the wrong stream. But not knowing this yet, we were overjoyed, because not only did we find this stream in the dark, it had white-blazes along it marking a Forest Service trail. A trail! We thought we were saved. We argued over which way to follow it, tried both ways, and eventually settled in for a good three or four miles of trudging in the direction we hoped would lead us to the parking lot.

Along this section of the hike, now affectionately known as the Survival Hike of 2010, spirits began to wane. I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to slip and break something, being without a headlamp in the dark on an unfamiliar trail. The trail started going uphill, and it didn't take us long to realize this was not the stream that flows past Mil/LF. We still took some solace in being on a marked trail and continued to follow it. However, some of the backpack trails go for dozens of miles, so we weren't that psyched about our predicament.

We eventually come upon a huge set of wooden stairs, which I took as a great sign since I didn't think the Forest Service would haul in that much lumber without a road nearby. And that was correct, once we got to the top of the stairs we were greeted with a gravel road.

Having found the gravel road, sometime around 9PM at this point, we again thought we were saved. But after hiking along this road for a mile or two, we began to reassess that feeling of false security. A car finally came upon us, but blazed past, apparently two dirty climbers (one of whom was carrying an enormous bouldering pad) weren't worth stopping for. A second car managed to stop, but only long enough to tell us we'd walked those miles in the wrong direction, and that the main road was the other way...

Sometime close to 10PM, after we'd backtracked the miles on the gravel road, and were headed to the main road and hopefully the parking lot, an entourage of two Forest Service SUV's stops and scopes us out. Two ranger-types hop out and stare us down, the one that talked had a thick Kentuck accent. They were especially interested in the bouldering pad, wondering if it was instead a clever vessel for transporting drugs. Little did they know, the drugs were in my cragpack, there was nothing but THC-less foam in the crashpad!

We told them our story about our day at Left Flank and our wise decision to undertake a sketchy hike at sundown. We explain that we've hiked what felt like 10 miles to get to this point, and that our car was at the Military parking lot. The ranger relays the news that the parking lot is about another 10 miles in the other direction, which lands a pretty disheartening blow to our 'walk back to the car' plan.

We plead with them to help us, and they were actually pretty reluctant, but eventually agreed to take one of us back to our car while the other one waited. My pal looked less suspicious, so I remained behind. I spent the next half-hour curled in the fetal position on the bouldering pad, shivering from evaporating sweat, and eating whatever was left of our crag snacks. I stared at the stars and contemplated what a bunch of spoiled pussies we are nowadays, with modern technology and heated homes and such, thinking about how our ancestors had to contend with the raw power of nature everyday, and nature is a cruel bitch sometimes!

So it ended up that we'd hiked to Chimney Rock, which is some overlook way up over the Nada Tunnel and way the hell away from Military. When we drove back into Slade, we passed the Subway on our left, which is kinda ridiculous given that we started on the other side of the Shell station that morning. We get back to Miguel's at like 11pm or something, no pizza, ate some random cans of soup that my buddy had in his trunk, and passed out. This was the 1st day of what ended up being a two week trip for me, and my nerves were pretty traumatized. I climbed like shit the next 2 days until I recovered from Survival Hike, but after that ordeal, every approach trail felt like nothing, and I wasn't even blinking an eye about hiking the rest of the trip. So, in some sense, I did get my "cardio on" but at the expense of feeling like I was gonna die in the dark for several hours. Not exactly the best trade-off, but definitely an 'adventure' I'll remember for some time.

[milspecmark]

That is a good story. The forrest service officers are mostly dick heads. I can't believe they only would give 1 of you a ride. I have had bad run ins with them 2 times and they are real ass holes.

[climb2core]

All in good fun

Ok, maybe the Red doesn't lend itself well to epic adventure stories.... Multi and pitch are mutually exclusive terms, so hard to get into trouble there. Trails are very well defined and most have signs to the crags. Weather is pretty predictable and you can climb through most of it... So, with things so well controlled it does tend to leave the more epic adventures in the Red to the Gumbies... Pigsteak, I concur with you- at least the Red.

[toad857]

That is a good story. The forrest service officers are mostly dick heads. I can't believe they only would give 1 of you a ride. I have had bad run ins with them 2 times and they are real ass holes.

agreed. daniel boone cops are out to get you, certainly not help you. never had a positive experience with one in all these years

[cliftongifford]

they want that money...

[rjackson]

real climbers don't have adventures...only gumbies.

Guess it depends on how you look at it... Tales of hand-sized arachnids, hiding bats, rat-chewed and ice-cloaked ropes, unidentified snakes, a suicidal dog, rain-forrest weather first ascents, a crag full of self-discovery, a little thievery, varied injuries, a ton of friendship and some clandestine wanderings to name but a few. And yes, most of these included the aforementioned Pigsteak.

[bcombs]

You two need to get a room.

[jobryan]

Pigsteak should tell the ice-cloaked rope story:)

[krampus]

I did have one scare when I thought I came across a bear. I was out by myself walking my dog when I hear this really low pitched guttural growling roar from around the bend, my dog did not think twice and high tailed it out of there. Naturally though, the right thing for me to do was to pull out my iphone to get a few snapshots to make a good story. So I crept toward the noise and as I got closer it got more intense but when I jumped around the corner to catch the bear it turned out just to be anticlimbr grudge fucking a hornets nest. I am not sure who it was more embarrassing for me or him. Actually it must have been me because he just waived and continued.