Tales From the Trail

[d_baker]

Similar to Mike's thread, but this one more so about odd or interesting things that you have experienced on the trail....

2000 or 2001, I was hiking up Barr Trail en route to Barr Camp, near the bottom in the switch backs, and before the "shortcut" off of the incline. On one of the switch backs, there's a convenient pullout for pee breaks (and it's probably used way too much).
I stopped in to pee, and there on the ground, out of plain site from the trail, was a stove, Coleman or something like that.
Not sure why it was there, I picked it up and went on my way to Barr Camp.
Sitting outside on one of the benches, I was talking to the person next to me and I mentioned I found a stove lower down on the trail. A guy across from me heard me, and said, "that's my stove."
??
"Oh, I'm sorry!" So I gave it back to him.
He said it was leaking on him the night before as they hiked up to camp, so he stashed it for later.
Oh, ok.

A week or so later, I was at Barr Camp again, and I was talking to Jeff (caretaker at the time) and I told him the stove story. He goes behind the counter and grabs a stove.
"Was it this one?"
"Yeah!"
"Well I guess the guy didn't want it that bad, because I found right next to the trail," Jeff told me.
He told me that he fixed it with a new gasket, good as new.

That's just one from me.

Anyone else have a trail story?

[bmcqueen]

I'm sensing a theme of you picking up strangers' belongings on trails Darin. Do you have the same issue in Target? Just cracked me up both your noob story and your trail story involved you taking something that didn't belong to you!

Now my quick story (perhaps Darin was the perp in this one too?):

June 2015 I had never done Conundrum and was starting to work on the list of 58. We were in Carbondale at my wife's aunt's, so I asked if I could run up to Aspen one morning and do C&C. It was still quite snowy, so I started off solo on my snowshoes. About 12.5k, I switched to my crampons and tucked my snowshoes behind a large boulder to retrieve on my way down. I went up the Conundrum Couloir, then over to Castle then headed down from there. I hadn't seen another person all day. When I got down off Castle's ridge and could see back down into the basin, I saw two people coming up across the snow. I'm fairly social in the mountains, so I angled towards them to say hi. As I got a bit closer, I could tell that one had flotation (a guy) and one did not (a girl). The one without flotation was post-holing rather badly in the warming snow. Closer still, I could see that the guy had on red snowshoes. My snowshoes are red. I greeted them warmly. They returned pleasantries. Then, the guy said sheepishly, "Did you happen to leave a pair of snowshoes down there by that rock?" "Why yes, yes I did!" He looks down at his feet. "Oh. These are yours. I supposed you want them back, huh?" "Yes please". He took them off, and they continued on their way, with him now post-holing as badly as she was...

So Darin....where were you on June 15, 2015?

[justiner]

I had just done Little Bear/Blanca/Ellingwood, and I came back to my camp to find all the food stolen by the (I'm guessing very well fed) Lake Como Bear. Beaten and demoralized, I gather everything up to make it back down. I rode my bike UP, so now I get to ride DOWN this road, without incident. I don't have much food on me, and the weather is turning.

All of a sudden, a beautiful young woman comes skipping up the trail! Not a care in the world.

"Hi!", she said, "Thought I'd take a little walk, and check out this lake up here. Go skinny dipping!"

"Where did you start?!"

"Oh, at the beginning - by the highway? Well, goodbye!"





and she just skips off.




Still not sure if that one was a hallucination or not.


Other bear story. I'm camping near Maroon Bells, and am awakened by a bunch of banging of pots and pans by the camp host.

"DO YOU SEE THE BEAR?!", they ask.

"Where?!"

"It's right between us!"

"....OH!"

My contacts aren't in, but I take their word for it. I think I rolled around and went back to sleep. The bear came back around the other side of me, eventually. Really happy I put all my food in the bear safe thing, that night. I remember coming back to camp after doing the Bells/Pyramid, and just was lying down, eating food, and passing out - just to wake up and eat more (and repeat)



On top of Uncompahgre, there's a Russian couple who have no gear, except one Walmart plastic bag with roll of toilet paper. They lament about the lack of glaciers in these mountains to me. They also started, "At the road", meaning basically Lake City.

[d_baker]

I'm sensing a theme of you picking up strangers' belongings on trails Darin. Do you have the same issue in Target? Just cracked me up both your noob story and your trail story involved you taking something that didn't belong to you!

So Darin....where were you on June 15, 2015?

I was in Austin, TX.
Ha!
(Or I might have been on vacation with my family in Ouray.... )

Brad, I have another found item story to share later.

[scalba123]

I was coming down Longs when I came across this guy who was taking a break just before the bridge. I'm just social enough the say hello to people, but this guy started talking away and I couldn't shake him. He eventually asked me what I did for a living and told him that I worked in Sales Tax. "So do I!!!" he exclaimed and started firing dozens of questions at me about my work experiences...

...like I come all the way to Colorado JUST to talk about work.

[Chicago Transplant]

One my favorites, when hiking up Massive from the east slopes route, a little ways above the Colorado Trail split I pass a guy charging up the hill in shorts and a tee shirt, no pack with a full one gallon water jug in each hand swinging them like weights. I never did see him on the summit or the way back down, maybe he was just getting a little bicep work out?

And then, more coincidence than funny, but two of my friends and I had camped in to climb some Sangre 13ers one spring, May I think. Nobody back there, the first day we got a lot of snow on our Comanche/Spring/Venable loop. So day two comes and we decided to climb the unnamed 13er to the west of Adams. Still not seeing anybody. On the summit all of the sudden my buddy exclaims in amazement that two people are coming up the other side. I casually, and half jokingly, say "I probably know them", after all, who else would climb unnamed 13ers in May after a spring snow storm? The pair crests the ridge, I look up and say "Oh, Hi Dwight", It was Dsunwall from this very forum. Small world. Incidentally for my buddy (Floyd on this site), that was the only summit he shared with someone not in his party that entire year. Generating a twist on the DYBM for us, "Damn You DSunwall". We still use that phrase whenever we have to share a summit with another party

[Trotter]

climbed la plata a couple years ago. At the summit, met a guy who was up there solo. He told me and my buddy he was disappointed that we were guys, as he was hoping some chicks would hike up. Apparently his plan was to ask them to join the "14,000 foot high club".

According to this guy, he had done it before in the front range and "tons of chicks" were interested and wanted to do it, but the summits were too crowded, so he came out to la plata so there would be less crowds.

Didn't see any chicks hiking up all day. Bet this guy was disappointed.

[Brimstone10]

According to this guy, he had done it before in the front range and "tons of chicks" were interested and wanted to do it, but the summits were too crowded, so he came out to la plata so there would be less crowds.

A hiking buddy of mine talked to someone who told the same story of asking chicks to do it on the summit and claimed to have had good luck with it.

[SkaredShtles]

I bet those guys win every time they go to Vegas, too.

[CreekRunner]

climbed la plata a couple years ago. At the summit, met a guy who was up there solo. He told me and my buddy he was disappointed that we were guys, as he was hoping some chicks would hike up. Apparently his plan was to ask them to join the "14,000 foot high club".

According to this guy, he had done it before in the front range and "tons of chicks" were interested and wanted to do it, but the summits were too crowded, so he came out to la plata so there would be less crowds.

Didn't see any chicks hiking up all day. Bet this guy was disappointed.

That guy was a couple years too early. When Marmot96 and I did La Plata on new years eve, the only other hiker we saw was of the female species...and she flew past us. I don't even think we are that slow since we got up Quandary in two hours during the winter welcomer, which, unless I'm completely wrong, is a decent time for casually hiking.

[TallGrass]

All of a sudden, a beautiful young woman comes skipping up the trail! Not a care in the world. "Hi!", she said, "Thought I'd take a little walk, and check out this lake up here. Go skinny dipping!"

No photos? Didn't happen.

I thought I saw Eric (thebeave7) and that he stopped to talk for just a minute when I recognized him running up the 4x4 road to SCL. Minute later he was gone no where to be seen. Must have been a mirage. When we were getting close the Humboldt saddle, there was someone who came down from Humboldt then was up Tedious Ridge by the time we got there and never saw him again. Another mirage I guess.

[TravelingMatt]

Surfer Girl is not in the mountains -- Gerry Roach

Anyway.... two or three Junes ago I was doing one of my go-to early-season hikes, coming down from Ptarmigan Peak. Ran into a party asking typical how-much-farther questions. Tuned out they were on vacation from the Chicago area, and one guy had lived in the hi-rise next door to mine.

Then there was the job interview I had a couple years back in Portland. I met with the CEO and he told me he had done a lot of peaks in Colorado, including Arrow and Vestal. Which I hadn't done yet. Suddenly I had a really bad feeling about that interview. I was right.