Backpacking trip mishap from this summer
Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:13 pm
It's nighttime, with a near-full moon. You have 50+ years of backpacking experience, and an excellent sense of direction. For about the ten-thousandth time in your Sierra backpacking career, you plunge out your tent door for a quick pee.
Think nothing can happen? Read on for my friend Anne's story. This could be any of us.
{Posting on Anne's behalf - she does not have an HST handle.}
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Whistleblowing: a humble lesson in the High Sierras
Anne W. Emerick
July 2016
I hitched up my soft warm tights, after relieving myself on this vast granite slab on an eerie July moonlit night. Bringing TP was too much bother. Fresh undies awaited in the tent, just steps away.
I turned toward the tent. Or what I thought was toward the tent.
Immediately I noticed unfamiliar patches of snow. Ok, I reasoned. No problem. I must have headed the wrong way.
I turned around and headed north, away from Mt. Conness, which grandly sits as a white queen on the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. Although the moon was almost full, the eastern sky was filled with clouds. The shrouded moonlight cast long, weird shadows from a jumble of small boulders. I did not see the tent.
Darn! I was definitely disoriented.
Ok. Not to worry. After all, just the previous evening I had peed three times without any problem. I had an excellent sense of direction and plenty of off-trail orienteering experience so surely the situation would quickly be resolved.
What I needed was a landmark. The very large ones were patently obvious: North Peak and Mt. Conness to the south, the pass to McCabe lake to the west, and the three lakes below. But in this granite microcosm, orientation to all this grandeur provided no help.
I needed a SMALL familiar landmark! The three dwarfed trees near our cooking area, the hefty boulder that my tentmates and I called Kitchen Rock, or the large slab by the tent - any of these would do.
No such luck.
I only saw a patchwork of mushy ground, interspersed with granite rocks and small boulders and even more unfamiliar patches of snow which was leaking into my airplane slippers. It didn’t help that I had left my flashlight back in the tent.
“****!”, I thought. Panic arose. By now, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was emphatically LOST.
A sense of humiliation burst in on the heels of panic. Intense, overwhelming shame.
"This should NOT be happening!" my psyche screamed. I had fifty-five years of hiking and backpacking experience behind me. I had climbed many peaks in the Sierras, as well as volcanoes in Mexico and mountains in Nepal. OK, I was sixty-nine, but my long history in the outdoors made this predicament unthinkable.
Yet here I was. Lost.
How could I justify waking up my friends? I thought of myself as an independent, capable being. It felt like a weakness to ask for help.
And so I searched some more. I wandered around, seeing only the aesthetically appealing film noir gray, black, and white blobs. I saw an excess of rocks, but Kitchen Rock was not among them. I looked at my watch. It was now one-fifteen a.m.
I began to weigh the ratio of humiliation to my actual need for help. After another 10 minutes I gave up.
Our leader, Lisa, had made it clear that everyone should carry a whistle. I had arrogantly defied this instruction, because I KNEW how to whistle. On many occasions, friends had expressed shock that I could send forth such an ear-splitting blast, simply by blowing across my fingers. And so I had neglected Lisa's advice.
Now it was time for a real life test of my whistling skill. Three short blasts equal an emergency, Lisa had instructed. And so I blew. Three short blasts.
There was no response. I tried again.
I tried again and again. All I heard in response was the occasional roar of the wind.
Glancing at the sky I saw a constellation that I recognized. But I was so frazzled that I could not recall, later, which one it was.
My panic escalated. I whistled again, and then began to yell.
“This is Anne!” I shouted. “I need help!” And then I found myself simply calling, “Help! Help!”
After several more rounds of shouting, to my immense relief, I saw two lights below. I knew that these lights did not come from our camp, as they were too near the lake. But what the hell, someone heard and understood my distress.
Hoorah!! RELIEF!! Yeah! I was safe at last.
Gratefully I headed toward the lights. When I was about fifty feet from their tents, two young men walked toward me and beamed their lights on Kitchen Rock, up above.
"Okay,” I told them. “Thanks so much! Now I know where I am.”
However, Kitchen Rock was very near a cliff. No way was I going to climb up there directly to Kitchen Rock in my thin slippers. I would not have gone up that way in the full light of day. I resolved to tack. I would go over gradually to the right, gaining altitude, and then tack back to the left. The tents and Kitchen Rock would be there.
Wrong!
Surely I had tacked, up to the right and then to the left. But I did not see or find, one or the other. I bumbled around, as before, and I was just as lost as ever!
