All By Myself

(I hope you sang the title in your head)

Solo adventure - December 2008

The other day a friend who is plotting a big solo trip asked how you deal with fear on solitary adventures? Such a great question! In the last couple years my anxiety has spiraled out of control with many things, but with solo trips it’s been alright. Anxiety aside, I think fear plays an important role in safe adventuring because it keeps you aware of potential dangers and allows you to determine if you have the skills to address them. Fear, unfortunately, can easily keep you from stepping out the door at all, but in the best case scenario, a healthy level of fear lets you leave the house with a Plan B for when things go wrong. See an abridged list of my fears below.

Helpful Fears

• Wind – the worst at foiling plans
• Lightning – the second worst
• Dumb deer – seriously, why don’t they run away from headlights? Why would headlights ever be an ok thing?
• Cliff edges – everyone trips, I trip all the time, so be careful
• Driving accidents – people are the worst
• Contaminated water – fecal coliforms, Giardia, brain-melting amoeba… choose your water carefully
• Bears
• Drowning

Unhelpful Fears

• Murder deer in the woods – not a thing, but I still worry about them
• Vagina bugs in the water – also not a thing, go ahead and skinny dip
• People creeping through your camp to murder you in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere – if someone wanted to murder you they would do it faster than that (direct quote from my mom, who is probably right)

Since I could use a good laugh, here’s a list of some of the things that have gone wrong on my solo adventures.

Should have used that time to develop my artistic side

1. I had to be rescued by the Park Service on my first solo vacation. Thirty minutes into a kayaking excursion on Lake Powell the wind started blowing hard and never stopped, so I spent 5 hours alone on a beach I couldn’t paddle away from. I through the guide book I packed several times (Birds of Western North America) before I swallowed my pride, called 911 (the only way to get hold of the park service in that primitive area) and was rescued by a boat with flashing lights. I can still taste that humble pie.

   

   Big ole sunglasses hiding my tears

2. Hit a deer and totaled my car. Driving back from a solo trip to Capitol Reef, where I went to just cry for a while, I hit and killed a deer and it disabled my car. I was stuck in Bicknell, UT in November for an extra 24 hours and it felt like I had to ask everyone in Wayne County for help. I couldn’t have gotten to my rental car without the help of a whole fleet of people and am eternally grateful for their help. It restored my faith in humanity, but I maintain that driving is the most dangerous thing we do on any adventure. And mule deer are the worst.

   

   It's hard to capture fear in a landscape picture

3. Cried and ran away from lightning in the Uinta’s. Thunder-snow is terrifying. Everything around you is shaking and electrified. Running for my life was not an appropriate response to lightning (should have squatted on the balls of my feet, being as small as possible) and slipping on slick rocks while crying (literally) made me feel like a spazzy dumbass. Something like that seems to happen every time I get a little cocky. Monsoon-seasonal thunderstorms are expected at high elevations and I’m really glad I bagged King’s Peak before it came in. The next night it snowed enough to collapse my tent. 

   

   I spend a lot of time looking for cool poops. This bear poop is the coolest I've found

4. Carried around a bear-bonking stick while hiking in the Abajo Mountains; kept losing my bear-bonking stick. Situational awareness (noticing important elements of your environment and what they mean for your safety) is as important as starting with a good plan. Noticing both the bear warnings at my campground and the bear poop on the trail helped me be alert to the potential to find a bear. I can’t verify that bonking sticks are useful, but it made me feel safe. Unfortunately, I lost my stick every time I bent down to take a picture of flowers. Not the most peaceful hike I’ve taken. 

   

   Top of the Henry Mountains - home to the scariest deer in the world

5. Cuddled with a hatchet or pepper spray in my sleeping bag more than once. I once had to sleep in a rest stop in rural Washington because I was going to fall asleep in a snow storm if I didn’t pull over, so I slept in the cab of my truck snuggling a keychain pepper spray. A year later I threatened a bunch of deer outside my tent in the Henry Mountains with a gun; I had no weapon and they did not understand the threat. After I caught a deer licking my car in the LaSal mountains I spent the rest of the night with a hatchet next to my pillow, just in case. 

   

   Pretty. Not great camping conditions though

6. I visited Bryce Canyon around Christmas instead of going to St. George as planned. Bryce Canyon is at 7,000 feet and was under a foot of snow. I couldn’t get a fire started so fed myself by warming up Clif Bars on the electric heaters in the bathroom. An ice crust formed on the outside of my sleeping bag and crunched every time I moved, which I interpreted to be someone creeping across the snow outside to murder me. I did not sleep.  

Hopefully it’s clear that the fear never leaves, but is sometimes helpful. After more than a decade of solo adventuring, I do have some advice in addition to my anecdotes.

