Why I Read Scary Stories

I hike alone. I kayak alone. I sometimes snowshoe alone. Most of the time, my adventures proceed without incident, but not always.   On a summer day, six years ago, a span of three minutes changed the way I navigate through life.  This is my scary story…

Doing all of these activities alone is risky, I am well aware, and I am constantly reminded by others of the dangers. If I don’t come home one day, nobody will be surprised, and many will have the last word, which I hate. My husband and I recently went to the Olympic Peninsula for a weekend getaway, and I showed him a few of the places that I have hiked, kayaked and driven to. All he could do was look at me, and shake his head. After a while, he stopped asking questions.

During the week, I work in a business in which I talk to people, and am talked at, for hours on end. Six phone lines, a cell phone, two computer screens and two email addresses. A constant stream of people in and out of my office. Numerous deadlines throughout the day, that if missed, cost somebody money and cause many headaches. I make sure I don’t miss those deadlines. I imagine it being like an aircraft controller, moving documents and money instead of planes, massaging people and schedules and moods. It can be exhausting. So when the weekend comes, and I have the opportunity to escape, my first choice is to head somewhere with the highest chance of seeing animals and pristine nature, and the least chance of encountering masses of people. When I am alone, I don’t have to talk, cater to anyone else’s needs or schedules, or frankly, listen to opinions. It is how I decompress and brace myself for more of my life. An attitude that is not especially popular at home.

To make sure that I do come home at the end of the day, I prepare. I do this by reading everything I can find about my chosen activities, and I read survival stories. Where I learn the most, however, is in the stories where there is no survivor. I want to know what mistakes were made, because I have no intention of making those same mistakes, of being that story. I don’t see climbing a mountain in my immediate future, but I read the entire bible of mountaineering, so I could learn about snow conditions, ice axes, self-arrest techniques, the cause and likely slope angles of avalanches. I have a book that describes, in details pulled directly from park ranger reports, every death in a national park, since the inception of the park system. I have many books about bear attacks, a book about unusual deaths in Alaska. I study stories about motorists stranded on isolated roads in deep snow, about the men who leave their families behind to seek help, and die in the process. Many deaths are simply caused by bad luck, or the inescapable superiority of nature and the elements over man. But many are also the result of poor planning, poor decision-making, or hubris. Usually, a combination of all three.

When I started hiking, it took me a while to build up my endurance and skills. I started out slowly, but pushed the limits of my abilities each time. I got better, and I grew more confident. Too confident. I took some risks, and found myself in places I had no business being, and had a few close calls. None was close enough to slow me down, until a hot July day in 2011…

I was at Sunrise, in Mt. Rainier National Park, and it was a beautiful clear day. One of my favorite hikes is Burroughs Mountain, an ancient eroded mountain that is older than Mt. Rainier itself. It is a rare sub alpine zone that resembles the arctic tundra, with masses of heather and other woody ground covers. The summit is treeless and windy, home to mountain goats. When you are at the top of Second Burroughs, you feel like you could reach out and caress the mountain, and you are close enough that you can track the climbers with your naked eye. I had checked in with a park ranger before heading out, to inquire about the conditions. The parking lot at Sunrise is at an elevation of 6,400 feet, and the trail ascends steeply from there. The hiking season on that side of the mountain is short, and there are areas that often don’t melt out at all. In July, there are usually many sections of the trail that remain covered in snow. I was assured that the trail was safe, and so I started out on the Frozen Lake route, and ascended without incident. I arrived at Second Burroughs, and found that I had the whole place to myself. There is a lovely stone bench at the top, that when warmed by the sun, makes a cozy place to rest and gaze up and marvel at the mountain. It was about 80 degrees, peaceful, and the only sounds were the creaks and groans of the icy seracs on the glaciers, and the occasional dust devil that would whip up and make a hissing sound like a hairdryer as it whirred over the rocky ground. I was so enthralled, that I stayed there for two hours, soaking up the sun and the views. What I was not factoring in was that the snow fields I would soon be crossing were also soaking up the sun…

After a time, I packed up and headed out. Confident that the information that the ranger had provided me was accurate, I took the other route down the mountain. I had traveled this route many times before, and there are stretches that are so steep, they can turn your stomach if you look down. I had always traveled that route later in the season, and had never encountered snow. When I came to a section of the trail that was covered by a snow field, I stopped to assess the situation. This particular part of the trail was once subject to a rock slide, and is extremely steep. The entire face is covered with loose talus: flat, sharp rock shards of varying size, that slip and slide over each other and can be dangerously unstable. The slide area goes straight down to the White River, almost 3,000 feet below, and has a slope of roughly 70 degrees. In the best of conditions, it is hair-raising. I could see across the snow field, which was about 50 yards wide, to the trail continuing on past the other side. I could see a boot trail across the snow field, so I knew someone else had crossed it. What I did not have yet was the skill to see that the snow was degraded, and had softened considerably in the hot sun of the late afternoon. I did not yet have the experience to think about when the last pair of boots crossed the snow, and to realize that it may have been hours before, in the cool of the morning, before the snow had softened. With some trepidation, I started to cross.