"Oh no!" my psyche yelled. My heart raced, and my palms were sweaty.
I had already wakened complete strangers. Now did I have to disturb them yet again? My chagrin kept me silent, as I continued to search.
I recalled that earlier in the day I had noticed a slight ridge above our campsite. I speculated that if I climbed up there, I might be able to see Kitchen Rock or our tents. I climbed up and looked down at Steelhead Lake, slightly to the north. I tried to remember the exact placement of our camp relative to Steelhead Lake and the two smaller lakes to the south.
I was sure my orientation to the lakes was correct. However, I could not decipher the vast maze of gray, rocky blobs below me.
My shame consumed me, and flashes of anger at myself boiled up in the emotional brew as well. Hell, I had once climbed to the summit of 12,649-foot Mt. Conness with my first lover. Admittedly that was years ago. But how dare I get myself into this ridiculous situation?
Then a voice of reason broke through. “I’m lucky,” I reminded myself. Even though I didn’t have a jacket, I could conceivably stay out until dawn, four hours away. As soon as I had more light, it would be easy to find my way back. Strong puffs of wind surged from the south and east. I was extremely grateful that the air was so warm.
I continued to creep along the ridge but suddenly, for the first time since leaving the tent I halted. My feet were rooted to the ground as my mind imploded with a maelstrom of emotions. I didn't know what action to take. The stars shone with a cold brilliance.
In that standstill, I gradually came to understand that although my life was not in danger, I really did need help. My friends would gladly come to my rescue, if only they knew I needed them. It was foolish for me to remain silent. Even stupid.
Finally, I allowed myself to start a second volley of whistling. Three times per round.
This time I followed most of the whistling rounds with yells for help. "Lisa! Megan!" I cried out again and again.
There was no response.
Was I actually going to spend the rest of the night on this mound of granite, after all? I began to despair.
Finally, after more rounds of whistling and yelling, I saw lights from the area of our tents below. What a huge, welcome, gigantic and blessed relief!!
Like an airplane about to land, the beams guided me towards Kitchen rock and my tent. I heard Cecillia greet me.
At last I climbed into my welcoming warm sleeping bag, not quite believing that my ordeal was over.
I was physically safe, but I still felt suffused with mortification. Perhaps the entire incident, with both volleys of whistling, had lasted 40 minutes? Perhaps longer.
Immediate Aftermath
Reluctant to repeat the episode, I allowed myself only a bit of water, to slack off my raging thirst. I took off my soaking slippers and socks. When I lay down, I knew it would be hard to get back to sleep.
For a few minutes I yacked with my tentmate, Megan, who had largely been unaware of what was going on because she slept with earplugs. The nylon tent had roared in the wind making the earplugs necessary. Ten minutes after I tucked myself into my bag, my body erupted.
I was not cold, but my upper body started trembling uncontrollably. I kept shaking and quivering. This lasted for about ten minutes, at which point it was the turn of my lower body to start the same process. I couldn’t stop the waves of shaking.
Later Paulette suggested that this was the aftermath of my body having been flooded with hormones. Indeed! I had suffered acute stress and my reptilian brain had consequently prompted my adrenal glands to release a surge of adrenaline--preparing me for a fight or flight. The aftermath of such a surge, was "the shakes". The experience reminded me of transitioning during childbirth.
While I was lost my mind had been swamped with reproach. Yes, I had been afraid out there but as Cecillia said, "You were 'on task'". I was so busy trying to find a solution that I couldn’t allow my mind to realize how terrifying the situation really was. But my body did an excellent job of catching up.
And then it was my mind’s turn to catch up. It felt as though I was too afraid to fall asleep. The only time I felt myself actually slip toward unconsciousness, my psyche shook me awake, yelling, "You are DROWNING! Emergency! Wake up!" And I bolted fully awake.
In all, it was a thoroughly humbling experience! Now that I'm safely back home, I feel immense gratitude. I am grateful to the young men who tried to help me. I am thankful for my friends, who guided me in. I still feel some embarrassment but thankfulness prevails.
Wider Perspective
As I looked back, two predominant questions gnawed at me. I wondered how many others get lost while hiking or backpacking? And I wondered what learning lessons I could carry away from the experience.
According to a government database (http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg534/SARfac ... 064-16.pdf), about six to eight hundred people in the United States get lost each year and don’t survive to tell the tale.
It is more difficult to uncover reliable statistics on hikers who get lost and then are found again. From an internet search, I located a statistician, Robert Koestler, who oversees a worldwide SAR--Search and Rescue-database. An extremely crude estimate is that between 10,000 and 100,000 U.S. hikers and climbers were lost and then found in 2013. The number is so imprecise because it is an extrapolation based on partial data.
