Why Trails Exist
And How NOT to follow them: A Story about getting lost
As most good expeditions begin, we started out at REI, because of course, you need more gear before you go. Stopped to buy some extra accessory cord and a couple more locking carabiners for anchor building if necessary. You see, we knew what we wanted to do, and for the most part we knew where we wanted to go, we just hadn’t been there so we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, at least not yet.
After being thoroughly distracted long enough at REI and acquiring the requisite gear for our Saturday Afternoon expedition we headed up the canyon. Read through mountain project on how to get there and started on our approach.
The exact details of the directions are helpful in understanding what I’m about to tell you next.
Getting There
Park at the pullout just after crossing the creek .2 miles up canyon from the Storm Mountain Picnic area.
Hike up the canyon due north for 3/4 a mile. Look for the wall to your left. Avoid cutting up the slope too soon. Look for talus fields or for a semi-obvious trail. Leaving the main trail and heading up towards the wall is a bit of a pain. It is steep, and not very enjoyable, but remember…you are escaping the crowds!
Allow 45 minutes to an hour for the approach.
Keep those in mind as I tell this story.
We parked the car according to directions and loaded up our packs. Threw in headlamps, walkie talkie’s, extra batteries, ropes, quick draws, harnesses, shoes, chalk, anchor supplies, safety lines, water and some snacks. You know, all the standard gear that you need for a solid safe climbing trip.
The trail was very obvious for the first few hundred feet, really easy to follow as it winded along following the flowing river headed opposite our direction.
As we approached the first river crossing, we opted not to go across the trail and went up to the right. After a few hundred feet we realized that definitely was not the trail, so like good trail finders / hikers we turned back to the last location that we knew we were on the appropriate trail. We crossed the river and continued up the gully due north toward the wall we planned to climb.
Shortly thereafter we approached another river crossing location (turns out there were a lot of them that we didn’t know about). We went toward the mountain across the river to what appeared to be the trail. At least to the best of our knowledge. I’m sure there was an element of distraction in our conversations where we weren’t fully paying attention to what we were doing.
Across the river we went, and up the hillside. The trail disappeared almost right after we got on it. We thought this was just a bit of a shortcut that would soon meet up with the trail again. **hint, we were super wrong.**
If your remember the directions said, “Leaving the main trail and heading up towards the wall is a bit of a pain” and that was no understatement.
We thought, hey the wall is just around this ridge, we’ll just hike up the “trail” this way and then we’ll probably get there a bit quicker. Classic thoughts that don’t tend to lead you down the right direction.
We continued hiking nearly straight up the mountainside. Up and up we went. The ground soon turned to mud, becoming quite slippery. It’s important to not our attire. We were wearing climbing pants and a t-shirt and the best approach shoes ever… chaco’s. Normally chaco’s are great for the approach, especially when it’s just a climbing trail, or if there is any water crossing involved. However, they are not good in loose rocks and mud, trust me.
We continued upward, thinking that we would break free of all of these little trees and mud and be able to laterally traverse to the wall where our bolted routes awaited us.
However, that of course was not the case. We slipped up the hill getting super muddy carrying our big climbing packs full of gear until we finally reached what we thought was a breakthrough point.
Turned out to just be a faux wall, which we thought was the top of the wall we were looking for, and of course we were wrong. Naturally, we started climbing up the wall with our packs and chaco’s thinking we could get to a point to rappel down. Again, we were wrong.
On the other side of this wall was just another huge gully full of mud, loose rocks and trees. We weren’t even close.
This annotated image might help explain just how far off we were…
You are probably laughing now as we were. Well we were painfully laughing with all of our cuts and scrapes that we had acquired from our journey thus far, and yet we were maybe only half way there.
We got to the top of what we thought was the top only to realize that we had a long way to go. What you can’t see in the picture is the other rock face that we thought we could traverse.
We were wrong. However, you could free climb up it. So, that is what we did, we started climbing up the face in our chaco’s with our packs. It was a pretty easy climb so no worries, but in retrospect, probably not a wise thing to do.
Anyway, we made it up the free solo (maybe 15–20 feet tops) and then began traversing across the ridge. This portions was actually mostly just rock, not ridden with branches and mud like everything else we had hiked up thus far.
Then in an attempt to get through the forest I acquired a nice cut down my whole leg, through my pants. That felt nice.
We slowly but surely made our way down the chossy ground, slipping and sliding, and getting attacked by rocks all along the way.
After about an hour and half we reached our climb. Our excursions probably doubled the amount of time to get there.
The climbing was great, lots of cool movements on small edges and side pulls and pockets. It was a short multi-pitch climb, but still tons of fun, and we got to test out the new 8.7mm rope!
When we decided to head back, we found the real trail. It’s actually rather pleasant, and trail like. No mountain goat abilities required, though we did almost die when a huge rock came lose and went tumbling down the mountain.
Outside of the falling rocks and toe/heel smashing with rocks we made it out alive. Followed the river trail back down to the parking lot. We survived, and made it out alive.
Moral of the story, trails are there for good reason. When you go off trail, you’ll probably save way more time by just going back to where you got off trail and heading in the right direction. Also, paying attention to directions is important.
