scary tales

“since its almost halloween, anybody have any scary stories? times were you thought your life was forfeit? ill start off with the second scariest thing that has happened to me in my short backpacking life:

in july of 01, i went on my first ever wilderness camping adventure. i cant really call it backpacking cuz it was with a paid guide and packhorses carried all the heavy gear. i was such a newbie! anyway, we were spending five days in the sangre de cristo range in the san isabel nf of colorado, which was to climax in the summiting of mt humboldt. our campsite on the fourth night was attained by bushwacking off the rainbow trail a couple of slow painful miles (with heavily loaded packhorses!) after making camp i decided i needed a bath. so i strip down and put on my swim trunks and sandals and after getting directions to the nearest water source, i attempt to make my way down to the creek. to make a long story short (too late!), i misunderstood the directions and zigged when i shouldve zagged. i gave up on finding the creek and headed back to camp. problem was, it wasnt where i left it. i searched in vain for about 40 minutes, wondering where the hell camp was. barely resisting panic, i make my way down the slope, back towards the rainbow trail. eventually i lose the sandals, which were just flip-flops, actually. so im lost in the wilderness, practically naked save for the flimsy swim trunks. at one point i hear a noise off to the side that scares the holy hell out of me (it was just a bird taking off). i turn and yell MOTHER! at the noise, brandishing a stick like a deranged samurai warrior and his sword. finally, after probably 20 minutes, i make it down to the rainbow trail, and after a few minutes walking find a campsite of mostly young nubile college-age girls to rescue me and call the SAR to take me back to the ranch. gah! what an intro to the great outdoors.”

“See my latest trip report "Snow Nymph, almost spent the night on a glacier"”

“yea i read that one. pretty harrowing stuff”

“My scariest story....its been posted several times:

I was in my bivy, sounded like a elk was running towards me. It was a skunk, and it stopped right in front of the bivy screen, waving its black and white tail inches from my face. I was never so scared in my life!!!”

“the skunk was scarier than the glacier? was it ten feet tall?”

“I wasn't scared myself on the glacier, just scared of what could happen with SnowDude in the condition he was in.

I was laying down in my bivy, on my stomach, and the skunk's @ss was less than a foot from my face. My heart was beating so hard my head hurt! I just knew that skunk was going to spray me. But it didn't.”

“That last reply was me, Snow Nymph. I'm on SD's computer.”

“you actually managed to say climax & naked AND young girls in your story......BONUS POINTS FOR YOU!”

“He just needs to work on the chronology...”

“Tilt and stratdewd, LOL!

I've got two, only one was actually dangerous. Years ago on a dark and cloudy night we were night hiking (something I don't do now that I'm old and clumsy and have figured out that I'm not immortal). We heard a dog barking, then two and three and next thing you know we're scambling up trees to get away from a pack of wild dogs. Nashing teeth and lots of slobber, they tore my friends pack to pieces before they got bored and went off after something else.

The other experience... I got up in the middle of a very cold and moonless night to answer the call of nature. As I'm squattin and in mid stream I hear this very strange deep snort kind of sound, right behind my behind. I swear I felt it's breath on my backside! I must have jumped 10 feet in the air still peeing. It was a buck not three feet from me! He and his harem parked right behind out tent for the night.”

“thats an image that will be branded into my brain forever, pamster!

ok, now for the scariest thing that has ever happened to me.

we were doing an overnighter in shades state park in indiana. it was a hot day, and after making camp we headed down to sugar creek. now, with an innocous name like sugar creek, how could this be a scary story, youre asking? well, the creek was about 5 feet deep and moving at a good pace. anyway i was playing in the creek, just kind of floating lazily with the current and splashing around. i see a large boulder in the stream a little bit off and decide to float over to it and climb on top. im just about there when i get swept UNDER the damn thing. i try to swim back up to the surface but the current is just way too strong. i believed i was dying right then and there. after struggling underwater for several seconds, im swept past the rock and come up for air. to make matters worse, in the commotion i lost my lucky charm, my pewter ankh necklace. ive since bought another ankh, but i dont like it as much. that was by far the scariest thing that has ever happened to me backpacking or anywhere else.”

“everyone's probably tired of hearing me ramble on about it, but you asked so here it is

Polar Bear

That's the only time i've ever really feared for my life”

“Playing hide and seek in Florida, I ducked behind a bush and hid. When I put hand on the ground, a snake wrapped around my wrist. Pygmy rattler, Coral Snake, racer? Who knows, it was dark. I froze for a several seconds that seemed like an eternity, until it crawled off. Then I ran inside the house and almost passed out. The entire time our dachsund was going crazy barking while my brother hed him back.”

“There are two scary things that happened to me on Montanapalooza.