The typical lost, then found, hiker is male, between 20 and 50, and hiking solo. Although I am an outlier for this profile, I am not exempt due to the survival advice I had patently ignored.
Lisa, our fearless leader, had wisely advised that we each carry the "10 essentials." I’ve since reviewed multiple "10 essentials”, or even "13" or “14" essentials lists on the internet, and I am appalled to report that most neglect to include an emergency notification device, namely a whistle. Not even an eighteen-minute video, deigned to include a whistle on its list--though perhaps it was amidst the pocket commercial emergency kit, mentioned at the very end.
But what use is carrying a whistle if it is not with you? As a friend said, "I have a whistle attached to my knife, but do I take my knife out with me when I go to pee?"
Although yelling can reach 110 decibels per shriek, one’s vocal chords quickly give out. Whereas a whistle can keep going and going and can reach over 120 decibels. This brings up the topic of whistle attributes. Several whistles claim to be the “loudest”. Larger whistles require considerable lung power to reach the maximum volume. Also some whistles have more than one pitch—lower tones tend to carry farther, a welcome attribute when there is background noise created by wind, trees and water. Whistling with one's fingers, as I found out all too well, does not have much carrying power. All this is to say, of the three, voice, fingers or whistle, the latter triumphs.
So we've floated into the learning lesson area.
When I’m off on a hike, I now carry a whistle on a lanyard--connected at all times to my body! My wonderful friends have given me a very strong beamed LED flashlight to use when away from the tent at night.
Here is the lesson for groups of hikers: DO wake up and get up, and shine a light, at the first call of distress. And if you’re lost, let your friends find you because you carry a whistle!
By far the hardest lesson of all for me is to look at my own shame. It is still a struggle for me to examine my old view of independence, which surely is riddled with falsehoods. I am coming to realize that it is wise to ask for help immediately in an emergency. Every day, in the aging process, there is an opportunity to learn more of this lesson. Asking for help is not a weakness--easy to say, and yet extremely difficult to do. How to be part of the group, and receive graciously, when I've trained myself in my younger years, to stand alone? I'll be working on that.
Perhaps Morrie, as in the physically disabled man in "Tuesdays with Morrie" should rise as a far larger influence in my life and the lives of all of us.
As many have said before, “It takes a village”.
Think nothing can happen? Read on for my friend Anne's story. This could be any of us.
{Posting on Anne's behalf - she does not have an HST handle.}
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Whistleblowing: a humble lesson in the High Sierras
Anne W. Emerick
July 2016
I hitched up my soft warm tights, after relieving myself on this vast granite slab on an eerie July moonlit night. Bringing TP was too much bother. Fresh undies awaited in the tent, just steps away.
I turned toward the tent. Or what I thought was toward the tent.
Immediately I noticed unfamiliar patches of snow. Ok, I reasoned. No problem. I must have headed the wrong way.
I turned around and headed north, away from Mt. Conness, which grandly sits as a white queen on the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. Although the moon was almost full, the eastern sky was filled with clouds. The shrouded moonlight cast long, weird shadows from a jumble of small boulders. I did not see the tent.
Darn! I was definitely disoriented.
Ok. Not to worry. After all, just the previous evening I had peed three times without any problem. I had an excellent sense of direction and plenty of off-trail orienteering experience so surely the situation would quickly be resolved.
What I needed was a landmark. The very large ones were patently obvious: North Peak and Mt. Conness to the south, the pass to McCabe lake to the west, and the three lakes below. But in this granite microcosm, orientation to all this grandeur provided no help.
I needed a SMALL familiar landmark! The three dwarfed trees near our cooking area, the hefty boulder that my tentmates and I called Kitchen Rock, or the large slab by the tent - any of these would do.
No such luck.
I only saw a patchwork of mushy ground, interspersed with granite rocks and small boulders and even more unfamiliar patches of snow which was leaking into my airplane slippers. It didn’t help that I had left my flashlight back in the tent.
“****!”, I thought. Panic arose. By now, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was emphatically LOST.
A sense of humiliation burst in on the heels of panic. Intense, overwhelming shame.
"This should NOT be happening!" my psyche screamed. I had fifty-five years of hiking and backpacking experience behind me. I had climbed many peaks in the Sierras, as well as volcanoes in Mexico and mountains in Nepal. OK, I was sixty-nine, but my long history in the outdoors made this predicament unthinkable.
Yet here I was. Lost.
