What's the dumbest thing you've ever done? Early season edition.

[c9h13no3]

Well, this is embarrassing.

Why am I starting this thread? Because I have a pretty good story for this one. Good rule of thumb: if your buddy is recording video of you doing something, it's probably pretty stupid. Link to video here.

I mean, the video tells the story. This was a typically warm early May day on Carson Pass. As you can see, I'm crossing a snow bridge while wearing shorts, which already sounds wrong. There was a real bridge about 0.75 miles up the stream. In hindsight, we should've just walked the extra 30 minutes. But the car was literally about 100 feet from where I crossed the creek, and I got sucked in.

Luckily I didn't fall in. Pure luck though that bailed me out of a bad decision. A bad roll of the dice and it'd be a different story trying to climb out of the creek while wearing skis.

So what's the dumbest thing you've ever done? And check your egos at the door. It's easy to criticize decisions from the comfort of our couches, it takes actual courage to put yourself out there. And if you don't have anything to share, then congratulate yourself for living in your comfort zone your whole life.

[Gogd]

Both of mine are follies of youth:
Boy Scouts playing capture the flag at night. I was being chased, lead the pursuit up a steep hill, bounding from rock to rock. I ran to the edge of what I assume to be a short hop-drop and jumped - it was almost 30 feet down. Landed on my feet, my legs collapsing under me, and ended up kissing the ground between my boots and tumbling a bit further. That stunt earned me a bunch of scrapes, some chipped teeth, broken nose, split lip, and bruising the bottoms of my feet. Those two seconds in free fall seemed like an eternity. I felt very lucky. Hurt like hell the next day to hike back out.

A bit younger, I was in the foothills, about a mile behind our house, exploring by myself. I was descending off a ridge which became steeper, and more so, until the foot and hand holds were no longer dirt and rock, but limbs of the scrub. The bush supporting my weight uprooted and sent me sliding on my ass and hand palms, like a toboggan, almost 250' down a 65-70⁰ incline of cobble/mud aggregate. The location was extremely rugged, I don't think I would have been found. Came out of that with just a few scratches. Made me feel stupid.

Those are the highlight of my really dumb outdoor misadventures. Got many many more, just as perilous, some done with purpose, albeit not as spectacular, and a zillion of additional Darwin acts unrelated to the outdoors. One campfire BS session had us swapping near miss stories. After entertaining the group for quite awhile with my stupidity, one remarked I had nine lives; my long time friend corrected him, stating I had a whole litter of cats' nine lives. Stupid and true.

But the DUMBEST thing I did outdoors related was a week vacation to Zion NP with a certain GF. At that time we were on the verge of a breakup. The park was beautiful as always; but she was an insufferable PITA for the first three days. It was worse than cowering from freezing rain in a leaky tent, meanwhile stricken with Montezuma's revenge. The fourth day we drove down to Hurricane, I and put her on a bus back to Los Angeles. My friends who knew of our drama told me I was a fool to expect anything else. They were so right!

Mama, tell your children, not to do as I have done! - House of the Rising sun original author is unknown

Ed

[Jimr]

Going over Reinstein pass from Martha Lake to Goddard Creek. I thought that I could reduce the straight up angle of the traditional path by traversing the talus slope. It was o.k. for awhile, but as I reached the top, I found myself in monster talus. The last move was a sphincter pucker. I was looking at a huge block of talus sitting on a flat talus chunk. I had to put off my pack in front of me and slide on my belly, pushing my pack in front of me as I snailed my way around, leaving a piss trail as I lurched forward. Once around that last obstacle, it was a short walk in the snow to where my partners were waiting for me. They were pissed, waiting for me, not knowing the route I took.

[wildhiker]

Back in my early 20s, when I was, shall we say, less experienced, my first wife and I did a mid-winter (February, I believe) backpack trip to the lower roadless mountains just north of Shasta Lake. The location is hazy in my mind, but I think it was north of the Pitt River arm of the lake. From some back road that I cannot recall, we hiked an old trail, not much maintained if at all, down a creek valley and found a campsite. The long drive and then the hike had used up most of the short day, but for some reason, I thought it would be great to continue from our camp without backpacks up a dim side trail to the top of the ridge to get a view. This area had mostly forest. As I recall, we left our camp about 4 pm and reached the top of the ridge in about an hour or maybe hour and a half right at sunset. The view was nice. But then I started to think about hiking back down to camp in the dark - with no flashlight. Also, no extra clothes or supplies. We set off and walked as fast as we could while the light was fading. But then it got dark. I mean really dark. In the forest, with no moon. For a long, long time (in reality, probably less than an hour) I led the way while my wife embraced me from behind, shuffling my feet forward, feeling out the tread of the trail. Not as romantic as it sounds. We literally could see nothing. Fortunately, I remembered the general route of the trail and we didn't miss any of the switchbacks. The camp area was less densely forested and there was a bit of starlight so when we finally bottomed out in the creek valley, we could find our tent. One of the top five moments of relief in my life.

