Our first big Friday adventure in the Uintas Mountains didn’t go well and it was entirely our fault. All of our problems could have been solved with a map but did we have one? Reader, we did not. We also didn’t have rain gear, cold weather gear, or extra water and I have no excuse. I know better! I can only think that a year of little jaunts in Millcreek just made me complacent. But COMPLACENCY KILLS. I’m glad we’re not dead.
So what happened? We meant to do a 3 mile loop. We missed a turn, hit a lightning storm at 11,000 feet, kept going because we needed to get off the ridge, then kept going it was 50 degrees and raining and then hailing, then still kept going because it seemed right and WE HAD NO MAP. By the time I realized our loop should have ended by now, there was no one to be seen (this is a heavily used area, even for wilderness) and I had about 15 minutes of really experiencing being lost in the middle of nowhere. Do not recommend!!
Thankfully a family came down the trail before I had a full-on panic attack and let us take a picture of their map. We were 4 hours into the hike at this point and the only way to get back to the car was…to turn around and retrace our steps. It was another 5 hours until we got out and it was a slog. But there was no way out except to keep going, and we did.
The ONE thing I did right was have the first aid kit with water purification tablets in my pack, and we used them. (Refilling the water from a tiny crystal stream was a high point in the endless march back.) We did have plenty of snacks and obviously we made it home, but wow. We were the unprepared hikers you hear about on the news. Judge not be ye lest judged, etc.
I debated even writing about this and just sharing pretty pictures instead, but writing helps me process and also LET THIS BE A WARNING TO US ALL to be more prepared than you think you need to be, especially when you’re going into the real wilderness.
Not that I want to go back into the wilderness any time soon. I might just stay home forever. But it IS pretty there:
