View Full Version : Weirdest thing you've seen in the 'wilderness'
mhambi
09-22-2010, 12:34 PM
Be it canyoneering, 4wd'ing, hiking, motorcycling, etc...
What's the strangest, weirdest, most out of place thing/scene you've seen?
What brought this on is I stumbled across an old pic...
I was solo hiking in a side drainage of Rock Canyon well off the main trail and spied a green sleeping bag stuck up on a 10' cliff... and it looked like something was stuffed in it... :scared:
http://i52.tinypic.com/x6n5z7.jpg
After prepping myself for finding Hoffa's body or something worse, I peeked in. Full of rocks, nothing else. That was weird.
So, in your travels.... whats the weirdest thing have you seen?
denaliguide
09-22-2010, 01:23 PM
in the fall of 1977 i was leading a group of 10 students from colorado mountain college on a course called "mountain orientation". we were coming down off the redstone ridge in to avalanche creek. it was a gray, wet gloomy day. we were almost into the bottom of the valley when i saw a pack and sleeping bag on the ground, well away from where anyone would normally camp. i said out loud "i wonder who this belongs to?". someone behind me says "probably that guy in the tree." we look up and there is a body hanging from the neck in the tree. it was a suicide. he had been there for about six weeks.
side note. we went through his pack and found 2lbs of rice. we kept the rice and ate deadmans rice for a couple of meals over the next few days.
Scott Card
09-22-2010, 01:44 PM
in the fall of 1977 i was leading a group of 10 students from colorado mountain college on a course called "mountain orientation". we were coming down off the redstone ridge in to avalanche creek. it was a gray, wet gloomy day. we were almost into the bottom of the valley when i saw a pack and sleeping bag on the ground, well away from where anyone would normally camp. i said out loud "i wonder who this belongs to?". someone behind me says "probably that guy in the tree." we look up and there is a body hanging from the neck in the tree. it was a suicide. he had been there for about six weeks.
side note. we went through his pack and found 2lbs of rice. we kept the rice and ate deadmans rice for a couple of meals over the next few days.
After that....I got nothin'. :eek2:
mhambi
09-22-2010, 01:45 PM
:eek2:
Great story!
in the fall of 1977 i was leading a group of 10 students from colorado mountain college on a course called "mountain orientation". we were coming down off the redstone ridge in to avalanche creek. it was a gray, wet gloomy day. we were almost into the bottom of the valley when i saw a pack and sleeping bag on the ground, well away from where anyone would normally camp. i said out loud "i wonder who this belongs to?". someone behind me says "probably that guy in the tree." we look up and there is a body hanging from the neck in the tree. it was a suicide. he had been there for about six weeks.
side note. we went through his pack and found 2lbs of rice. we kept the rice and ate deadmans rice for a couple of meals over the next few days.
couldn't you have waited until everyone else posted before you put us all to shame :lol8:
Sombeech
09-22-2010, 01:59 PM
in the fall of 1977 i was leading a group of 10 students from colorado mountain college on a course called "mountain orientation". we were coming down off the redstone ridge in to avalanche creek. it was a gray, wet gloomy day. we were almost into the bottom of the valley when i saw a pack and sleeping bag on the ground, well away from where anyone would normally camp. i said out loud "i wonder who this belongs to?". someone behind me says "probably that guy in the tree." we look up and there is a body hanging from the neck in the tree. it was a suicide. he had been there for about six weeks.
side note. we went through his pack and found 2lbs of rice. we kept the rice and ate deadmans rice for a couple of meals over the next few days.
:scared:
Deadman's rice. Classic.
Up Bell's Canyon with Josh once we saw a man and 4 women (obviously polygamists judging by their clothing and hiar style and quantity of women per man) hiking. The odd thing was; we were pretty far up there and had stopped to filter more water when these 5 walked by. The guy was wearing slacks, sneakers, a button down shirt and a tie, the women were wearing dresses and sneakers and only one of the 5 carried anything; a single bottle of water. Weird. We planned to strip down and hike past them in the nude but never saw them again. :haha:
nelsonccc
09-22-2010, 02:12 PM
That's nothing. I, along with several other regular visitors here, came out of Spry canyon a few years ago. We were kind of tired and thus being quiet. We were walking along the sandstone ledge above the creek when we heard singing. I walked back and looked down on one of the pools to see 4 women completely naked. Well we decided to go up and say 'HI'. So we walked up to them and they didn't scamper away or anything. They were very comfortable with their nudity. So we joined them. Almost all of of our guys ended up naked with them in the pool for the next 2-3 hours. One witty Bogley member said after a few awkard moments was 'Um....Can I address the elephant in the room? Everyone is naked except us. Can we get naked too?" Turned into a delightful evening...:wink:. One of my best canyoneering experiences and the reason I now hike so silently and stealthly.