• Make a plan for what you will do with each day but also expect things to go wrong.
• While planning be explicit about the risks that are present and if they are acceptable. Getting lost is an acceptable (probable) risk for me. Free solo climbing is not.
• Have a check-in person who knows where you’ll be and when to expect you back in cell service.
• Check the weather and understand the effects of elevation on temperature and precipitation. We live in a magical time of smart phones with radar apps. Use them when possible.
• Pack carefully. I like to bring reading and writing materials for long, cold nights or days I am stranded. Having something comforting, like a hatchet, when I am scared is a bonus.
• Develop deer-eyes that check for deer on the side of roadways. And don’t drive through Wayne/Sevier Counties at night.

Solo trips give you the chance to peep wetlands without any mockery or impatience.

I’m a big believer in the solo vacation if it’s something that has ever piqued your curiosity (but it’s not for everyone). It definitely requires an honest assessment of you capabilities, but really, you’re more capable than you give yourself credit for. I tend to feel all the things very strongly, from elation to regret, while I’m out alone, but I think that’s one of the best parts of solo adventures. I guess what I’m saying with all of this is to expect a least one thing to go wrong when out of solo trips, but it will be alright.

I read this quote in a Banff Film Festival magazine years ago and I’ve put it in several blogs because it’s still the best summation of solo adventuring I’ve read:

The line between badass and dumbass is not only fine, it is a grey, wavy line, and in a different place for each individual. It’s hard to recognise, easy to miss, and painfully clear when overstepped. It’s the concept of pushing hard and not giving up, balanced against blind ambition and getting in too deep. Basically, when you start to get really scared, you are probably approaching your line.
-Leo Holding

Uranium was named for the planet Uranus

In my quest to more be skilled generally I’ve been working on mapping skills by downloading interesting-sounding data layers from the internet and trying to make something out of them.  Most recently I made this map of Utah mines [1]:

A few parts of the map struck me:

• Fluorine-fluorite (coded ‘F’ in the data) and Uranium (coded ‘U’) are often mined in the same places, leading to the attribute table commodity code ‘FU.’  This is funny. 
• The sand and gravel pits follow the base of the Rockies and length of I-15 quite nicely.
• Look at all those uranium mines. I was in one of those once. 

I think the Cold War is interesting.  It’s amazing that during my lifetime but not in my memory Americans lived with the legitimate fear of nuclear war (it is not amazing that we are re-living this fear).  That between 1947 and 1991 we were engaged in an arms race that produced nuclear warheads small enough for three to fit on a single intercontinental ballistic missile and each capable of producing a 475 kiloton explosion (that’s equivalent to 475,000 tons of TNT)[2].  The first nuclear bomb, dropped in 1945, was almost 20 times heavier with a 15 kiloton yield[3].  The U.S has LOTS of nuclear weapons, which required lots of uranium.  While we’ve begun slimming down our stockpile of nuclear weapons, hundreds of abandoned uranium mines in Utah currently bear witness to that crazy period of time. 

Look at this stuff.  Isn't it neat?

Abandoned mines are an environmental hazard but abandoned places are also irresistible.  Brent, Karina, and I had planned for a day of mine exploration during our 2015 Spring Break trip.  I downloaded a list of uranium mines and we set off to look at the closest mines… which turned out to be active processing mills (read: do not trespass there).  This was disappointing, but Plan B was to drive the roads in the part of San Juan County with the highest density of active mines in hopes of finding something abandoned.  And it worked. 

Speak friend and enter  

Uranium is a heavy metal that is found in rocks, soil, and water.  It’s way more common than silver or gold.  Uranium can move through the earth with groundwater, driven by changes in oxygen availability that will keep the uranium bound to water or bound to rocks[4].  Sandstone can be lousy with uranium because it is porous (so uranium-laden water can move through it) and because most sandstone deposits were formed near or below ancient seas, where the oxygen availability fluctuated a lot.  It wasn’t a coincidence that the cliffs we were exploring had bands of red and green rock that showed when oxygen was (red) and wasn’t (green) available millennia ago.  

The grey rock coming out of the chute and below it is uranium ore

When mining, the key is to find uranium-bearing rocks that have enough concentrated uranium to make digging a tunnel, carrying the rocks out of the ground, and transporting them to a refinery worthwhile.  Then a refinery will need to see reason to crush, heat, and spin the ore until it is enriched enough that it can make atom-splitting chain reactions (the physics and chemistry, of course, are more complicated, but that’s the gist of it)[5].  Uranium by itself isn’t very radioactive at all and wasn’t the real threat while we were in the mines. 

