Was it a good adventure?

[markskor]

a helpful key...found on facebook

[Cross Country]

Did you ever see a cyote chase a fawn-about to catch it and the doe ran between them to save tha faun
No. Yes. No Yes
No Adventure. It was cool. The fawn would have. And the fawn escaped into
Been lunch. The wood and the doe
Escaped by plunging
Into and across the Kern
And that was an interesting part of our adventue.

[Cross Country]

This didn't print like I wrote it.

[balzaccom]

That's OK. It was an adventure to read it

[AlmostThere]

It's missing a few things. Did you get a ride in a helicopter? Did you have to walk your friend back to the car? Did one of your buds drop something off a cliff/in the lake and nearly die trying to get it back and then need a ride in a helicopter?
Did you forget your sleeping bag/pad/tent/food/down jacket?
Forgetting your sleeping gear is an adventure....

[Shawn]

The Fun Scale

Type 1: An activity that is fun while you are doing it.

Type 2: An activity that is not fun, but you remember it being fun.

Type 3: An activity that was never fun and usually involves near death experiences or conditions so horrific that your life is put into jeopardy.

[Jimr]

Type 4: an activity that never really happened, but eventually morphed into a great adventure.

"Did you get a ride in a helicopter?" Yeah, had one of those. Did your buddy get a ride in a helicopter? Yeah, had one of those too.

[Wandering Daisy]

Adventure is pretty simple for me. I do not need anything to go bad or get sketchy. All I need is to go fantastic places, somewhere I have never been before, do amazing things. Or just accomplish something I was not sure I could do. In fact, when my "adventure" turns ugly, it no longer is an aventure for me. My best adventures happen when trips are well planned, turn out better than expected, have non-life-threatening unexpected moments and goals that seemed unreachable are reached.

I like that "fun scale" a lot!

[giantbrookie]

For an adventure I like the unexpected parts and the uncertainty and the pleasant surprises. This is why the Dumbbell Lakes trip I took with Judy in 1993 remains my favorite trip of all time and will alway be that. There were so many times when we didn't think the trip would go or that serious components would be compromised. On morning no. 1 I launched my rod tip in 11393 in Dusy AND the line broke. I thought Judy would be the only one fishing for the rest of that trip, but my precision dredging operation with a special multi Z-Ray thing did in fact manage to hit the ultimate fishing 3 pointer and hook that lead line guide (lost one rig in process doing this). Then came the total unknown descent down Barrett Creek on day 2. Would it go? Yes it did. Best slot canyon descent we've ever done. This had a lunch break where I noticed a minor problem. I hadn't tightened the fuel valve on my stove enough and a fuel leak ruined about 1/3 of my snack food. This turned out not to be a big deal because of the heavily fish-based diet the next few days but at that point we didn't know. Then later on day 2 Palisade Creek looked absolutely uncrossable so it looked like we'd have to simply turn around and go back to the Barretts and Dusy. On the morning of day 3 we found the magic log across so the trip continued. Then came the horrid log steeplechase at the bottom of the Cataract Creek climb, then we reach Amphitheater L. and I look toward the pass and see a seemingly invincible wall of cornices. So I figure the trip will get no further than Amphitheater but I say we should walk up to the cornices and see if there is a bypass route somewhere. We find the magic crack between a cornice and rock and we stem and wiggle through and then we're at the closest thing to High Sierra paradise. But we weren't out of the woods yet. I did in fact catch a cold. I was still nursing it when we decided we'd attempt to blast all the way out from Amphitheater to South L. on the last day (had to do with us taking an extra layover day at the Dumbbells and with a hotel reservation in Bishop). The cold burned off as we ascended the Barrett Creek slot canyon to Knapsack. When we reached Knapsack we ran into some backpackers headed to Barrett Lks from Dusy. When they heard we had come from Amphitheater they thought we were crazy, something they were more sure of when we said we were in fact headed for South Lake. Anyhow I think the uncertainty about "will it go" and the many times we thought the trip was going to do a U-Turn all contribute to this being our favorite.

Our 2nd favorite didn't even have good fishing but the improvisational quality stood out: our Ring Around the Goddard trip the next year (1994). What made that one special is that we originally intended to go to Blue Canyon and back from North Lake but decided on the fly to circle Goddard (Lamarck-Darwin Cyn-Ionian-10232-dayhike to Blue Canyon-Martha-Davis-McGees (dayhike)-Evo-Darwin Cyn-Lamarck). The improvising is what made this trip so memory although the biggest fish we caught on the trip was only 11" (out of the now-fishless lake downstream of Martha).

The improvisational aspect is one of the reason why I like off trail backpacking so much and the longer such trips always rate high on my "adventure" scale. I plan very carefully by examining topo maps but the fine-scale route finding is best done by on-the-fly terrain analysis. The more challenging this is, the better the adventure factor, although I think the uncertainty stuff (as above) elevates things on my adventure scale. This is why the finest off trail backpacking descent I can remember was that blind descent south of the Josephine L. outlet. I really didn't know if this would actually go. I had more confidence in the Barrett Creek route (no beta on this from anyone before I did it in '93 and of course there was nothing on the Josephine route), probably because the average slope angle was a tad less for the latter.

I have had some close calls and injuries, one of which I thought I was in fact going to die. Those close calls don't rank as high on my adventure scale, with the exception of my 1977 Abbot climb that had some real-life Clarence King stuff (not throwing a lasso but there were some flying leaps). The "thought I was dead" one is certainly not high on my adventure list (remains no. 1 on my nightmare list and the only true High Sierra one--the others on the "nightmare" list are urban situations, driving situations, or "Deliverance" situations while doing geologic field work). The best adventure aspect of that really bad near-fatal High Sierra experience was Judy's response to my story when I was expecting her to castigate me for being an idiot "So...How big were those goldens and how hard is it to get to that lake?"

[wildhiker]

If you define "adventure" as something you remember well, then it seems to usually involve an emotional extreme - either danger and the unknown, or bliss. I remember well the scary log crossings of streams and the nasty storms, but I also remember well the unexpectedly beautiful lake basins and gorgeous sunsets.
-Phil