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Sierra Echo
02-23-2012, 00:41
What is your best trail blooper to date??

Mine is while doing a river crossing. The rocks were real slick. A man had his hand out to me in a spot where I had to make a big jump. I grabbed his hand and jumped. I actually made it to the rock, but my feet shot out from under me and I fell backwards pulling the man in to the water with me! :D

TOMP
02-23-2012, 01:22
After a few hours of bouldering I noticed that the bottom of my pack was now swiss cheese.

Iceaxe
02-23-2012, 01:23
I was hiking along a ridge on the PCT in 2009 when I came upon a large group of Boy Scouts resting at a trail junction.
They figured out I was a thru hiker by my "tiny" pack and began to ask questions.
After a while of hamming it up and telling them about the trail, and particularly how "in tune" with the enviroment
thru hikers get, I said my good-byes and made a grand exit striding up the trail.
Hiking poles flashing in the sunlight and kicking my legs at 4 MPH until I rounded the bend out of sight.
Unfortunately, I went the wrong way up the trail from the junction.
I had to double back and pass the scouts again.. it was pretty hilarious!

fiddlehead
02-23-2012, 01:51
Back in '89, while hiking in Maine, I made a wrong turn and when I figured it out, bushwhacked a bit to get back on trail.
Came out on the trail right in front of Noel DeCavalcante "Singing Horseman" who has since become a leader of ALDHA and always at their gatherings.
We laugh about it almost every time I see him.

Probably going the wrong way at times is my biggest problem.
Even yesterday, out on my jungle trail I'm putting together here, I found myself going the wrong way a few times.
Of course, with no trail, and bushwhacking through thick jungle, it's understandable but, I still feel like an idiot everytime it happens.

chiefduffy
02-23-2012, 01:57
Left a shelter and after hiking about a mile downhill I realized I had left something at the shelter. I stashed my pack and ran back UP to the shelter, but couldn't find the item. (Don't remember what it was now) Finally gave up and hiked back down to my pack. When I finally stopped for the night I found it buried in my pack.

Sailing_Faith
02-23-2012, 02:36
Got on the trail at 3 after 2 days of driving... it was late, but I wanted to get a couple miles in anyway. Headed back to the truck to ditch some 'extra' gear (most of my cold wx gear... before the early snow back in Nov)...

... finally got back hiking an hour later. The sun set, and I was planning to make the couple (few) hours to the shelter and was not finding any good places to camp. After I ran out of daylight, I dug in my pack looking for a headlamp... which appeared to be missing.

I hiked for 3 hours in the dark, no moon, no flashlight. Stumbled, fumbled, and groped my way to the shelter, and settled in for the night in the dark.

Of course I found the headlamp first thing in the morning... :rolleyes:

Rasty
02-23-2012, 02:46
Gave my daughter the bug repellant at the car. She used it and then put it back in the car. We hiked five miles to our first camp. My wife asked for the bug spray. I walked five miles back to the car and another five back to camp. I laughed the whole time. I wanted to do more miles the first day when we were planning the trip they didn't. We all got our wish.

tophatxj
02-23-2012, 09:24
Gave my daughter the bug repellant at the car. She used it and then put it back in the car. We hiked five miles to our first camp. My wife asked for the bug spray. I walked five miles back to the car and another five back to camp. I laughed the whole time. I wanted to do more miles the first day when we were planning the trip they didn't. We all got our wish.

You are a better man than I!
My wife would have had to suck it up. :p

mrcoffeect
02-23-2012, 09:30
Two years ago while hiking in vt, I was spending the night at goddard shelter on the side of glastenbury mt . I arrived there with just enough time to settle in and make a quick cup of coffee,and then head for the firetower on the summit to get some sunset pics.
Fast forward an hour and a half, and two rolls of film, now it is well after dark. I had stayed on awhile talking to a couple of thru hikers
that were going to stealth up top. As we went to climb down from the tower, it was then i realized in my haste back at the shelter, i had forgotten to grab my headlamp. the best part was the ribbing i got from other hikers upon my 10:30pm arrival back at the shelter.
A few hikers had stayed back at the shelter when i went up to the tower earlier,but by the time i got back there was at least six or seven more. Everyone at the shelter had spent at least an hour wondering what the bright flashes of light were, that were slowly advancing down the mt. toward the shelter. They all had a grand ole time laughing and teasing me in turns, here i was, snap a flash of my camera walk a quick few feet stop wait for flash to recharge , snap and walk ,snap and walk.

B-Rabbit
02-23-2012, 09:46
Left a gap in my rainfly to my hammock. Several hours later went to climb in and a river poured out. It was the coldest night of the year....oops.

Ktaadn
02-23-2012, 11:46
While doing some trail work outside of Duncannon last October, I was trying to pull a root out before putting in a stone step. I was facing up hill perpendicular to the trail. When the root came loose, I fell backward and did 2 or 3 summersaults down the rocky slope. When I stopped rolling, I still had my hardhat on and I was unhurt. I was a little embarrassed, but my fellow crewmembers said it looked very graceful.

Tinker
02-23-2012, 12:05
Failing to find the trail while descending a hill next to a stream in the Hundred Mile Wilderness, I crossed the stream where there appeared to be a trail into the woods (there was, made by other hikers who had gotten mixed up there). The trail petered out with no blazes, so I recrossed the stream and began looking around. I spotted a white blaze and promptly followed it right back to a pond that I had passed a mile or so back (I had gotten completely turned around - it was a dark, gray, misty day with no shadows to gauge direction for me). I met some others who said "I thought you were headed northbound. Did you flip or something?". Then I realized that I had backtracked and was quite embarrassed-
especially because I was hiking with a thruhiker who had come all the way from Georgia who had (mistakenly, it turned out) figured that I must know what I'm doing because I'm older and have spent more time in the Northeast woods.
It turned out that the trail took a sharp right away from the stream and someone had neglected to double blaze the turn. It was alarmingly clear when we came back and looked to the right at the 90 degree turn.
Two extra miles on a dismal day half way through the hundred miles :rolleyes::o.

skinewmexico
02-23-2012, 12:51
I was hiking along a ridge on the PCT in 2009 when I came upon a large group of Boy Scouts resting at a trail junction.
They figured out I was a thru hiker by my "tiny" pack and began to ask questions.
After a while of hamming it up and telling them about the trail, and particularly how "in tune" with the enviroment
thru hikers get, I said my good-byes and made a grand exit striding up the trail.
Hiking poles flashing in the sunlight and kicking my legs at 4 MPH until I rounded the bend out of sight.
Unfortunately, I went the wrong way up the trail from the junction.
I had to double back and pass the scouts again.. it was pretty hilarious!

That is awesome!!

BrianLe
02-23-2012, 13:46
"Hiking poles flashing in the sunlight and kicking my legs at 4 MPH until I rounded the bend out of sight.
Unfortunately, I went the wrong way up the trail from the junction."

EXACT same thing happened to me with some sort of hiking group milling about at a trail junction just past Big Bear City in CA. Right down to the "oh so cool" and then soon self-effacing humble aspect.

I don't know what it is, but folks really like to hang around at trail junctions, and the bigger the group the more this tends to happen. To include not even being able to see trail signs with people standing in front of them. I think that it's sort of natural to focus on the people not think so much about the navigation aspect. And then, of course (especially if you're male), once it's been established that you're a thru-hiker, you can't show any hesitation!

What silly creatures we all are, at the end of the day. I can't really think of one single biggest trail blooper, but I'll offer something a bit similar on the AT --- going NOBO right where the Long Trail and the AT are no longer the same thing, I came to the intersection and continued to follow the only white blaze I could see. Got a fair bit of bonus travel on the LT before I began to exercise my swear-word vocabulary on the way back.

