- Joined
- May 16, 2006
- Messages
- 2,724
On today's beautiful hike I atoned for the sin of not bringing a camera by doing two good deeds.
Deed 1
I'm bushwaching my way back to a trail and notice a group of hikers going past. I go in the opposite direction on the trail and within about 500 feet I find a cell phone. I turned around and did a light jog back in the direction of the hikers. They had gone pretty far but I caught up to them in about 5 minutes. One of them was very happy to have her cell phone back even though she hadn't known it was missing.
Deed 2
Later I bushwacked my way onto another trail and ran into an older Korean couple and two female 20 somethings who were lost and getting tired. None of them had any water left nor appeared to have any supplies, and one of them had a map that was for the wrong section of the park. All they wanted to know was what is the fastest route to a road. So I showed them on the map and started walking with them since I was going in the same direction. The young women were extra oblivious and kept wandering off the trail. We got to a spot on the trail where I was planning to turn off and take my dogs for another swim but looking at this group knowing that they might not even be able to follow the trail all the way out and that if they do get to the road they are at least 10 miles by road from where they claimed they parked and that there was only about 2 hours of daylight left I decided to cancel the doggie swim and hiked out with them. I chided them a bit for not at least having a map and tried several times to show them ways to keep oriented with a topographic map. When we got to the parking lot the four lost hikers, my two dogs, 40 lbs of dog food and 20 lbs of cat litter all crammed into my station wagon for the drive back to their cars. So I take them to where they told me their cars were parked. But sure enough they were not parked where they thought. I then figured out from a description of the parking lot where they were actually parked and drove them there. I did try to point out how vulnerable they had let themselves become but stopped short of saying things like, "Wake up! I could have led all of you into an abandoned mine shaft and you would have followed me." I probably should have said that.
So lets hear about some of your good deeds on the trail.
Deed 1
I'm bushwaching my way back to a trail and notice a group of hikers going past. I go in the opposite direction on the trail and within about 500 feet I find a cell phone. I turned around and did a light jog back in the direction of the hikers. They had gone pretty far but I caught up to them in about 5 minutes. One of them was very happy to have her cell phone back even though she hadn't known it was missing.
Deed 2
Later I bushwacked my way onto another trail and ran into an older Korean couple and two female 20 somethings who were lost and getting tired. None of them had any water left nor appeared to have any supplies, and one of them had a map that was for the wrong section of the park. All they wanted to know was what is the fastest route to a road. So I showed them on the map and started walking with them since I was going in the same direction. The young women were extra oblivious and kept wandering off the trail. We got to a spot on the trail where I was planning to turn off and take my dogs for another swim but looking at this group knowing that they might not even be able to follow the trail all the way out and that if they do get to the road they are at least 10 miles by road from where they claimed they parked and that there was only about 2 hours of daylight left I decided to cancel the doggie swim and hiked out with them. I chided them a bit for not at least having a map and tried several times to show them ways to keep oriented with a topographic map. When we got to the parking lot the four lost hikers, my two dogs, 40 lbs of dog food and 20 lbs of cat litter all crammed into my station wagon for the drive back to their cars. So I take them to where they told me their cars were parked. But sure enough they were not parked where they thought. I then figured out from a description of the parking lot where they were actually parked and drove them there. I did try to point out how vulnerable they had let themselves become but stopped short of saying things like, "Wake up! I could have led all of you into an abandoned mine shaft and you would have followed me." I probably should have said that.
So lets hear about some of your good deeds on the trail.
:
Mine was bent so badly that it too wouldn't close. But I took a different repair route and ended up jumping up and down on it, that must have been an amusing spectacle on the side of the highway. 