Deathcricket
09-22-2010, 02:33 PM
Not sure if it count's as wilderness, but at the bottom of Bloomington Cave is a strange skull. it's under the Crystal Kings Cavern section. Might be a dog skull but it's soo weird just sitting there at the bottom half buried in the mud. There is no way a dog could get all the way down there and die I think. Everyone who sees it agrees it's pretty creepy.
DiscGo
09-22-2010, 03:02 PM
I have nothing so cool as DenaliGuide's or even most of those stories already posted, but I sure have seen some cool stuff, and other stuff which was crazy.
I once stumbled across an adult film being made up Little Cotton Wood Canyon.
I have seen several avalanches. One of those avalanches was so awesome, it could have killed me. I saw it coming and I couldn't decide if I should get out of the way, or get my camera. I mostly just stood there and watched, but thankfully it turned and kept going down the mountain instead of covering me (not a strong judgement moment for me).
JONBOYLEMON
09-22-2010, 03:44 PM
I once stumbled across an adult film being made up Little Cotton Wood Canyon.
That was YOU???????:oops:
ibenick
09-22-2010, 03:56 PM
I once stumbled across an adult film being made up Little Cotton Wood Canyon.
Just one sentence on this?! We need details! :naughty:
nelsonccc
09-22-2010, 04:10 PM
I once stumbled across an adult film being made up Little Cotton Wood Canyon.
Was it gay porn? That would explain a lot.:lol8: Been having urges ever since......?
ibenick
09-22-2010, 04:13 PM
Was it gay porn? That would explain a lot.:lol8: Been having urges ever since......?
Perhaps expectations should be tempered. An 'adult film' to a good mormon could mean a lot of things! :lol8:
ststephen
09-22-2010, 04:18 PM
*Sort* of wilderness...
High school days; New Jersey suburban/rural area. We liked to head out to the woods at night and drink beer, often following some railroad tracks to a scenic spot. We finished one such excursion and got back to the road. As we were standing around our car trying to decide what to do next we watched as a car came racing down this two lane road towards the RR crossing. It slams on its brakes and fishtails around to come to a stop pointing back the way it came. A guy jumps out of the car and runs over to the RR crossing lights. There was a large silver box underneath the lights and he reaches around the side of that box and pulls out a black brief case. He runs back to the car with the brief case and the car lays down rubber as it races away.
Now, had we noticed that brief case we all might have been very rich...at least for the remainder of our very much shorter lives :lol8:
nelsonccc
09-22-2010, 04:24 PM
Perhaps expectations should be tempered. An 'adult film' to a good mormon could mean a lot of things! :lol8:
They were probably just making out and maybe someone was at 2nd base. As far as I'm concerned it's not an adult film unless there are 3 or more people involved, hopefully at a ratio of 2:1 female to male.
Sombeech
09-22-2010, 09:13 PM
I once stumbled across an adult film being made up Little Cotton Wood Canyon.
37658
tanya
09-23-2010, 06:29 AM
a NAKED MAN swimming in ICE COLD water! I mean water with ice floating in it. lol I wont mention who that naked man is since he is on this site. lol Not that he is odd looking but the fact he is in that water is very very very odd!
a NAKED MAN swimming in ICE COLD water! I mean water with ice floating in it. lol I wont mention who that naked man is since he is on this site. lol Not that he is odd looking but the fact he is in that water is very very very odd!