Now, one of my trail partners, his would involve finding a 'water bottle' and later taking quite a big drink of denatured alcohol. Somehow he never saw the same amount of humor in that as I did. He sure laughed his butt off when I (multiple times along the way) whacked my head on shelter timbers.

1azarus
02-23-2012, 13:57
had my hammock hung in the little pavilion at port clinton one january night -- the one nearer to the river with a fireplace in it. climbed into my hammock without paying attention to the too-many layers of keep warm junk, and just fell out backwards, hitting my head pretty well on the fireplace. ouch. oh. oh. and another one! there was the night i slept on my glasses in my hammock and bent them to pretty much useless. oh. oh. and then there was the time i pitched my hammock in the dark in frustration and found out my rain fly was blowing against a bunch of prickers. yep, pretty much all my screw-ups are related to hammocks. i do agree, though, it is a screw-up with boyscout witnesses that is priceless.

STINGER1
02-23-2012, 17:12
On my 2011 cdt thru I did two back to back 250 mile sections. On the first one from old faithful village wy to tendoy id I thought I had enough food for the 10 days, instead by the 5th day I had to ration all the rest of the food. It was miserable only eating a couple bars and a couple ramen a day for the last 5 25mile days. Every time I opened my food bag I said to myself that I could eat everything I had right then. All I did was think about food, it was crazy. I now know the meaning of food porn.

bamboo bob
02-23-2012, 17:33
On the AT, I was stealth camped on Mt Mariah at the end of the Whites. In the morning I hiked along for maybe 45 minutes and saw two guys coming towards me. You see people a ways off there as there heads poke out of the brush when they step up on a boulder and disappear again when they step back on the trail. Anyway they finally got to me and I said, " Hi, did you guys stay at Rattle River last night? They, "No, (puzzled look) we were at Imp Shelter." Me. "OH OH" I merrily hiked the wrong way ! A hazard of stealth sites. Of course It wasn't my first time going the wrong way just the most embarrassing" blush...

beakerman
02-23-2012, 17:37
Not AT related but a dohh moment just the same. I pride myself on being great with map and compass skills. I teach the stuff so i should be. Anyway the west section of the Lone Star trail is nothing but a bunch of loops. One of these "loops" crosses the road twice. I had the map in my car but left it there by accident. Anyway so I started on down the trail and had I been on the corrct one I was to hang a right. Well I hung a right turn at what I thought was the correct intersection and ended up on a much longer loop than I intended. Now by myself this would not have been a problem but I had the wife and kids in tow so tripling the distance we were planning to hike was not appreciated. Moral of the story make sure you have your map in hand.

RossSFCA
02-23-2012, 17:50
While on the John Muir Trail, I asked a passerby to take a photo of me fording a knee-deep stream beneath a rushing cascade, thinking the photo would make me look like a stud.

Naturally, as soon as he took the photo, I fell in.

D'oh!

Sierra Echo
02-23-2012, 17:58
While on the John Muir Trail, I asked a passerby to take a photo of me fording a knee-deep stream beneath a rushing cascade, thinking the photo would make me look like a stud.

Naturally, as soon as he took the photo, I fell in.

D'oh!

I hope you plan on sharing the pic!

Sierra Echo
02-23-2012, 17:59
Two years ago while hiking in vt, I was spending the night at goddard shelter on the side of glastenbury mt . I arrived there with just enough time to settle in and make a quick cup of coffee,and then head for the firetower on the summit to get some sunset pics.
Fast forward an hour and a half, and two rolls of film, now it is well after dark. I had stayed on awhile talking to a couple of thru hikers
that were going to stealth up top. As we went to climb down from the tower, it was then i realized in my haste back at the shelter, i had forgotten to grab my headlamp. the best part was the ribbing i got from other hikers upon my 10:30pm arrival back at the shelter.
A few hikers had stayed back at the shelter when i went up to the tower earlier,but by the time i got back there was at least six or seven more. Everyone at the shelter had spent at least an hour wondering what the bright flashes of light were, that were slowly advancing down the mt. toward the shelter. They all had a grand ole time laughing and teasing me in turns, here i was, snap a flash of my camera walk a quick few feet stop wait for flash to recharge , snap and walk ,snap and walk.


