In Alaska, no matter where you are, you need to make good choices when you're in the woods. Even if you're still within the city boundaries on a well known trail system. Saturday night, I made one bad decision after another and was lucky to get out of the situation with only bruises, devil's club scrapes and a lost cell phone.
I had another one of my geocaching wild hairs - I wanted one of the very spiffy white jeep rubicon travel bugs. They're pretty rare but one popped up in the Geocache Survivor geocache. Geo survivor is located up off of the Spencer Loop x-c ski trail on the Hillside. The Spencer Loop is notoriously hilly and difficult. In the summer it's popular with hikers, bikers, bears, and moose. I carefully read the logs and figured I could find the cache pretty easily - I'm familiar with the loop and the cache's terrain difficulty wasn't too high.
I figured I could get the cache within an hour. So Saturday night at 8:00 PM I headed out. First big mistake - way too late to allow enough time for a wilderness cache. The sun is now setting at about 10:30 PM. So, I really didn't give myself enough daylight. It was also late in the day and I was about out of energy. But, I just had to get that jeep.
So I got out on the trail at about 8:30 PM and immediately started going up. And up. And up. That trail really is steep and long. Well, after about a mile total, the trail took a turn in the completely wrong direction. But I knew where the trail would ultimately end up - it would loop back to the cache location. But I underestimated the detour distance. There was a fork in the trail that I could have taken that was much shorter. But because I was so sure about my trail choice, I didn't investigate the fork. Another big mistake.
An hour later after a moose enduced forced retreat through twisted trail loops and tons of off trail bushwacking I ended up basically 100 yards from the trail fork and quite close to the cache coordinates. If I had just investigated the fork, I would have saved myself a ton of energy.
By this time, I was absolutely beat and somewhat fuzzy. More than once, I headed off in a 180 degree opposite direction from the coordinates reading. I was not thinking straight. I should have bagged it and headed home. But I was fixated. This is a classic wilderness mistake. This how people get hurt - they don't quit when they should. I know way better than to continue. But I stupidly did.
So, I was on the trail, a mere 400 feet from the cache. The coordinates indicated that I should head directly north over the edge of a very steep ravine that was filled with devil's club. So, instead of paying attention, I just clambered over the edge. I figured I was close - the bushwacking wouldn't be difficult. Well...
Yet another mistake. I was so tired that I confused myself yet again on the coordinates and ended up staggering off to the north east instead of to the north west. The vegetation was so thick and the incline so steep that it was virtually impassible. At this point, I began to realize that I might be in some actual trouble. I finally got myself going in the right direction and after about 30 minutes of extremely difficult going, I managed to make it to the cache. I was totally worn out and just sagged to the ground and grabbed the cache. I looked through the cache, signed the log, and was getting ready to dig into my swag bag for a goodie to leave behind when I was attacked by wasps. Which totally sucked. I slammed the cache shut, stuffed it back in its hiding spot and skedaddled - fortunately I didn't get stung.
As I skedaddled, I discovered a nice little trail. I followed the game trail right back up the top to the main trail. The trail came out about 20 feet to the west of where I dived over the side - if I just done a little preliminary searching, I could have saved myself about 30 minutes of pain, completely avoided all of the devil's club, and greatly reduced my overall bruise level. Man...
But I tried not to think about that and as I started down the main trail, I reached for my cell phone so I could check in with Peter - who was at home certainly worrying away. But guess what? No cell phone - it had slipped off my belt somewhere during my epic devil's club crawl. There was no way I would be able to find it. It was gone. Yet another very very very stupid mistake. That cellphone should have been safely tucked away in my pack.
So, I picked up my pace - it was about 10:15 PM and almost dark. I knew Peter would be extremely worried and I didn't want to be out on the trail in the dark with moose and bears. It took me a half hour to make it back to my car. I then drove 100 yards to the Hilltop Chalet where a wedding celebration was just winding down. I went up to one of the groosmen and asked if he had a cellphone - I explained that I had lost mine. He very generously loaned me his cellphone and I dialed home. I got Alix, let her know that I was o.k. and on my home and then handed the phone back to the somewhat bemused groomsman.
Henry and I then set a landspeed record heading home. I berated myself every mile of the way. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I got home, went upstairs and there was Peter in bed looking very worried - evidently Alix had not passed on my message so he didn't know I was o.k. until I pulled into the driveway at around 11:15 PM. Plus, I was bleeding on my forehead where I had gotten whacked by devils club, my clothes were filthy, etc...Peter was quite shaken. And I felt even worse. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Peter and I were both so wound up that we couldn't go to sleep and ended up playing 20 questions until about 2:00 AM. Peter got to pick first - it took me about ten questions when I ended up with the right answer - my cellphone lost in the woods.
Oh - and the white jeep had already been picked up by someone earlier in the day...
8:33:22 PM 
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