Tunnels

Side note.  I’m also think water law is interesting and it follows a lot of the rules of mining. Did you know that the General Mining Act of 1872 still stands as the rules for how one claims and works a mine.  1. First to claim it owns it.  2. Mineral rights are separate from land rights (you don’t own the minerals below your home).  3. You have to put in $100 of labor per year to keep your claim valid. 

Only slightly less magnificent than the Door of Durin

The mines we explored were three separate claims with interconnected tunnels established in the 1950’s. The ores in the mines were a mix of uranium, vanadium, potassium, and sulphur; in practical terms, there were a lot of yellow rocks[1].  Prior to the Uranium Boom in Moab, mines extracted radium (for medicine) and vanadium (for making iron steel stronger), both of which are found in the same places as uranium[6].  We left the tunnels with mild headaches, which might have been due to vanadium gas. 

Note the white calcite and yellow salts

The Uranium Boom (approximately 1952-1961) was wild.  Staking lots of claims was profitable at that time because the U.S. government paid a guaranteed price for uranium and the Colorado Plateau had a lot to offer.  But as mentioned above, uranium isn’t uncommon and the market quickly became saturated and the government stopped buying uranium.  Most mines were abandoned by the 1970’s, leaving behind structures, mining refuse, and any equipment that wasn’t worth the cost of moving.  Miles of underground tunnels and heaps of uranium slag are just one facet of the unintended consequences that came to Utah with the Cold War arms race, along with stockpiles of neurotoxins in the West Desert and down-winder cancer deaths in southwestern Utah. 

We wandered around a couple miles of underground tunnels where we experienced true silence and darkness when we dared turn our headlamps off.  We found the remains of blasting caps and earthmoving machinery.  I discovered that I feel very uneasy underground while Brent is emboldened.  In the first tunnel he pushed ahead while I was farther back, taking very cautious steps.  Karina was caught in between us, but I found the bravery to lightly skip up to her, making sure not to take any heavy, earth-shaking steps.  Given how quiet the tunnel was, I thought I could use my inside voice to alert Brent to my fear and get him to come back.  I spent minutes saying, ‘Brent.  Can you come back here?” in a volume that doesn’t deserve an exclamation point and I got really frustrated that he never came back.  But I couldn’t yell for fear I would cave in the whole tunnel. 

My Fellowship of the Tunnels

The tunnels all went deeper into the sandstone, but we had to stop at the depth of the regional water table, below which the tunnels were flooded.  That is where we caught up to Brent, who promised he had not been ignoring my quiet pleas.  Some entrances required crawling into, which felt intrepid.  One entrance was quite large and grand, like the Mines of Moria.  It was exciting to get a glimpse into the semi-recent past and to have it all to ourselves.  The threat of trolls and Balrogs made it all the more interesting. 

Ever intrepid Karina

The uranium mines in the Four Corners Region still have tens of thousands of pounds of uranium ore left, but the cost of extraction is more than the price of the ore.  Like abandoned conventional weapon blast sites and missile launch pads (which I will detail later), they show what Utah was like during the Cold War. 

 Sources:

[1] Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, “Minerals.” Geoscience, 2017,  https://gis.utah.gov/data/geoscience/

[2] “W87.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia, 5 Feb. 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87.

 [3]  Wellerstein, Alex. “Kilotons per kilogram.” Nuclear Secrecy Blog, 23 Dec. 2013, http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/.

 [4] “Uranium ore.” Wikipedia, Wikipeida, 5 Feb. 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_ore

[5]  Rhodes, Richard. Making of the Atomic Bomb.  Simon & Schuster, 2012. 

[6]”Utah’s Uranium Boom.” Utah History To Go, State of Utah, 2018,  http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/utahsuraniumboom.html

All Alone and Very Scared (and Tired)

I’ve been thinking a bit too much about my death lately.  It’s weird, but I’ve become concerned about how people will think of me when I’m gone.  I write in my journals primarily when I’m upset, which could give the impression I’ve lived an unhappy life, unappreciative of the amazing people around me.  Sure, there have been some unhappy times (July-August, for example, my theme was “Everything is stupid, everybody sucks”), but my life is overwhelmingly awesome.  Just last week I went on a solitary vacation full of hiking, spectacular views, and lots of time to contemplate the good things in life.  And when I’m not by myself, the people around me are pretty great.  So, if at some point the forces I talk about below make their move to take me out, try to remember me as a bad ass out doing awesome things (not the scaredy cat who wrote this huddled in my car with a hatchet).  

The view from my most recent adventure.