That hilarious!

BrianLe
02-23-2012, 22:01
"had my hammock hung in the little pavilion at port clinton one january night ..."


Hammocks definitely provide lots of opportunities for in-retrospect-funny issues. I wonder how many hammock hangers have inadvertently hung on a dead tree only to have the tree start falling towards them as they climbed in? (my hand is up ...)

map man
02-23-2012, 22:03
I was hiking in the Wind River Range and responded to nature's call. I was careful, like I always am, to get comfortably off the trail, facing away from the trail with some undergrowth shielding me from sight. When I was just finishing up I looked up and realized that there was a campsite I didn't know about just 50 feet above me and there was an amused couple peering down at me. I've had other close calls of this nature that involved trail switchbacks. I bet I am not alone on this one.

Sierra Echo
02-23-2012, 22:12
You aren't! I was up near Millers Gap on a work trip. I head off to go pee not realizing the trail had a big horse shoe bend there. I have my pants almost down to my ankles when to men hiked almost twenty feet right by me. They didnt see me thank goodness. Its astounding to know how unobservant some people are. Since then, Ive always made sure to wear a rockin' pair of knickers when I hike!

Hikerhead
02-23-2012, 23:00
Hammocks definitely provide lots of opportunities for in-retrospect-funny issues. I wonder how many hammock hangers have inadvertently hung on a dead tree only to have the tree start falling towards them as they climbed in? (my hand is up ...)

I had a small one fall over on me from the head end near Stan Murray one night. Another time the rope on the head end came loose in The Mt Washington wilderness and I hit the ground after a long long day. One time I flip over the back side and my supper landed on my chest when I sat down too close to the end of my hammock.

stranger
02-24-2012, 03:10
Here is mine...so I'm climbing out of Lehigh Gap in 2001 heading northbound, the trail follows an old woods road for some time up on the ridge, so I'm walking and walking, just cruising along and miss the trail leaving the road and entering the woods to my left.

So I keep walking down the woods road and because I assume I am on the trail, when I notice the trail entering the woods on my left, I turn and follow the blazes into the woods. Because I thought I was on the trail, I never thought to look right...if I had, I would have seen that the trail 'crossed' the woods road, thus assuming I had missed the turn and would have followed the trail to the right, which was downhill.

BUT because I thought I was on the trail to begin with, I just followed the first blaze I saw. Which meant walking south on the AT, back to the junction point where I originally missed the turn off, walking back out onto the woods road and back towards Lehigh Gap!

I remember feeling like it was wrong, I kept thinking "I feel like I'm being turned around", then I saw a trail friend coming 'the wrong way' down the trail, it was amusing to say the least.

nox
02-24-2012, 03:38
On a 3 day trip from car A to car B my friend realized as we were in sight of his vehicle that he put his keys in my glovebox... luckily someone pulled into the parking lot while we were discussing who was walking all the way back.

beakerman
02-24-2012, 12:40
YEah I've done the "I've hike far enough off trail to do my business" thing only to have the trail just feet from me quite a few times. Most of the timie I find out when I hike back to my original point and start down the trail and I start recognizing trees I was looking at just moments ago...or worse yet when another hiker passes me while I'm busy. I'm glad I'm not the only one that has this happen. Of course the same thing happens with camping as well. That's not quite as embarrassing.

louisb
02-24-2012, 13:59
One time back in my scouting days we were up at the Little Grand Canyon in GA learning how to use a compass to navigate through the woods. I have never been very good with a compass so needless to say we got hopelessly lost. This was about 10 am and being the smart kids we were, we decided that the sun had to be in the east since it was still morning, and since our camp was supposed to be east of us, if we headed towards the sun we should hit the camp, more or less. Well four hours later we were still following the sun, see the problem yet, when we hit a paved road that looked familiar. That is when it dawned on us that we had done a quarter moon shaped crescent and ended up almost exactly back where we had started. We got more than a little bit of razzing for that when we finally staggered back into the camp later that afternoon.