Halfway across the snow field, the entire slope gave way beneath me. You have no idea how fast you can slide on a steep slope until it is happening. All I could think about was that if I did not slow my fall, I was going to start tumbling, and I was going to go right over the cliff. I had not yet started carrying an ice axe, but had read about self-arrest techniques. I managed to flip onto my stomach and I started punching at the snow, with my fingers stiffened like a garden claw, and kicking the toes of my boots in to try to stop my fall. I slid down about 75 feet, and came to a stop, hugging the hill and trying not to move. I was paralyzed with fear, but I knew I had to get off that snow field. I stood up slowly, turned sideways to try to walk across the rest of the way, but just that small change in my angle in comparison to the slope was enough to start the hill sliding again. I kicked and clawed some more, trying to slow myself down again, and tried to press myself flat to the slope so I wouldn’t start rolling, ass over teakettle, and sail over the edge. I slid another 50 feet or so, and hit the rocks at the edge of the snow field at a shocking rate of speed. I felt like I had been hit by a truck, but I was so grateful to be at a stop, and off the snow. I did not take time to assess the damage, because I was dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, and the talus can be as unstable and unforgiving as the snow. I was well below the trail, so I crawled across the slope, straight for the trees, which were at most 3 feet high. When I reached them, I clung to them like a lifeline, and used them to pull myself back up the hill to the trail. After I had moved a safe distance down the trail beyond the snow field, I sat down to rest. Looking back, I realize I was in a state of shock. I was wearing shorts, and my legs looked like they had been scraped across a cheese grater. I had hit a rock at the bottom with my bottom, and I was bleeding and already purple. My fingers all felt broken and frozen, and my fingertips and the palms of my hands were speckled with embedded gravel. My shirt had risen up when I slid, and I had cuts and small rocks embedded all over my stomach. I just wanted to go home, so I forced myself to get up, and keep walking. I had not gone very far when I encountered another open area of the trail, and another snow field. I sat down, feeling defeated. I knew I could not go back the way I came, the slope behind me was too steep to go up and around, and I was terrified to cross another snow field. I thought about trying to call for help, but when I checked my SPOT beacon, which had been on when I started out, I found that the battery had died. I rifled through my pack, and put on all my extra clothes, and pulled out every bit of food I had in my pack. I ate it all, trying to muster enough energy to stop shaking.

After some time had passed, I came to the conclusion that it was going to soon be dark, that the fact that I had the mountain to myself meant now that I was by myself, and nobody was coming to save me. I had to get up, summon the courage, and get across. Thankfully, the second snow field was a bit smaller, and I made it across without sliding. I have never felt so grateful in all my life. But it was now dusk, I smelled like fresh blood and feared I would attract bears, and I still had several miles to go to get back to the car. It was all downhill, and I almost ran. When I neared Sunrise Camp, I came around a corner, and there was a huge elk standing on a knoll, watching me. I stopped, and we looked at each other, and it was then that I finally wept. I felt like he had been there waiting for me, to make sure I knew I was not alone, and that another being was aware of my presence and watching over me. After he turned and disappeared back into the trees, I wiped away my tears, took a deep breath, and dug deep down for just a bit more energy to get me back to the parking lot. When I reached my car, I leaned on the trunk, and said a prayer of thanks. I found a couple of plastic bags and filled them with snow to ice my wounds, and drove myself to the hospital in Enumclaw.

The following weekend, before setting out on another hike, I presented my wounded self to the park rangers and reported the incident. After my hike, I ran into the rangers again, and they told me that two of them had gone up to investigate, and found the place where I had fallen…they could see where I slid, stopped, and slid again, and where I hit the rocks. They had closed that section of the trail, and it stayed closed until the snow melted several weeks later. They told me it was a miracle that they weren’t picking pieces of me off the rocks at the base of the cliff. They apologized that I had been given poor advice, by a person that had apparently not even been up to that section of trail yet that season. They talked me into becoming a volunteer.