The first wasn't on the actual trip, it was 2 days before the trip when I first met most of the group. I pulled up to Aero's house and I was attempting to park my car behind this stupid Toyota Tacoma. The driver, a redneck from Georgia, according to his plates, kept backing up and backing up. I thought he was going to hit my vehicle. It kept going through my mind, "This guy is actually trying to destroy my poor, little car." Then all the sudden he slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the truck w/ 2 beers in his hands. Turns out he was some guy named Gojo! (LOL! I'm only kidding you Joe! 'Yer the best southern boy I know.)

The other really scary thing is when I thought I was going to lose sight of Aero, our fearless leader, on the trail ahead of me. If that happen, oh GAWD, I'm going to be stuck back her w/ Crazy Mike! I'm going to have to make conversation about wacked out trees, bizarre rocks, and insane deer butts! (Okay, I'm only kidding again. You know you're a great slab of meat Mike! LOL!)”

“thats a great story simer. well im off now to return to the site of my scariest story (shades). the river is way down now, maybe ill just climb on top of that rock now.”

“We were trekking the nepalese highlands. I found a skull that appeared to be human... until I noticed the horns.

I thought all that bible stuff was just bunk until this things actually laughed why I held it.

Our photographer who was later killed in a beef packing plant sprinkled the unholy thing with holy water and horseradish. It disintegrated and in the wind we heard a trailing off of mocking laughter to the south.

That night, our shelters were attacked by yaks.”

“Someone's been drinking that funny sherpa tea again.”

“WAh!! i cant go anywhere this weekend my check engine light is flashing and the car is running rough, so i need to bring it in for diagnostics! o well i guess ill stay at home and watch my irish beat the crap out of whomever theyre beating the crap out of this weekend”

“Hey 2scoops, that doesn't scare me.

Where's the scariness?”

“Irish aren't scary... I just don't get it.

Irish beat up?


I don't get it...”

“It's a long story Little Bird.”

“o sorry i was getting off topic. whats scary is that notre dame defense 8 sacks and no touchdowns allowed, baby!”

“Ohhh... there's an Irish baseball team? I thought they only had American, Canadian and Japanese?”

“Scariest thing for me was hearing a bobcat scream while I was cleaning up after dinner one night along the Laurel Prong Trail in SNP. My hair actually stood on end. After cleaning up, I went down the trail to where a couple was camped. They had invited me to share some tokes. They had exactly the same experience, hair standing up. It was eerie. I think I slept awake that night.”

“Tokes?!

Of a bobcat?!”

“my very first solo, i heard a sudden chorus of coyotes probably no more than 50 yards away as i lay in my tent one night. not scary, but defineitely spooky for a newbie”

“"insane deer butts"???? LOLOLOL


Smoked bobcat is quite tasty when it's done right.”

“So my wife has this couple whom she knows, Pam and Chris. Chris's brother got a call from Chris's cell phone and recieved a voice mail that was dead air, then some paper rustling, a dog barks and Chris says, "I'm OK.". Nothing else. the weird thing is Chris had been killed in a motorcycle accident a week and a half before and his cell was on his wife's bed side table locked.

I would have called bullshyt but this is someone my wife knew and she said there was no mistaking the voice was Chris.”

“when did the call come in?”

“Something like 1203am.”

“playing devils advocate, but was the cell phone on him when the accident happened?
i know that when I had a cell phone, sometimes there was a LONG and HUGE delay in getting messages.
but I guess at this point it does not matter..still scary..if that was me, I would so be flipping out big time!!”

“Yeah I've had that happen where it takes days for a message to come through when sent with normal delivery. And he did have his cell on him that night but the severity of the accident was very bad. He wasn't wearing a helmet and they said it wouldn't have mattered.

”

“oops, sorry. i was thinking tails”

“it's too bad that simer's polar bear tale is no longer accessible.”

““it's too bad that simer's polar bear tale is no longer accessible.”
hel
9:29:34 AM
10/31/09

No kidding! You'd think they'd warn me that they were going to delete everything (or maybe they did and I just didn't pay attention). But, in searching for a copy of this story somewhere, I ended up here. I found a copy of it like a month ago, but where I found it I can't remember! It's around somewhere...”

“Found it! That was more difficult than I thought it would be:

http://buskingtheworld.com/blog/?p=197”

“holy crap, that's a great story. I can deal with darn near anything encountered on a trail, but the big bears (grizz and polar) scare the holy hell out of me.”

“"Oops!What you are looking for doesn't seem to be on this page..."


arrgh! quit teasing me”

“Sorry! I was trying to do something with it (put it back on top of the order for the day) and i think I created a rift in the time space continuum... Should be there now, no?”

“yep.
thanks simer. we love that story.”

“I'll give it a go...

Before I learned to balance my love of backpacking with, well, reality, I had what one might call an unhealthy obsession to it. An addiction almost. Anyways, I was going through a miserable patch of life and decided that what I really needed was a good backpacking trip in my favorite place, Zion National Park.

