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Inner City
Trad climber
East Bay
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Oct 28, 2016 - 08:13am PT
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This is an interesting thread. Most climbers probably don't think of hiking as that risky of a pursuit. The solo aspect obviously moves the risk needle significantly.
I've done a bit of solo stuff and I've not really ever had a way to get in touch with anyone in an emergency. I have felt a bit like DMT seems to on this.
Now that I have three kids of modest ages, I do feel a little different. I cannot afford to fall into a talus hole at this time of life.
It seems like being out on a solo adventure is such a meaningful way to interact with the outdoors that people are always going to do it.
SAR folks are awesome!
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Beatrix Kiddo
Mountain climber
ColoRADo
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Oct 28, 2016 - 09:54am PT
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I've done maybe 50 of Colorado's peaks above treeline solo and have literally hiked/run thousands of miles in the hills alone. My biggest fears are always other people but I figure if anyone messes with me, I can likely out run them. Plus, sometimes I'm in areas where few people visit.
I've started leaving a note on my car stating my objective and when I'm expected back. I also usually have a "safety" that I tell the same info to. I pay attention to my surroundings, weather, food and water, how I feel, etc...
I can't seem to find consistent partners to get out with. That's not going to keep me from going tho. Sometimes I'm out there longing for company but much of that time, I'm basking in the vastness and the silence that you can only tap into while being alone in nature. I highly recommend it.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 28, 2016 - 10:24am PT
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^^^^^ And then there was the case of the couple who went for a hike in northern Washington.
They got back to their car to find it broken into. Nothing was really taken except, it later turned
out, the car registration. The scumbags drove to their home in Olympia and knew they had
days to ransack the place. DON'T LEAVE YER REGISTRATION IN THE VEHICLE!
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Oct 28, 2016 - 10:25am PT
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We play our cards the way we see fit. If this fits you, go for it!
If you survive, you can come back and regale us with tales of your extraordinary, insane strength of mind, if that's the way you roll. Or better yet, you seem like the type who's got the strength of mind to overcome our brain's narcissism, and tune into your own sense of humility out there on your own :-)
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Beatrix Kiddo
Mountain climber
ColoRADo
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Oct 28, 2016 - 10:28am PT
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Hey Dingus! Yeah, I've never thought of that! I try to always let someone know so moving forward, I may skip the step of leaving the note on my car. You may have just saved me from some smashed windows. :-)
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John M
climber
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Oct 28, 2016 - 10:43am PT
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Easier to just put up a sign saying that this area is under surveillance by cameras. Get an official looking sign made up and take it with you. That should freak the thieves out.
If you still want to leave a note in the car, then I suggest leaving it someplace like under the mat. Thieves are unlikely to search the car for something like that. But the police most likely will.
Hide registration someplace other then glovebox. For those thieves looking for your address.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Oct 28, 2016 - 10:54am PT
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Also, at trailheads near major highways and urban areas? My biggest solo hike fear is the final 200-feet to my car in the parking lot, after dark. I mean, you don't know what's waiting for you there, right? I live in LA (and subsequently hike there alot) and have never once had that concern. Did something happen once that gave you the willies? I'm far more concerned when I go hiking in the Southern Sierra and all the folks wandering around with guns.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 28, 2016 - 11:00am PT
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I've started leaving a note on my car stating my objective and when I'm expected back...
want to leave a note in the car, then I suggest leaving it someplace
not readable from outside your locked car.
Yes, I do this frequently.
Definitely do NOT leave a note visible to outsiders. This is
practically an open invitation... to the bad hombres.
Another place to be esp circumspect are parking areas of Emerald Bay.
Go figure, eh? Such a pretty place.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Oct 28, 2016 - 11:23am PT
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Hunters and rednecks with guns don't bother me much. That's been based on my observations of how careless some of these guys are with their firearms. I've hiked out of trails to see guys shooting at a low (barely a bump) hillside where, just over the rise, a hiking trail follows the direction in which these knuckleheads were shooting. Who goes shooting at a popular trailhead? I'm much more worried about the guns I can see (and hear!) than the ones I can't.
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Oct 28, 2016 - 11:25am PT
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After hiking solo in the Angeles Forest I came back to find my car broken into and about $500 worth of gear stolen from the trunk.
I stopped leaving valuables in my vehicles after that.
This was back in '79 or so.
I was armed at the time (legal back then) and am glad to this day that I did not catch the thieves in the act.