--louis

Farr Away
02-24-2012, 15:18
You aren't! I was up near Millers Gap on a work trip. I head off to go pee not realizing the trail had a big horse shoe bend there. I have my pants almost down to my ankles when to men hiked almost twenty feet right by me. They didnt see me thank goodness. Its astounding to know how unobservant some people are. Since then, Ive always made sure to wear a rockin' pair of knickers when I hike!

They may have just been pretending they didn't see you - being polite. Happened to us one time (in the Smokies). We came up on someone doing their business; we just kept walking, and pretended we didn't see a thing.

-FA

Blissful
02-24-2012, 15:24
Going the wrong way down a mountain in MA (just before Mt Greylock) on my SOBO. I was down a half mile, saw this large tree on the ground and thought wow did I just pass that going up? Uh yeah... I was very angry with myself.

kayak karl
02-24-2012, 15:29
throw my pack down a cliff in NH as they yelled "the trail goes this was" i climbed down. got it. climbed back up and followed them down the trail which switchbacked to where the pack had landed :(

Kerosene
02-24-2012, 15:58
They may have just been pretending they didn't see you - being polite. Happened to us one time (in the Smokies). We came up on someone doing their business; we just kept walking, and pretended we didn't see a thing.Similar to my experience. I was cruising around a corner in Georgia in early April before the trees had leafed out. There was a "gap" perhaps 100 yards ahead with a handful of people standing there, with a woman walking away to the left across the trail. She promptly squatted down to relieve herself, while I'm now perhaps 40 yards away. There wasn't anywhere to go, so I just kept walking with my head down until I got to the main group. She was very embarrassed.

SouthMark
02-24-2012, 18:20
Well mine is also a hammock story. Before doing Katahdin and the 100 mile wilderness I decided to make a modification to my small ultralite hammock to make it "better". It was a Hennessy Adventure Racer which has one hole in the gathered end for the suspension to pass through. Well I decided that since I had added new suspension that two holes in each end like on the regular Hennessy Hammocks would be better. Third night out at Abol Bridge, before even starting the 100 mile wilderness, 2:00 am I wound up on the ground. Landed pretty hard on my back. Here I am at 2 in the morning improvising by whipping that end and turning it into a gathered end hammock but know shorter. It held up through the wilderness.

RWheeler
02-24-2012, 18:34
I forgot my tent poles at home once. It was a dry night, though, so I didn't learn my lesson completely.

rocketsocks
02-24-2012, 18:35
Got on the trail at 3 after 2 days of driving... it was late, but I wanted to get a couple miles in anyway. Headed back to the truck to ditch some 'extra' gear (most of my cold wx gear... before the early snow back in Nov)...

... finally got back hiking an hour later. The sun set, and I was planning to make the couple (few) hours to the shelter and was not finding any good places to camp. After I ran out of daylight, I dug in my pack looking for a headlamp... which appeared to be missing.

I hiked for 3 hours in the dark, no moon, no flashlight. Stumbled, fumbled, and groped my way to the shelter, and settled in for the night in the dark.

Of course I found the headlamp first thing in the morning... :rolleyes:not a bad ending ...I thought you were going to say you found it ....on your head!

bamboo bob
02-24-2012, 19:11
My very first backpacking trip ever was as a NOBO on Springer Mountain. What a doofus right? My "plan" was to hike as far as a could every day and then tent. I managed to get to Horse Gap ten miles in. I started setting up my TWO person Kelty Vortex tent, a four plus pounder, and could NOT find my tent stakes. I had of course packed and repacked everything many times. I tore everything apart but no stakes. Bummer. (In reality this was a free standing tent) It started to rain and blow so being a resourceful THRUHIKER after all I put some softball size rocks in the corners of my spacious tent and had a nice night watching the lightning and no being too scared. The next morning I packed up my TEN days food which I had hung and everything else and and rolled up the tent. There under the groundcloth in a neat little bag of there own, were my tent stakes!

blackbird04217
02-24-2012, 21:00
I've certainly fallen victim to the "I've walked far enough off trail..." Go about my business. Walk back to the trail and then notice, I was within feet from the trail as it switched back around, or an intersection etc.