The problem is, it was early February, and the entire western United States was covered in a hefty storm. Oh well. I figured, we had tents (in my noobyness, I didn't bother to confirm they were waterproof ahead of time) and warm sleeping bags. We'd be fine. I got three of my friends, Chris, Eric and Brady (names changed - you'll see why) to go with me.

Since we didn't have much vacation time, we left after work Friday night and drove all ngiht, arriving in a snowy and rainy Zion at dawn. Getting our permit for a 2-night trip up the West Rim trail (our plans were Cable Mountain one night, Deertrap Mountain the next, then a hike back down) the ranger raised his eyebrows at us, said "you sure?" then confessed he'd "rather be nibbled to death by ducks than go up there in this weather." We went anyways. I almost laugh about how stupid I was, except it's scary how little I've learned...

Weeping rock at the start of the trail was a gushing waterfall. A couple thousand feet up, the constant rain alternated with hail, sleet, and snow. In addition, a fifty yard patch required us to wade through near-freezing knee-deep water. No problem, I thought - we had dry clothes in our packs.

Up at the summit, a steady snow was falling. I knew (and was 100% right) that all we had to do was get to the summit and we'd be fine - we could stay warm as long as we could stay dry. We continued on the trail.

During an orienteering break (the trail cairns were scattered everywhere, knocked over, missing, etc) Chris suddenly and without warning schit his pants. We stashed his soiled clothes under a rock to get on the way out and continued on, taking a much slower pace as Chris stopped every 1/8 mile or so to... well...

We reached a point at the foot of the last final climb where the trail vanished completely (I would learn on a later trip in better weather that it was seamlessly covered by a drift of snow). I hadn't slept in about 20 hours, was soaked from the knees down, and was frustrated at the lack of trail, need for constant stops, and the nonstop complaining of my co-hikers, all on their first backpacking trip, who kept suggesting that we turn around or set up camp where we were. I did something stupid. I took my pack off, removed my heavy jacket, and ran. "Hold on, I'll be right back!"

I ran along the base of the climb, trying to find a way up. I found nothing. My undershirt was getting soaked and my mind wasn't working well. Ahead, I saw a steep but manageable snow-covered hill that looked like it met at the summit. I knew it wasn't the trail, but it was the first passable ascent I saw. Knowing we needed to get to a higher altitude to stay out of the rain, I returned to my waiting friends.

In my haste and fuzzy-mindedness, I had rested my jacket on my pack inside-out. It was soaked through and useless. All I had now was a sweater. It would be okay, I thought, as long as we got to the top - I could climb in my sleeping bag and be fine. We headed to the hill and began climbing.

It was steep, icy, muddy, and unpredictable. As we climbed higher, we realized a fall would take us all the way to the bottom, and there were plenty of sharp rocks on the way down to bounce off. My friends were hopeful - we were making good vertical progress. Then we came to a cliff. A creekbed carved a 50-foot canyon across our ascent. There was no way up.

We didn't bring watches (I was too idealistic to believe in bringing a watch backpacking) so we had no idea what time it was. One person wanted to go back to the car - another wanted to camp where we were. One wanted to use ropes to descend into the canyon and find a way up the other side. And me, I wanted to keep going up, somehow. Find another way. Get out of the rain.

We ended up deciding to pitch camp where we were. My partners didn't care to seek out a good campsite, and pitched their tent more or less where we stood, on a muddy, saturated hollow in the dead trees. In my exhaustion, I decided it would be a logically sound idea to do the same. Brady and I took one tent, and Chris and Eric took the other. I heated up a dehydrated meal, but was too tired to eat more than a bite. I crawled into my sleeping bag and was out cold.

I woke up cold and wet, a dim light coming from the sky. Shifting in my sleeping bag revealed a large quantity of water actually IN the bag. The down was soaked through and a small pond rested inside our tent. Brady was sitting up and looking at me with scared eyes. "It's cool, man... we made it through the night. We'll just hike out today and cut it short."

"No, Ryan... it's still the same day. It isn't even dark yet."

That's when I got really scared.

the hypothermia clouded my mind. I considered leaving our gear and making a run for the car. Of packing up and making another attempt at ascent. We finally settled on the smartest option - all squeeze into one tent to conserve as much heat as possible. Eric and Chris were wide awake in the other tent, soaked and huddled in their jackets. My jacket was still soaked - all my clothes were. I realized that if anyone was going to kick it that night, I'd probably be the first.

We all sat up, back to back, shivering in our sleeping bags while the roof dripped water and the sunlight faded to the darkest night I've ever seen. Soon a scum of ice spread across the surface of the water gathered on the floor of the tent - frost formed on my sleeping bag, in my beard and hair.

