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Did a mod move this thread back to GBS 1.4 to die? I thought it was going to be put in PYF or somewhere else in order to avoid the /b/tards?
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Feb 11, 2014 01:33
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 08:59 |
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Orkin Mang posted:I look forward to 50 Foot Ant ruling over this thread like a tyrant. 50ft moved his stuff to Creative Convention last season where it had room to grow, there's no need for bad blood.
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Feb 12, 2014 08:09
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Forgive me if this is a bit poorly composed, I've been suffering from a decent fever for the past few days. Upper lung infection or something. So, at the end of August I decided to be an idiot and do a solo-hike through the Stein Divide. 120km of completely untouched wilderness (except for the rough trail) that crosses a mountain range. I packed expecting to be out there for 9 days, take my time, enjoy the solitude and beauty, really find myself. For millenia the Stein was used by the Nlaka’pamux as both a living place and a location for puberty rights; they'd send their sons and daughters into the valley where they would live for several weeks or months and culminate in dancing before a fire until sunrise, at which point they'd pass out, have fever dreams, and paint some pictographs. Hundreds of them still decorate the valley today. From the start poo poo went downhill, rain soaked through my layers and defeated all my waterproof gear. I watched half a mountain collapse while I was practically standing on top of it. On the fourth day, the noises started. I'd become lost in the fog and turned back to the campground at Tundra Lake, an inhospitable site blasted by winds and rain. As I settled in to try and sleep around 7pm, I heard rocks slide down the hill behind me. I wasn't too concerned, since this had been happening all day and the lake was a caldera with sheer walls. I passed out, woke up in the dark to hear it again sometime later, slept till the next day. The fourth day was hell. Blasting winds, heavy rain, and I walked a ridge for 6 hours with a 5000' drop-off on either side of me. I got to Stein Lake near 6, soaked to the bone and hypothermic, set up my tent on the SAR helicopter pad, and seriously believed I was going to die that night. If I hadn't been wearing wool for most of my layers, I would have. At roughly 6:30 pm, as I was shivering into sleep, a tree cracked like a gunshot less than twenty feet from my tent, echoed, and went still. At this point I realize that they'll find my shredded corpse a week later when I'm finally overdue, and there's nothing I can do about it. I slept with a bear banger loaded in one hand and my knife in the other, as if it would do any good. The morning of the fifth day, the weather lifted finally and I resolved to GTFO of this godforsaken valley as fast as possible. It was 75km to the trailhead, through heavy slide alder after a massive forest fire. It was at least five days for a fit person. I did 20km the first day, not stopping to rest. As I reached Logjam camp, I rejoiced. I was warm, my clothes were drying, and I could eat a hot meal for the first time in days instead of just crawling into bed. I enjoyed the evening, and as 7pm rolled around, a tree cracked like a gunshot roughly twenty feet away, and echoed up the river. Now, the rocks I had chalked up to unstable conditions, the tree the night before to a bear trying to get at bugs or something. But the same time, close by, three days in a row? Must be coincidence, it must be. I kept the bear spray nearby, slept like a log regardless. As I'm leaving camp the next morning, I fail to clip the bear spray to my belt properly and don't hear it drop. I don't notice until I'm an hour out of camp, traversing the lush valley bottom where a bear is mostly likely to be. For the next 8 hours, it's still as can be around me. No animal calls, no bird calls. Oh, I can hear them far far out in the distance, but there is a dead zone of like a kilometer around me and I don't even here bugs in this dense woodland. As the day went on, I realized that this had been the case the day before but I'd been so focused on walking that I hadn't noticed. I'd paused above some marmot holes to eat nuts, scattered some about, and nothing came out. WTF, that's uncanny. The only wildlife I see that day is a single, massive, toad. I do over 25km and make the Lower Crossing, the entrance to the valley, just after 6pm. Up until now, all crossings of the river have been done using cable cars, including getting down to Stein Lake from the ridge, hence why I was still chalking my nocturnal visitor up to coincidence. At the lower crossing however, there's a nice big bridge. As I'm drifting off, right at 7pm, a goddamn tree goes off like a gun across the river, followed by another which then tumbles into the water. I shoot out of the tent, peer through the scrub trying to see wtf is over there, can't see anything. Get back into tent, hunker down, have dreams of being stalked all night. I got up a the crack of down and powered my way to the trailhead by 1pm, which resulted in me being half-delusional from hunger by the time I got to the pictographs and breaking down crying like a bitch. So much for nine days, I was out in five.. Now I've told this story to a few close friends, and they can't explain it. Every night at the same time, the same noise? If it was a different bear messing about with trees every night, then that's a mighty big coincidence. Why stop at one tree? Why push one into the river on the last night? At the same time, the cable car system means it couldn't have been something stalking me all the way from the alpine, and the access to the ridge was quite precipitous even for a human. I saw no scat of any sort the entire time I was up there. Not the scariest story that's ever been posted here, but I certainly won't be going through that valley solo ever again Rime has a new favorite as of 22:29 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 22:21
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