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Gorgeous George
Trad climber
Los Angeles, California
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Oct 28, 2016 - 11:30am PT
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I seem to remember from somewhere that people that don't go out alone feel that way because of the company they keep.
Part of the adventure is facing our inner fears. Those that succeed without injury have planned accordingly.
A diver's motto comes to mind: "Always plan your dive, and dive your plan."
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Oct 31, 2016 - 03:08pm PT
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My wife just got back from 5 days solo in the Golden Trout Wilderness in the Southern Sierra's.
Lot's of beautiful photos, a few bruises and a great attitude returned with her.
Solo hiking is a treasure for those not afraid to hunt.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Oct 31, 2016 - 04:46pm PT
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Use to be in the 80's and 90's Vivian Creek at San Gorgonio was notorious for break in at the trailhead.
I stopped going there when one day I was hiking down from Halfway Creek and some bozos were firing a lot of rounds down at Vivian Creek. I mean a LOT of rounds. I waited around up high for a few hours until it seemed they ran out of ammo. Blew my whistle every few minutes as I headed down, when I got to Vivian there was no one there. I remember once hanging around Vivian and seeing a nice herd of mountain goats coming down to the creek. Hope these bozos did not shoot them.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 31, 2016 - 07:18pm PT
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Lots of interesting replies here.
I've done quite a bit of solo hiking/exploring as a kid growing up in a rural area, some night solo scrambling in the wonderland of rocks in Jtree, and even some solo night hikes where I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. But somehow that has always been in a separate mental category from "going on a backpacking trip alone." I never looked favorably on that.
Maybe now, because it's the first time in my life where it might come up more often as a solution to a problem (finding a partner overlapping schedule on the rare weekends that I have available, sometimes discovered at the last minute), that I'm thinking about it more.
Hiking itself doesn't seem to be the issue. Seems more like regulating my impulses to go explore that interesting looking outcropping over there <looks in any direction>....
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oct 31, 2016 - 10:56pm PT
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Hiking itself doesn't seem to be the issue. Seems more like regulating my impulses to go explore that interesting looking outcropping over there <looks in any direction>....
It certainly can be. Generally, a few die on Whitney each year (main trail), which generally has so many hikers you can't spit without hitting somebody.
Altitude of course, is the reason.
So, I think that we need to defer to the Boy Scouts on this issue more than anything: be prepared.
Add that the ancient admonition of the Temple of Delphi: Know Thyself.
Learn appropriate lightweight technique, and reduce the possibility of injury from overpacking.
Get certified in Wilderness First Aid, at least. The life you save may be your own.
I have to say that if you are going off the major beaten paths, one of the PLB-type seems reasonable.
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chainsaw
Trad climber
CA
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My Dad started taking me flyfishing when I was four. By the time I was eight, we would split up and rendezvous at dark. I just got used to fishing alone and being miles from him and miles from the car. Eventually I developed a sense of security alone in the woods. The world is the world. Its not generally hostile. The back country becomes your backyard when you hike it enough. Ive been benighted in shorts and shortsleves with naught but a flyrod. Ive run out of water and drank puddles. Ive burried myself in pineneedles and dirt under a fallen tree to keep from freezing. It can get hairy. Ive crawled on my belly through brush in the dark. I was stuck in slash and brush so deep on one occasion that I ditched my pack because I couldnt move with it strapped on and it was too steep to give up a hand to carry it. I fell in a deep snow well next to a boulder with snowshoes one time and got stuck. Had to climb back down in to retrieve a shoe after nearly pannicking while climbing out. It was too slick to move and I had slid down and under the boulder. Ive been surrounded by coyotes who wanted to punk me and been tracked by hungry bears. Had lotsa solo encounters with rattlesnakes....been washed downstream. I never ever wear waders anymore!
But truthfully, the most scared Ive ever been in the wilderness was when I encountered other solo hikers. Ive run across some sick f*#kers out there. Once I was with a friend on a hike out of Waltons Grizzly Lodge summer camp near Portola, Plumas National Forest, when we encountered a totally sketchy tweaker, who had been on a rampage in the woods for who knows how long. We first heard what we thought was a bear growling and snarling. We saw the brush shaking as this thing barrelled down the hill at us. It was scrapping on all fours and thrashing the vegetation as it raged and snarled like it was going to maul us. When the rabid monster was upon us, it stood up and we saw that it was a man all bloody and scratched up. He was filthy and his tattered clothes were ragged and torn. This caveman looked like hed been scrapping through the brush and dirt for a week. And he had a big old scythe! Like were talking a grim reaper pick axe type thing.... He stood up when he realized we saw him, apparently unaware that we were even there during his rampage, pretending to be a wild animal. When he saw us, he stood up and spoke: "hey how's it goin?" as if nothing was out of the ordinary, scythe in hand, looking like death incarnate. His eyes were dilated and crazy like they were going to pop out of his head.