That experience shook me to the core, and I am still processing and recovering, six years later. It put on immediate pause my dream of attempting to summit the mountain. I had already signed up and paid for a guided trip to Camp Muir, a climbing base camp at 10,000 feet, which was scheduled for two weeks later, and I postponed it another month, because I was too traumatized to set foot on snow. When I did go to Camp Muir at the end of August, I was fighting my fear instinct the entire way up. It took me so long to hike up to Muir, that the guide caught up to me and wanted me to turn back, but I refused. He decided that I was so close, he would let me continue up, but told me we could only stay 15 minutes, and we would have to glissade down. I had purchased and practiced with an ice axe in the interim, but it did little to assuage the sheer fright of sliding down the icy chutes that crisscross the ice field, and I nearly dislocated my arm, trying to keep the controlled slide to as slow a speed as possible. That was the last time I set foot on a steep snow-covered slope.

So, what did this experience teach me? I have reviewed all of the things I did wrong, and there were many. I was overconfident in my abilities. I do not know enough about snow, in its many variations. I did not factor in the heat of the day, and I stayed too long. I did not replace my batteries in my emergency beacon at the beginning of the season. I did not carry an ice axe. I listened to unsound advice and looked to clues left by earlier travelers, and did not follow my fear instinct, the one that stopped me at the edge of the snowfield and made me pause. I was too intent on following my planned route, and was unwilling to backtrack to go home via the safer route. I learned that when rocks are embedded in your fingers and hands, they continue to surface for weeks after the fact. And yes, I was travelling alone. But my usual hiking companion is less experienced than I am, and she relies on me to make the decisions. If I had put her in harm’s way, and she had gone over the edge, I would have to live with that. In the end, the lesson that truly stuck, and hurt me the most, was that ultimately, the mountain is going to be the winner, and I am no match.

I have been back to that section of the trail many times since, both with family, and alone. When I took my husband there a couple of years ago, he was surprised to see how steep it really was, and he realized why I am still so traumatized over it. To this day, I cannot approach that area without feeling physically ill, and I cannot talk about the details of it to others without crying.

I continue to hike, but I take far fewer risks. I stay off the snow. I did become a park volunteer, and took all of their offerings of training. I carry a well equipped pack, no matter how short the hike. I continue to read everything I can find about hikers and climbers that perish, trying to dig up details about what went wrong. I am reminded constantly by the lingering pain and stiffness where I tore a muscle in my arm, and by the nerve damage in my leg. I still read scary stories, more than ever. I am haunted by the story of the climber that was holed up in his tent with his companions during a storm on the mountain, who stepped out of the tent to gather snow to melt for tea, and was never seen again. Did he wander too far in search of clean snow? Did the wind pick him up and carry him away? Was he blinded by the blizzard, and walk over the edge of a crevasse? I am sure his climbing partners are haunted by the same questions. I am also haunted by the story of Nick Hall, a climbing ranger that perished the following June, after helping save some wounded climbers on Mt. Rainier. He had just helped load the last climber onto the helicopter, when he lost his footing and slipped, falling 3,700 feet down the face of the Emmons Glacier. He was a man who had years and years of experience climbing, and one misstep caused him to lose his life. If someone with that much experience could die, then what business do I have being on the mountain? I was tortured by the thought of what went through his mind as he slid. When I talked to one of the park rangers about it, he told me that when a person starts to tumble, they are knocked unconscious, or worse, very quickly. Small comfort.

My guide to Camp Muir told the story of his friends that were caught in a blizzard on the Muir Snowfield. They were experienced climbers, extremely fit, and had been to Camp Muir so many times, they could probably navigate it blindfolded. They went up to see off another friend that was heading to the summit. It was a warm day, and they figured it would be a quick up and down, so they were dressed in running gear. A blizzard struck, and they were forced to dig a snow cave. It was a woman, her husband, and another friend. The husband insisted on being on the bottom of the snow pit, to keep his wife off the snow. Throughout the night, she begged him to trade places with her, so he could warm up, but he refused. By morning, he was dead. So experienced, so fit, so unprepared. Pure hubris.

When I am volunteering in the park, I am sure I would win the title of Queen Buzzkill. When I see a family headed up to Burroughs via the snow-covered trail, small children in tow, wearing sequined flats or tennis shoes with no traction, I find it impossible to keep my mouth shut. I see people heading out at dusk, under dressed, no packs, no lights. I see people headed up to the Fremont Lookout at the beginning of a thunderstorm, a place with absolutely no place to hide when the lighting strikes. I explain to them the worst that could happen, and am amazed when they shrug their shoulders and continue on. A park ranger told me once that people believe that if there are trails and signs, and it is a park, it must be safe. Yet people die every year. I am shocked that more don’t. For most, luck outweighs ignorance and being ill-prepared. I think about climbers and other extreme sports athletes, and I am reminded of a book I read in a college business management class, called “The Peter Principle”, by Raymond Hull. It talks about a management theory, formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, where in business, people will continue to rise or be promoted, until they reach the level of their incompetence. Meaning, people will do well until they don’t. There must be a similar principle in extreme sports…people will continue to push the limits, until the limits push back and you pay the price. You hear the rationale again and again: “At least he died doing what he loved.”