And for those of you assuming; it wasn't me. (I'd have told the story already. :haha: )
stefan
09-23-2010, 09:52 AM
crazy story denali
weird is a word that conjures up the strange and bizarre ... not sure if it's 'weird' per se, but one time a friend and i were in grand gulch and on day 9. we had seen very few people in the lower part of the canyon and things were relatively quiet with comfortable solitude. we were approaching the san juan river in the very last section where you cross from the cedar mesa layer into the halgaito shale where the canyon floor erodes away into a sweeping drop. you can see all the way down the rest of the now wide and deep canyon all the way to the mouth of the san juan. my friend of course wants to take a few moments to snap some photos. after he's done i help him put the large camera into the top-loader of his pack. i turn around to get another gaze in at this stunning view in near silence with the faint sound of the river below. it's not more than a couple seconds of again staring at this view that a gigantic black airplane (i wish i knew what) comes banking a turn up grand gulch from the san juan, below the rim of the canyon. since we were staring right down the canyon it just appear out of nowhere filling the mouth of the canyon. and it kept growing bigger and bigger somewhat darkening the sky as it flew slowly directly above us. kinda felt almost ufo like. more extraordinary than 'weird'
something else that might fit more 'weird' ... this was back in sept 96. a few of my friends and i were on a 7 day trip from cottonwood lakes to mount whitney. this is day 6 and we've decided to spend about 6 hours on the peak. we got up there about 9 am to find a couple folks drinking tequila. it was wild to watch as the day progressed and people came and left. i had read that they started issuing permits after there was 900 people on the peak one day. since it's a gigantic peak it was easy to find refuge from the people, but there was one particular moment when a group of 3 guys stopped and hung out in close proximity. they're enjoying the view and comparing times with other hikers on their rapid day hikes from whitney portal. at some point a guy pulls out a cell phone (which were quite foreign to me at the time), makes a call to his wife, brags a bit, then passes the phone to his friend to call his wife. after the calls an unknown hiker comes up to the guy to ask if he might have permission to use the phone to call a mechanic in a local town. before his hike his car had broken down and he wanted to find out the latest about it to decide how and when to get back there. almost without flinching the guy with the phone turns to him and says, "well, what do you have to barter with?" with his back to the scene, my friend mutters, "did that guy just say that?" the guy asking to use the phone has a shocked look on his face now. he pulls out his wallet, looks in it, takes out a bill, and says, "all i've got is 5 dollars." the guy with the phone says, "that'll do." snatches the bill and hands the guy the phone. we were all stunned.
oh, incidentally, early while we were at the peak, an F-14 made a couple circles around the peak at just slightly above the level of the peak. wild perspective on such an airplane
trackrunner
09-24-2010, 08:09 PM
I was solo hiking in a side drainage of Rock Canyon well off the main trail and spied a green sleeping bag stuck up on a 10' cliff... and it looked like something was stuffed in it... :scared:
After prepping myself for finding Hoffa's body or something worse, I peeked in. Full of rocks, nothing else. That was weird.
So, in your travels.... whats the weirdest thing have you seen?
similar. I cam across an abandoned tent that was partially collapsed. I could tell it had been there for a while and that the tent was wrapped around a large long object. I yelled out and asked if anyone is there and threw a rock. I zipped the door down a little but could bring myself to look. I put my camera in and then took a picture. It was rocks and a lot of sand.
Sombeech
09-24-2010, 08:54 PM
I put my camera in and then took a picture.
Dang, I think I would have done the same thing.
Swamp Thing
09-25-2010, 07:54 AM
Well, not weird but cool. I was up on Bethal Ridge near Yakima, WA looking down on Rimrock Dam which you can see in the second picture next to the big Goose Egg Rock, when I heard the sound of a jet. I looked to find an F-18 flying high above. I was watching it make it's way overead when suddenly it dove down into the valley and made a mock attack run on a little airstrip in between Goose Egg and the other rock Kloochman, diving down behind Goose Egg. I'm sure the folks down there must have been pretty surprised! (unless the airstrip gets "bombed" every day)37768
coinslab
09-29-2010, 04:50 PM
Someone who decided they were done living, and gassed themselves in their car.
Hidden Splendor parking lot. 2007ish(?) He put a hose on his exhaust and worked it up through the window, then stuffed a towel in the window and turned the car on.
I saw that "contraption" built and knew what may have happened, so i opened the door, and he was laying from the back of the car to the front in a sleeping bag, luckily face down with a hat. Hadn't been there long, car was still running.
tavapaa
09-29-2010, 06:46 PM
my reflection in the cameras screen when i go to take a picture, that's pretty weird.
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