Having hiked there to meet a group of thirty six year olds on an overnight (cubs and polars we called the little guys) we politely disengaged the Charlie Manson looking fellow and found our group. We told the other leaders what was happening and sure enough, "Axe-man" as he became known in Waltons lore, wandered into our camp. The directors asked him politely to leave and he got angry and left. Hours later about 11pm, councilor Billy Butt Chafe was telling the polars and cubs a scary story about "Stump Man" who impaled a child on a sharp limb of a treestump (previous Waltons lore.) It was one of those camp stories that had been around for years. We used stories like that to keep kids in their bunks from wandering off at night. When Billy got to the climax of the story, one of the kids pointed off in the darkness and said "Thats him!" I kid you not, the axe man had snuck back into our camp, his gruesome, greasy features glowing in the firelight as he grinned psychotically holding the scyth above his head.
Immediately, we councilors went into action. Two of us calmed the kids down, most of whom were screaming and wiggling frantically in their sleeping bags. Three coucilors surrounded the axe man and told him to leave. I lied to the kids, telling them that the guy was part of the story and that we had planned it to scrare them, while the other councilors escorted the guy away. After he left we had a meeting to discuss what to do next. After about an hour of keeping watch, it was now about midnight. Thats when we heard the sound of a heavy metal object hitting an old metal shack wed passed on the way in. The axe man was demolishing the shack about a half mile away with his scythe. Then the gunshots were heard. We could hear him unloading a volly of rounds from a handgun into the shack. At this point we had a crisis that had to be managed. I made up another lie. I told the kids that the camp director had called us on the radio, warning that a rainstorm was coming and that we needed to hike back to the dorms, some 2.5 miles away.
We organized the kids into their groups and gave them numbers. Hiking back along the trail we had the kids do "sound off" to keep them together and accounted for as we marched the thirty six year olds back to Waltons in the pitch black. As I was not assigned a group at the time, I was designated straggler patrol, taking up the rear. We had to march past the shack on our way and saw that it was destroyed. I remember recalling friday the thirteenth type summercamp horror movies. We were now officially in one. Adding to the mood, my buddy played Pink Floyd Ummagumma on the boom box as we followed the group about forty yards behind, It was the most surreal experience of my life up to that point. Because flashlights were needed for the kids, we tiptoed along in the void of darkness, praying that the axeman would remain hidden. Fotunately, we made it back to Waltons about 2am and summoned the sherriff after putting the kids to bed. We councilors stayed up the rest of the night reveling in the impossible fortunate outcome that we made it out alive. Law enforcement searched the area we were camping to no avail and found only shell casings. That was thirty years ago, and I presume that "Axeman" has passed away. But you never know. Perhaps hes still out there. "Hey Billy, there he is now!!"
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 1, 2016 - 10:41am PT
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Holy Moly chainsaw, that would be some serious anxiety being responsible for a bunch of little kids in a situation like that.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
sawatch choss
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Just go do it Nutjob, and yeah, "regulating my impulses to go explore that interesting looking outcropping over there " is a good practice.
Worst solo-hiking moment I can currently recall [Grand Gulch, UT, solo, 10 days]:
Trying to get up to an alcove that may or may not have held a ruin, wearing Tevas. Took a 30' skidder down a slab and ripped off some toenails; forced to finish multiday hike with resultant pain/damage. NBD.
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Reeotch
climber
4 Corners Area
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Does taking your pooch count.
Could be a liability.
I took Jack down in to Fish & Owl canyons once. It was cold, the creek was frozen over in the AM. I'm hiking along, thinking, "I wonder where Jack went". I start calling him, then I hear this crashing sound coming from the direction of the creek. I got to the bank just in time to see my beloved dog's head slip beneath the surface in a hole in the ice, directly in the middle of the creek. I just reacted - and jumped in after him! It was waist deep, I still had my pack on. I lifted Jack out of the icy water, then myself.
I found a sunny spot for a while, but then the sun started sinking, so I did about 3 hours of fast hiking, generating enough body heat to dry my clothes. Luckily, my sleeping bag stayed dry.
On second thought I feel safer without the pooch . . .
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