How could I justify waking up my friends? I thought of myself as an independent, capable being. It felt like a weakness to ask for help.
And so I searched some more. I wandered around, seeing only the aesthetically appealing film noir gray, black, and white blobs. I saw an excess of rocks, but Kitchen Rock was not among them. I looked at my watch. It was now one-fifteen a.m.
I began to weigh the ratio of humiliation to my actual need for help. After another 10 minutes I gave up.
Our leader, Lisa, had made it clear that everyone should carry a whistle. I had arrogantly defied this instruction, because I KNEW how to whistle. On many occasions, friends had expressed shock that I could send forth such an ear-splitting blast, simply by blowing across my fingers. And so I had neglected Lisa's advice.
Now it was time for a real life test of my whistling skill. Three short blasts equal an emergency, Lisa had instructed. And so I blew. Three short blasts.
There was no response. I tried again.
I tried again and again. All I heard in response was the occasional roar of the wind.
Glancing at the sky I saw a constellation that I recognized. But I was so frazzled that I could not recall, later, which one it was.
My panic escalated. I whistled again, and then began to yell.
“This is Anne!” I shouted. “I need help!” And then I found myself simply calling, “Help! Help!”
After several more rounds of shouting, to my immense relief, I saw two lights below. I knew that these lights did not come from our camp, as they were too near the lake. But what the hell, someone heard and understood my distress.
Hoorah!! RELIEF!! Yeah! I was safe at last.
Gratefully I headed toward the lights. When I was about fifty feet from their tents, two young men walked toward me and beamed their lights on Kitchen Rock, up above.
"Okay,” I told them. “Thanks so much! Now I know where I am.”
However, Kitchen Rock was very near a cliff. No way was I going to climb up there directly to Kitchen Rock in my thin slippers. I would not have gone up that way in the full light of day. I resolved to tack. I would go over gradually to the right, gaining altitude, and then tack back to the left. The tents and Kitchen Rock would be there.
Wrong!
Surely I had tacked, up to the right and then to the left. But I did not see or find, one or the other. I bumbled around, as before, and I was just as lost as ever!
"Oh no!" my psyche yelled. My heart raced, and my palms were sweaty.
I had already wakened complete strangers. Now did I have to disturb them yet again? My chagrin kept me silent, as I continued to search.
I recalled that earlier in the day I had noticed a slight ridge above our campsite. I speculated that if I climbed up there, I might be able to see Kitchen Rock or our tents. I climbed up and looked down at Steelhead Lake, slightly to the north. I tried to remember the exact placement of our camp relative to Steelhead Lake and the two smaller lakes to the south.
I was sure my orientation to the lakes was correct. However, I could not decipher the vast maze of gray, rocky blobs below me.
My shame consumed me, and flashes of anger at myself boiled up in the emotional brew as well. Hell, I had once climbed to the summit of 12,649-foot Mt. Conness with my first lover. Admittedly that was years ago. But how dare I get myself into this ridiculous situation?
Then a voice of reason broke through. “I’m lucky,” I reminded myself. Even though I didn’t have a jacket, I could conceivably stay out until dawn, four hours away. As soon as I had more light, it would be easy to find my way back. Strong puffs of wind surged from the south and east. I was extremely grateful that the air was so warm.
I continued to creep along the ridge but suddenly, for the first time since leaving the tent I halted. My feet were rooted to the ground as my mind imploded with a maelstrom of emotions. I didn't know what action to take. The stars shone with a cold brilliance.
In that standstill, I gradually came to understand that although my life was not in danger, I really did need help. My friends would gladly come to my rescue, if only they knew I needed them. It was foolish for me to remain silent. Even stupid.
Finally, I allowed myself to start a second volley of whistling. Three times per round.
This time I followed most of the whistling rounds with yells for help. "Lisa! Megan!" I cried out again and again.
There was no response.
Was I actually going to spend the rest of the night on this mound of granite, after all? I began to despair.
Finally, after more rounds of whistling and yelling, I saw lights from the area of our tents below. What a huge, welcome, gigantic and blessed relief!!
Like an airplane about to land, the beams guided me towards Kitchen rock and my tent. I heard Cecillia greet me.
At last I climbed into my welcoming warm sleeping bag, not quite believing that my ordeal was over.
I was physically safe, but I still felt suffused with mortification. Perhaps the entire incident, with both volleys of whistling, had lasted 40 minutes? Perhaps longer.
Immediate Aftermath
Reluctant to repeat the episode, I allowed myself only a bit of water, to slack off my raging thirst. I took off my soaking slippers and socks. When I lay down, I knew it would be hard to get back to sleep.