Being on a solitary adventure gives me a great perspective on all the ways I haven’t died yet.  I wasn’t struck by lightning, mauled by a bear, or tumbled down a talus slope - they were all remote possibilities though. In fact, I spent the first night of my adventure sleeping with a hatchet inside my tent because I was worried about deer.  That night I was out like the fire that I never got started; Benadryl, a long day working with Canvas, and six hours of driving saw to that.  But I woke up suddenly at 1:00 am to noise in my campsite, specifically around my car.  I knew it was deer, or maybe a very large raccoon, but I still sat right up, shaking, trying to see my assailants in the dark.  Then I said, “Get out of here” and went back to bed.  A similar, but more dramatic thing happened five years ago when I was camping by myself in the Henry Mountains.

Mt. Hilliers.

At 11:59 on July 17, 2010 I was alone as I could possibly be at the Starr Springs Campground in the Henry Mountains.  The Henry’s are one of the most remote ranges in the country; in fact, they were last range in the Lower 48 to be surveyed or added to maps.  I had come there to be alone.  Having just acquired my master’s degree, I had some serious soul searching to do about my next steps.  Plus I had been obsessed with the Henry’s for years.  I stared at them constantly and pointed them out whenever possible (I still do that because you can see them from everywhere in Southern Utah).  There’s something so fascinating about that much remoteness sandwiched between Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Lake Powell.  Plus it’s a bunch of steep, igneous rock in the middle of the Colorado Plateau.  Why?  Buffalo and beryllium, why? 

Henry Mountains and the surrounding desert

I was pleased with my campsite: empty, remote, shady, water tap present and a clean pit toilet.  Awesome.  I zonked out early that night, too, but at midnight I literally bolted upright in bed because SOMEONE WAS OUTSIDE MY TENT!  And it was dark and I was ALL ALONE IN THE MOST REMOTE MOUNTAIN RANGE IN THE STATE!  My heart was pounding like I’d never felt it, but it seemed my assailants couldn’t hear it because they just kept circling my tent.  Or maybe they could hear my heart and my fear was part of their ritual.  On the chance they were part of that last free-roaming buffalo herd or fellow travelers who were just mistaken I said, “Hello?”  They didn’t startle, so they must not be bison, and they clearly weren’t surprised by my presence inside the tent, so they must have been stalking me.  I tried bluster, “I have a gun.”  – Some hesitation in movement – 

  

The scene of my intense, frightening moment

Time to formulate a plan.  I did not have a gun and whoever was out there probably knew it because my voice was shaking hard enough that my lie statement sounded more like a question.  I did have a multi-tool… in my truck… which had a 50% likelihood of starting (battery troubles).  I was trapped in a nylon prison!  I couldn’t see who was after me or escape them quickly.  I could tell there was more than one set of feet… that occasionally wandered into the woods and came back… and I hadn’t been raped or murdered yet… or gored.  So I shook the sides of my tent as hard as I could and yelled, “Hey!  Get out of here!” and the assailants startled a little, one ran off.  My heart was still pounding insanely hard, so I lay down to further formulate my plan. 

Then I fell asleep, immediately.  I slept like the dead, except I wasn’t dead because wandering deer weren’t trying to kill me.  I searched the ground the next day and all evidence points to deer.  Turns out that day I had run (and won(!)) a 5K race in Cannonville, 150 miles away, had my first sit down meal all by myself, hiked up a wash in the Monument I was sure had drug lords guarding a marijuana plantation, and it was still 70ºF at midnight.  I was tired.  Additionally, in the moment of my intense fear (really, the most scared I’ve ever been) I remembered the best advice my mom has ever given me:

“No one will spend three hours creeping slowly down the hallway to kill you, they’ll just do it.”  

That advice came from experience watching murderous hallway shadows intensely while my dad was out of town.^*  Whenever I find myself accosted by deer or convinced someone has just crawled in my window I tell myself, “Go to bed, Becka.  Let your death be a surprise like Gosh intended.”^{^} While it is likely that anyone who came all the way to the Henry Mountains to kill me would be into some crazy rituals, it’s highly unlikely that someone would come that far just to kill me, which is strangely comforting to remember.  Similar situations have played out on other camping trips but I find myself far less frightened, more startled and annoyed.  I figure if I live my night in fear of the terrorist [deer], then they’ve won. 

All the evidence my assailants left

*Second best advice came from my Auntie Boo, who told me to buy a clear shower curtain when I moved into my first apartment, that way I wouldn’t have to get scared and check for intruders hiding in my shower.  Ten years later I still buy clear shower curtains. 

^Except the night I wrote this in the Abajo Mountains.  Dogs, cows, bears and wind.  Too much noise and too many bad options for what was waking me, so I slept in my car.  Plus I was within hearing distance of a road with its own OHV speed limit full of literal hooting and hollering rednecks.  I should never have watched Deliverance.