ta&idaho
New member
I'll tell you what's worse than following unknown tracks: heading out-of-bounds WITHOUT following tracks, which I very unwisely did when I was 16. I had spent a ton of time in the summer hiking and mountain biking on the back side of my home mountain in Idaho, and this guy I knew--who was a few years older, was a sick skier, and I've since learned was full of it--told me about how easy it was to ski off the back side of said mountain down to where our families both had cabins, along a lake that is clearly visible from the top of the mountain. Beautiful Spring day, looking for a new adventure, I somehow managed to talk my then girlfriend into venturing off the back side with me, AND I also somehow convinced my dad it was a reasonably safe idea.
We had about 15 minutes of blissful backcountry turns before we ended up one ravine over from the one that I knew led eventually back down to the lake and our cabin. If you've ever been in the middle of nowhere, in think woods, in the dark, you might have some sense of how disorienting it is once things start to get dark. We hiked and hiked and hiked, but we made very little progress in this flattened out base of the ravine. Once it was pitch black, we had to dig in to a tree well and wait.
Fortunately, about an hour and a half after we dug in, we heard the sound of a snow cat that we assumed was searching for us. It got closer and closer to us, but despite yelling like two teenagers lost in the woods would be expected to yell, it never got closer than about 100 yards from us, and then kept going by without us being able to make contact with it given the darkness and thick brush.
Our hopes sank, and after yelling and yelling long past the point when we could no longer hear or see any sign of it, we dejectedly dug back in. Fortunately, about an hour later, it circled back and approached us again. This time I ran as fast as I could to intercept it, and--while it was backtracking to get around a thick stand of trees--I was able to catch up and get the driver's attention. We spent the next hour or so waiting in the cab as two ski patrollers in proper backcountry setups followed our tracks down from the top of the mountain (when we failed to show up, my Dad had called the resort manager and gone to show the ski patrol where we had ducked under the ropes). We were definitely lucky--it got down to 10 degrees that night, and we were rescued around 9:30pm.
I guess the moral of the story is, you can do some really stupid things searching for a fresh line. Maybe tracked up snow isn't so bad after all...
We had about 15 minutes of blissful backcountry turns before we ended up one ravine over from the one that I knew led eventually back down to the lake and our cabin. If you've ever been in the middle of nowhere, in think woods, in the dark, you might have some sense of how disorienting it is once things start to get dark. We hiked and hiked and hiked, but we made very little progress in this flattened out base of the ravine. Once it was pitch black, we had to dig in to a tree well and wait.
Fortunately, about an hour and a half after we dug in, we heard the sound of a snow cat that we assumed was searching for us. It got closer and closer to us, but despite yelling like two teenagers lost in the woods would be expected to yell, it never got closer than about 100 yards from us, and then kept going by without us being able to make contact with it given the darkness and thick brush.
Our hopes sank, and after yelling and yelling long past the point when we could no longer hear or see any sign of it, we dejectedly dug back in. Fortunately, about an hour later, it circled back and approached us again. This time I ran as fast as I could to intercept it, and--while it was backtracking to get around a thick stand of trees--I was able to catch up and get the driver's attention. We spent the next hour or so waiting in the cab as two ski patrollers in proper backcountry setups followed our tracks down from the top of the mountain (when we failed to show up, my Dad had called the resort manager and gone to show the ski patrol where we had ducked under the ropes). We were definitely lucky--it got down to 10 degrees that night, and we were rescued around 9:30pm.
I guess the moral of the story is, you can do some really stupid things searching for a fresh line. Maybe tracked up snow isn't so bad after all...
