Adventure Index

I was recently talking to a person I just met, and I mentioned that we just took a vacation to Yellowstone. The conversation quickly became an exchange of the trips we had taken, mostly focusing on those that involved hiking or climbing. He said that he found out late in life that he was an explorer or an adventurer.

It was interesting to try to put a finger on the concept. I knew what he was talking about and I couldn't put it into words very well, either. We found that the kind of vacation we enjoyed was one where we were outside of the comforts of civilization, pushing our own limits, and enjoying some of the more beautiful things nature has to offer.

That usually involves hiking at altitude, across a big elevation difference, or in a really remote location. He explained that they had hiked Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the windiest place on the planet. He also talked about the Narrows in Zion National Park, which sounded pretty cool, too.

We had both climbed 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet) in Colorado and wanted to do more, and we had both hiked from rim to river in the Grand Canyon.

He talked about the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalacian Trail as places he wanted to go, and we had both read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. I told him about a chalet in Glacier that you can't drive to that I want to go to.

So I started trying to remember what I have done that I consider adventures. I rode around in Helicopters in the military, which was pretty exciting. The best was going along the Panama Canal by helicopter, but the most dangerous was in the mountains of Panama. In western Panama in the Chirique province, I was with two helicopter pilots, just the 3 of us, when we got surprised by some weather that came in. Thick clouds blanketed the mountaintops and we couldn't fly up into these clouds, because we couldn't see or fly back down, then. We were flying through valleys, close to the ground, looking for a way out of the valley we were in and into an adjacent valley which probably had a straight shot back to the camp. While the pilots were looking up side valleys, we almost ran into a high tension power line that was draped across the valley. Talk about a stomach dropping maneuver. It wasn't over yet. The little valleys that radiated off of the main valley we were in were capped in clouds, and we wanted to find one that was low enough that we could fly through it in the clear into the next big valley over. We thought we found one, and we flew up it, in this ever narrowing slot, the clouds coming down from above and constricting us in the valley. The co-pilot watched while the pilot concentrated on flying. The co-pilot's job was to say if he could see through the hole in the end of the valley (below the clouds, but through the canyon walls) to see if it was clear on the other side. We were in a Huey, so we couldn't hover, we had to maintain forward velocity to maintain lift. The ever slowing ascent up the narrowing valley, where the pilot was trading speed for altitude was accompanied by the narrative between the pilots. "Clear?" "Not yet" "Can you see?" "No." "Anything?" "Can't tell." We had to figure it out before we reached the point where there was enough room between the canyon walls to turn around, and enough velocity to make the maneuver. We hit the point of no return and the Pilot started to turn the helicopter on it's side to go back when the copilot yelled "I see it! It's clear!" Too late, the pilot had to fall back. We traded height for speed and rocketed back into the center of the main valley, where we again turned on our side and lined up on the little canyon again. This time we sped into the canyon, aiming for the little clear triangle at the end. We came up and over the hump, with not much room to spare and rocketed in the next valley and made our way home.

I hiked for days in the Oriente, a region in the upper Amazon in Ecuador around the Rio Napa. I climbed a 14er in Bolivia on the 4th of July in 1989, but I don't know the name of it. I hiked through the jungle of Costa Rica along the route that we later put a road through, seeing some of the prettiest birds and trees I've seen in my life.

I hiked in the Grand Canyon with a friend of my from my time in the Army. He thought we could camp in the bottom, hiking down and out the next day. He did not have reservations and was surprised that you needed them at all, and further surprised that this was considered a serious subject by the Park Rangers with severe penalties. After a brief period of gloom, he decided that we would just hike down to the river in one day and back out. We retreated to our hotel room, where I nursed a nasty cold and poured over maps and travel guides, planning the adventure of the next day. I remember reading tidbits from the park brochures that warned that trying to do what we wanted to do was VERY DANGEROUS. The climate was more desert than anything else, dehydration, temperature extremes and a brutal climb were not for most people. In short, we did it. Along the Bright Angel trail, in May when the Yucca and other flowers were in full bloom. It was 39 degrees in the morning when we started and 90 degrees at 2pm when we got back. I got badly dehydrated the last hour returning, which I fixed by quickly guzzling 3 quarts of water, a cure almost as bad as the disease. We could barely walk the next day, but we did it.

I climbed a 14er, Handies Peak, with my brother in 2000, which made us both sick from altitude when we got back. I climbed Mt. Harney with my wife and Mt. Washburn on our recent Yellowstone vacation. We went whitewater rafting on our honeymoon last year, and the year before through the Royal Gorge in Colorado. We hiked from Bear Lake to Fern Lake trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park and saw a bear from about 30' away. I also hiked through parts of the Tahoe Rim trail. Another mini adventure I took some years back was flying to Miami, renting a motorcycle and riding down to Key West, which wasn't physically trying (except for the sunburn on the tops of my feet) but it was adventurous.

This fall, we planned a fall colors hike around the Eleven Point in the Ozarks. The rest of the future adventures are yet to be written, but as my new friend pointed out, once you get the bug, there's no end to it.