| | My absence can be attributed to the seventh Harry Potter book, which I will not speak of at this current moment. 
On with the travel updates!
UFORTE: Day 4
This, dear readers, is the day. The "We're climbing up a freaking
mountain!" Day. The four ladies of UFORTE left camp at about 8:30 in
the morning and embarked upon the long road that lead to Teekaboo Peak.
And I do mean the long road. We first had to drive for an hour back to Alamo,
Nevada (home of the only gas station for something like 100 miles).
Then we had to drive for about an hour down a dirt road in a wildlife
reservation to get to the trail head. Our first clue that this would
not be an ordinary day should have been that the road was quite a bit
more narrow than we were lead to believe. Art the Antenna Cactus got
quite a beating from the nearby trees and we scrached the Road Panther. But we finally decided to forget
the truck and just walk up to the trail head.
We strapped on our backpacks that weighed the equivalent of 2-year-olds
and hiked up to the first campsite where the trail head began. Armed
with the GPS and some wild enthusiasm we took off for the epic hike.
Now, it is at this time that I mention we had no idea what we were
getting into. This mountain was steep and consisted of loose rock all
the way up. I believe it was an elevation gain of 3000 feet in a 1.6
mile hike. We were, indeed, nuts.
See, loose rock. It's crazy!
On the way up, the view was pretty amazing. You can see the faint line
between the mountains in the picture. We believe that is Groom Lake
Road (the road that leads to Area 51 and is the same road we traveled
the day before).
Unfortunately, once we neared the top, a previous ankle injury of mine
and the steepness of the trail (we're talking crawling on hands and
knees to reach the top) lead us to a decision to turn around and head
back down the mountain. It was definitely a disappointment, but hey,
we'd get a head start on the 17 hours of driving we had ahead of us.
So, since I was moving rather slow, Amy and Stephanie headed on down
the mountain to the second campsite to start a fire so we could eat
something before getting back on the road.
Now, it wasn't long at all before Kaitlin and I heard the sounds of
Stephanie and Amy playing Marco Polo with us. And then we reached the
second campsite and they weren't there. So we looked slightly puzzled
and decided to head down to the first campsite where they might have
gone to be closer to the truck. But no luck. So we thought maybe they
were still down at the truck, dropping off their 40-60 pound backpacks.
But again, no fellow hikers. It was at this point that Kaitlin and I
started to panic a little bit. But we decided to be optimistic, drop
our backpacks off at the truck and return to the second campsite to
wait for them to come strolling out of the woods with an "oops". After
an hour of waiting at the second campsite and yelling as loud as we
could, we returned to the truck out of restlessness, nervousness and
probably a bit of, oh I don't know, terror. Yeah, we were both a little
hysterical at this point. All that kept flashing through my mind was
what my dad told us before we left for the trip... "Don't wind up on
CNN."
So there we were, two girls who had never done serious hiking before
and only 2 nights of camping experience. Separated from the other two
members of our crew with absolutely no idea where they were. No cell
phone service. No other people around. 28 miles from civilization on a
mountain, in the middle of a wildlife reservation. Yeah, it would be an
understatement to say that we were freaked out.
So we fretted about what to do because we pretty much couldn't do
anything. Finally, in a moment of desparation I was looking into the
truck window debating whether it would be worth it to break the window
to retrieve the roadside assistance kit with flares when I saw a
note attached to the driver side door. We snatched the note and read
about a lady who was hiking in the area and thought she heard us
calling for a dog (remember: Marco Polo). Turns out, she was camping
about 4 miles down the road. Kaitlin and I frantically started down the
trail in hopes of finding this mysterious hiker. We were yelling for
help and feeling so releaved that there was someone available to help
us that the four-wheeler came practically out of nowhere and who was on
the back? Stephanie. Woo! Tragedy over!
Turns out they had gotten lost and decided to just continue down the
mountain until they got to the main road. They ate cold speghettios on
the side of the road and through some miracle ran into the lady that
had heard us calling. So she gave Stephanie a ride back to where we
were and we high-tailed it away from that mountain as fast as possible!
On our travels we crossed the Hoover Dam. Naturally, we made some Dam
jokes, took some Dam pictures and did some Dam observation. The Road
Panther was happy to be out of the trees and Art the Antenna Cactus
lost his eyes but we had a good laugh about the adventures in hiking
and had nice showers at the KOA in Kingman, Arizona.
A crazy, terrifying, exhausting and nutty day 4 it was. And what's the moral of this tale? DO NOT SPLIT UP WHEN YOU GO HIKING!!
~ Marco... |
| | Posted 7/23/2007 6:30 PM - 6 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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