I am married to an Eagle Scout, but I am the one that packs a survival kit when we cross the mountains, blankets and pillows and food, and candles, because I read they can raise the temperature of the inside of the car by ten degrees. I insist that we top off the tank before driving long stretches of isolated or potentially treacherous highway. My husband pointed out recently that the piles of car chains in the garage were purchased at my insistence, before various road trips, and have never been used. I have always been afraid of going off a bridge and being trapped, while the car fills with water and sinks to the bottom. After watching a documentary about how it is almost impossible to break a car window underwater, I bought everyone in my family a gadget to keep in their glove box that can be used to slice your seat belt off, and then be used to tap on the window to break it. (You must wait until the water is completely covering the window…hold your breath. Merry Christmas.)

I am full of good doomsday advice. I have my father to thank for the “worst case scenario” thinking…I was raised with a warning preceding every activity. Don’t walk on the railroad tracks, you will get hit by a train. Don’t play on a flotation device, because you will get sucked out to sea. The fact that those things happened to others in my neighborhood when I was growing up, and he was able to have the last word about it, only cemented the fear in my mind, and taught me that the worst really can happen.

You hear stories about people having their life flash before their eyes right before they die. When I thought I was going over the edge of the cliff, all I felt was a deep, deep sorrow that I was about to leave my children motherless, and a desperate desire to do whatever I could to stop that from happening. I have come to realize that no activity or goal that puts me in a situation where I know I am going to die, and might have to experience again the heart-wrenching feeling of regret and loss that I felt in those few seconds, will ever be worth it. It was a moment that came close to ending my life, and it was life-changing, on so many levels.

The trick now is to find a balance, and to only engage in activities at a level that will heal me, not hurt me. To slowly regain my confidence, but not get to the point of dangerous overconfidence. I was very fortunate that the ER physician on call the night I drove to the Enumclaw Hospital also happened to be a climbing guide, and as she picked gravel out of the skin on my legs, hands and stomach, she spent a great deal of time talking me through the grief, because I was sure I had just spent my last day on the mountain I loved so much. I will always be grateful that she was there, and that she was able to put me back together, both physically and emotionally, and encourage me to not give up my dreams.

I refuse to give up doing the things I love, but I try to learn everything I can, to anticipate every possible scenario, and to think each one through as a training exercise. Sometimes, though, I think it through to the point that I scare myself out of what I had planned to do. Once, on my way to snowshoe at Paradise, I was running the avalanche criteria through my head, and I got myself so worked up, I turned around and went back home. I was within minutes of the park entrance, and almost two hours into my drive, but it felt right to retreat that day. I am not sure if I am just becoming better tuned in to my instincts, or if sometimes an angel is whispering in my ear that maybe today is not the day to snowshoe alone…but whatever it is, I listen more carefully now.

I will continue to read the scary stories, and obsess over the details, because life is scary, and we must try to learn from the mistakes of others. If I am going to continue to go out on adventures, I have to be prepared, because if a day comes where luck is not on my side, that preparation may be the only thing that sees me through. I want to keep doing the things I love, but I don’t want to die doing them. However, I do need to find a way to be at peace with the idea that no matter how prepared I am, there may come a day when I make a misstep, the Universe will have its own plan, and Nature will be the ultimate winner. I believe that if I truly understand and accept that possibility, I no longer suffer from the hubris that once allowed me to walk onto a slippery dance floor, to perform a tango with fate. And when I have accepted that, I can focus on the gifts of the adventure, use fear as a tool, tighten up the straps on my pack, and step bravely forth.

Scary stories, interesting reads, sources:

Mountaineering, The Freedom of the Hills, The Mountaineers Books, edited by Ronald C. Eng
True Stories of Bear Attacks, Who Survived and Why, by Mike Lapinski
Cheating Death, Amazing Stories from Alaska, by Larry Kaniut
The Magnificent Bears of North America…and Where to Find Them, by Keith Scott
Death, Daring, & Disaster, Search and Rescue in the National Parks, by Charles R. “Butch” Farabee, Jr.
The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, by Sid Marty
The Big Fact Book About Mount Rainier, by Bette Filley
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
The Bear: A Novel, by Claire Cameron
The Peter Principle, by Raymond Hull

Photo: Mt. Rainier, by Susan Berry