For a few minutes I yacked with my tentmate, Megan, who had largely been unaware of what was going on because she slept with earplugs. The nylon tent had roared in the wind making the earplugs necessary. Ten minutes after I tucked myself into my bag, my body erupted.
I was not cold, but my upper body started trembling uncontrollably. I kept shaking and quivering. This lasted for about ten minutes, at which point it was the turn of my lower body to start the same process. I couldn’t stop the waves of shaking.
Later Paulette suggested that this was the aftermath of my body having been flooded with hormones. Indeed! I had suffered acute stress and my reptilian brain had consequently prompted my adrenal glands to release a surge of adrenaline--preparing me for a fight or flight. The aftermath of such a surge, was "the shakes". The experience reminded me of transitioning during childbirth.
While I was lost my mind had been swamped with reproach. Yes, I had been afraid out there but as Cecillia said, "You were 'on task'". I was so busy trying to find a solution that I couldn’t allow my mind to realize how terrifying the situation really was. But my body did an excellent job of catching up.
And then it was my mind’s turn to catch up. It felt as though I was too afraid to fall asleep. The only time I felt myself actually slip toward unconsciousness, my psyche shook me awake, yelling, "You are DROWNING! Emergency! Wake up!" And I bolted fully awake.
In all, it was a thoroughly humbling experience! Now that I'm safely back home, I feel immense gratitude. I am grateful to the young men who tried to help me. I am thankful for my friends, who guided me in. I still feel some embarrassment but thankfulness prevails.
Wider Perspective
As I looked back, two predominant questions gnawed at me. I wondered how many others get lost while hiking or backpacking? And I wondered what learning lessons I could carry away from the experience.
According to a government database (http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg534/SARfac ... 064-16.pdf), about six to eight hundred people in the United States get lost each year and don’t survive to tell the tale.
It is more difficult to uncover reliable statistics on hikers who get lost and then are found again. From an internet search, I located a statistician, Robert Koestler, who oversees a worldwide SAR--Search and Rescue-database. An extremely crude estimate is that between 10,000 and 100,000 U.S. hikers and climbers were lost and then found in 2013. The number is so imprecise because it is an extrapolation based on partial data.
The typical lost, then found, hiker is male, between 20 and 50, and hiking solo. Although I am an outlier for this profile, I am not exempt due to the survival advice I had patently ignored.
Lisa, our fearless leader, had wisely advised that we each carry the "10 essentials." I’ve since reviewed multiple "10 essentials”, or even "13" or “14" essentials lists on the internet, and I am appalled to report that most neglect to include an emergency notification device, namely a whistle. Not even an eighteen-minute video, deigned to include a whistle on its list--though perhaps it was amidst the pocket commercial emergency kit, mentioned at the very end.
But what use is carrying a whistle if it is not with you? As a friend said, "I have a whistle attached to my knife, but do I take my knife out with me when I go to pee?"
Although yelling can reach 110 decibels per shriek, one’s vocal chords quickly give out. Whereas a whistle can keep going and going and can reach over 120 decibels. This brings up the topic of whistle attributes. Several whistles claim to be the “loudest”. Larger whistles require considerable lung power to reach the maximum volume. Also some whistles have more than one pitch—lower tones tend to carry farther, a welcome attribute when there is background noise created by wind, trees and water. Whistling with one's fingers, as I found out all too well, does not have much carrying power. All this is to say, of the three, voice, fingers or whistle, the latter triumphs.
So we've floated into the learning lesson area.
When I’m off on a hike, I now carry a whistle on a lanyard--connected at all times to my body! My wonderful friends have given me a very strong beamed LED flashlight to use when away from the tent at night.
Here is the lesson for groups of hikers: DO wake up and get up, and shine a light, at the first call of distress. And if you’re lost, let your friends find you because you carry a whistle!
By far the hardest lesson of all for me is to look at my own shame. It is still a struggle for me to examine my old view of independence, which surely is riddled with falsehoods. I am coming to realize that it is wise to ask for help immediately in an emergency. Every day, in the aging process, there is an opportunity to learn more of this lesson. Asking for help is not a weakness--easy to say, and yet extremely difficult to do. How to be part of the group, and receive graciously, when I've trained myself in my younger years, to stand alone? I'll be working on that.
Perhaps Morrie, as in the physically disabled man in "Tuesdays with Morrie" should rise as a far larger influence in my life and the lives of all of us.
As many have said before, “It takes a village”.