FRIDAY SURPRISE: Are you NUTS??

Friday, January 12, 2007 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant
I found this thread over on Candlepowerforums (a great place for flashaholics!) about a hike in China. Take a look at what passes for a trail:

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While not having been to China, I have had some experience along those lines. A few years back, I spent a month gold mining in the wilderness of southern Oregon - just a few miles, coincidentally, from where the James Kim family was stranded last month.

We were mining down in a canyon, and it was a seriously difficult hike in and out. The nearest flat, relatively clear spot to make a camp was about a 1-1/2 miles away, which wouldn't have been too bad - except for the 800 foot elevation change! Even that wouldn't have been too bad, except that more than half the trail was relatively level, which meant that we had to deal with an 800 foot vertical climb in about three-quarters of a mile! (Did I mention that the trail was wilderness, amounted to a path that most of the time wasn't even visible, and that we hiked in and out every single day for a month?)

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At one point in the hike, we had to traverse a cliff face for about 50 yards. The drop from that point down to the river at the bottom of the canyon was about 300 feet, and the "trail" was nothing more than a few crudely carved footholds in the cliff face. The first few times across the cliff I was sweating bullets, but at the end of the first week I was hopping across the cliff with nary a care in the world!

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(That's the cliff face, shrouded by trees, as viewed from the approach.)


After that we had to climb down a rock wall; the first day out I fell off the wall and landed on the rocks below. Luckily I was almost all the way down, and only fell 10 feet or so. The result was a broken finger (with residual loss of dexterity coupled with some arthritis - hey, ya gotta be tough if you want to live out West!)

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Just for fun, here I am in all my glory; I'm carrying about 75 pounds of mining equipment in the British pack/web gear set:

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Next installment: when I was younger, I did even dumber things. Wait until you see just what...

-=[ Grant ]=-
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