But my whoopsie started as I walked into Hot Springs. Bought all my food, and an extra food bag to fit the food in. Then an urge hit me as I'm walking in the middle of town. I look left, buildings. Right, buildings. Everywhere, there are people and buildings! Oh-no! I had to go into some little restaurant to use the bathroom, and decided it respectable to order 'something'. From that point on, I made note before entering a town, unlike the trial you can't just walk off to the side when the urge hits...

Sierra Echo
02-26-2012, 12:39
Yesterday doing trail maintenance I was watching a sapling being cut down. I figured I was far enough out of the way. On its way down it bopped me in the nose and snot shot out. Oh well now I can say I've literally had the snot knocked out of me. Am I a total mess or what!?

MuddyWaters
02-26-2012, 21:50
My 11 yo son and I had hiked in the day before, and camped overnight on a bluff, and on 28F next morning were looking for the trail down to continue a loop trail we were hiking. We followed an obvious heavily used trail down and into the brush below , and it dead-ended. ***?

We followed several other less obvious trails at different parts of the bluff down and they dead ended too.

I did the first trail down AGAIN by myself to save him the climb back up , and laboriously searched for a way forward at the bottom, but there was nothing, just impenatrable brush.

I Went back up this bluff for about the 4th time that morning , looked at the trail markers AGAIN , There were ones pointing in oppposite directions, including two that were pointing in opposite directions on on a single tree!

Scratching my head after over an hour of searching for the trail forward , I told my son " Well, we cant stay here, and we cant find the trail forward, we will just have to backtrack". I said some choice words about the forest service and the quality of trail marking.

Then my 11yo shows me where the trail forward is. He reasoned that we should go back to the trai we ascended the bluff on, and only pay attention to the marker visible to us at that point. Then go that direction and keep going . We did and promptly came to the correct trail leading forward.

In my own defense, lots of others had made the same mistake, thats why there were heavily used false trails that deadended.

Bronk
02-27-2012, 03:38
I was hiking in the smokies in the pouring rain...had my hood pulled tight to keep the rain out and my eyes on the ground to assure proper foot placement so I wouldn't trip over a rock or a root...all of the sudden WHACK...I hit my head so hard I literally saw stars and before I knew it I fell backwards into a mud puddle...there was a blowdown that was positioned perfectly so that I couldn't see it from the angle I was looking at the ground but was high enough that I hit it with my head...I was walking VERY FAST because I just wanted to get to the shelter where it would be dry and warm, so I hit that tree at full speed...it hurt really bad, but I found myself sitting in a mud puddle in the pouring rain and all I could do was laugh. I must have sat there in that puddle laughing for 10 minutes. That was the day I knew I was having fun out there on the trail.

Hennessy
02-27-2012, 13:03
Not on the AT, but I remember once when I was trying to bushwhack my way to a cave whose location I knew, but thought a shortcut would take a couple of miles off my trip. Was following my GPS, and didn't realize I had it zoomed in almost all the way... Those contour lines were close, but didn't seem as close as I would normally think for, say, a sudden three hundred foot drop. Stepped out with one foot into thin air and narrowly avoided falling by grabbing a very small, whippy tree. It was a good lesson in keeping my eye on the ground in front of me and not on my GPS.

lemon b
02-27-2012, 13:12
Back in the day. I fell asleep one night in Kay Wood Shelter, got up to relieve myself forgetting where I was and walked right off the edge, tool out and did a bodyplant into mud. Took a second to figure out what happened. Hid my face for the next couple days.