Somehow I slept on and off. I would doze and hear laughter, waking to realize it was just the rain and hail beating on the tent. I stopped shivering and with a horror realized I didn't even feel cold anymore (a sign of severe hypothermia, I've been told). I couldn't speak - couldn't tell if I was awake or not, alive or dead. I fully expected not to survive the night.

Then, I opened my eyes and saw light. We'd somehow made it through the night. Me, Chris and Eric stood up and began packing. Then Brady, emerging from the tent, said in a fearful voice, "guys, something's wrong." As we all looked to him, he collapsed into the mud in a semi faint. We hurried to him and helped wake him up. After eating something and drinking some water, he was fine. We packed out muddy gear with numb fingers and hurried to the car.

After some deliberation (and with the heater blasting), we decided (probably incorrectly) to forego the emergency room visit and just hurry home.

I learned many many lessons from that trip (I think it was only maybe my 3rd or 4th trip acting as the "leader). Of course, many of the lessons should have already been known, and many others weren't necessary if we hadn't acted like disoriented fools out there or if we'd been adults and realized that the trip should've been scrubbed.

Chris was the first to go on another trip with me - taking a bottle of tequila up Quail Mtn in Joshua Tree. He's currently one of the people planning a trip to the Grand Canyon this June. Brady trusted me to lead another trip soon after, up the East Rim of Zion where an absolute freak May blizzard send us scrambing out early. He hasn't been ona trip since. Eric was the last. It's been about 10 years now since this horrible trip, and he's yet to have gone on another with me. However, miraculously, I was able to talk him into accompanying me to the Grand Canyon this June as well, under my assurance that snow will be the least of our worries in June.

Anyway, that's about it. It may not sound too scary, but I thought it was the end”

“May not sound scary?? Sounds scary as hell! I do love that trail in Zion, but it sounds like hell (after it has frozen over), hell of an adventure, and a worthwhile story to tell now, after everyone survived and you can share the lessons that you'd learned.

I have a story from Zion, maybe not quite that scary (but pretty damn scary), there was a possibility everybody might not make it out... this gives me inspiration to write that one.

Thanks for sharing! I thoroughly enjoyed the read.”

“After readying PepsisFormosa's story of Zion, I recalled my Zion adventure last fall. This was probably the scariest event of my life (yes even more scary that a polar bear encounter) I actually feared for the life of myself and the others at several points during this ordeal. I just finished typing it up, yes it's long, so set aside a chunk of time and give it a read through, let me know what you think.

http://buskingtheworld.com/blog/?p=222”

“great story, Simer. I've been to that area of Zion once and am desperate for a return. I'd love to do a top-down Subway trip someday. Sounds like a harrowing experience from start to finish though. Glad everyone made it out all right”

“That was quite a story!

There is a lot to be learned from you guys.........even for a geezer like me.

You boys really looked after one another.”

“Yeah, I'd love to do the subway sometime, top down - I'd suggest the Russel Gulch entrance, the "steep gully decent" out of the Tom Jones Zion Canyoneering guide isn't worth it...

I'm glad you can learn from our mistakes, the key here is don't be stupid and you can keep yourselves alive.”

“rather be nibbled to death by ducks

That actually doesn't sound too bad to me.”

“another short scary tale that isn't too scary but is kinda neat:

A couple summers ago I took some friends to Coyote Gulch on the Escalante. The forecast was for PM thunderstorms, which is pretty much the standing forecast for the region for the entire span of summer, so it was no big deal. The hike in was brutally hot and sunny, and we ended up setting up our camp just short of Coyote Natural Bridge, on a bench about 6 feet above the water level.

After dark, a wicked thunderstorm came in. I thought it was awesome, the way the thunder rolled down the canyon like a subway train - how the lightning illuminated the inside of the tent, etc. My wife thought it was pretty scary. Unfortunately, it was also still hot out... with the rainfly down, the tent was like a sauna - so we didn't sleep much. At some point in the middle of the storm, I realized I couldn't wait any longer and had to take a leak. I step outside the tent when a flash of lightning illuminated the canyon, revealing that the river had risen and was less than a foot below our camp now.

I woke everyone up and we hurriedly moved out camp to higher ground in the dark and rain. I couldn't sleep anyway, so I sat outside in my raincoat and watched the river rise.

Ultimately, it did reach the level where our camp was. Although it was only about two inches deep at our old camp at the worst point, it was enough that we would've gotten everything soaked and we'dve run the risk of gear washing away. So although it wasn't anything super perilous, it was kinda scary how close we came to a minor disaster...

second semiscary note about this - while I was sitting out there, I suddenly heard the sound of something large barreling toward me in the brush. Obviously, I was pretty scared. Then a nice looking mule deer buck burst out of the brush and ran past me almost close enough to touch. In the dark, yeah... kinda scary”