Phil

[dave54]

I am old enough that I did all my stupid stuff in my youth before it could be videoed and posted on social media.

[sparky]

I have done all kinds of dumb stuff. live and learn.

One early season dumb thing:

July 4 weekend of a heavy year, maybe 2011?

I have zero idea how I did it. I was in cloud canyon early season trying to get to big wet meadow. Cunnigham Creek was absolutely raging. There was maybe a 6" branch crossing in a convenient place, I didnt see any better alternative. It was incredibly bouncy, but just in that moment I was "in the zone" and without a second thought just bounded across this thing and didnt think much of it.

I get to big wet meadow not too far past and its completely flooded. I didnt want to wade through or bushwack above so I decided to call it and head back to the car at roads end. I get back to the crossing and I am looking at this thing which from the other side side looks completely insane. I try to step on the branch but there is no way I was goign to be able to cross this thing and I have no clue how I went across it to begin with. I search for a while and start thinking I might be stuck but then of course I do find a slightly less death defying way across.

[Carne_DelMuerto]

Dumbest thing I've done backpacking?

Not doing enough research and hiking too far north and too high for Ritter Pass, being forced to backtrack along a loose talus slope, and then assuming a steep slot was the pass and taking the group up and over. On the other side? Deathly exposure with no clear way down. We puckered there for about 30 minutes debating if we should turn around. I finally found a safe route up to the ridge that landed us on the actual pass. I'm an idiot for missing such an easy route.

Dumbest thing outside of backpacking? Well...those records are sealed.

[limpingcrab]

I know these are stupid, but I went through a phase from teenage until I got married when I wasn't too concerned about dying. Not in a depressed way, just ok with the thought of it along with the tendency to get in over my head.

1) North fork of the Kaweah River in the backcountry with friends in springtime when the water was high. They were arguing about whether or not someone would die if they fell in the river next to camp (two serious rapids followed by a waterfall into a big pool). I stood up and said, "put this on my tombstone: It's only water you pansies" and ran into the river. I was bounced around underwater for a bit and then got a breath before the waterfall, which landed in a deep spot so it worked out.

2) Not knowing that wet avalanches were a thing, a couple friends and I snowshoed Mt Silliman in the afternoon in the late spring with rolled up plastic to sled down. My dad snowshoed Tokopah Falls and was checking out Wuksachi Lodge wile he waited to give us a ride home. He ended up having a conversation with a ski/snowshoe guide and when he told them where we were the guide got really angry and told my dad he might not see us again and started trying to prepare for a rescue. We had a wonderful sled but it turns out it was down a long, steep, west facing granite slab with water underneath and hot sun baking it.

Unfortunately the list goes on, especially if non-backpacking mistakes count (electrocuted by a radio tower, 120mph on the roof of a car, etc...).

[Harlen]

Shame on you all. Myself-- "Safety" is my middle name.
I suppose I do have an addiction to old ski boots on Craigslist:

20 lakes basin 037.JPG

This, or some variation of the theme has occurred no less than FOUR TIMES! Now Sam, your the U.D. guy, what's the Urban-dictionary definition for "stupid-funny'?" ...or does "Stupidly-stupid" apply better?¹

20 lakes basin 033.JPG

However, I have become expert at jury-rigging failed boot soles. Can you see the pride in my beady eyes?

boots (11).JPG

The ultimate technique: Gorilla glue, deck screws,... both a boot fix and free crampons in one go.

¹ Freud called this [sort of stupidity] the repetition compulsion: We feel driven to repeat mistakes from the past in the hopes that this time the situation will work out differently, but it rarely does. But those boots were cheap! Oh well.

[SSSdave]

Well more ignorant than stupid...

1974 age 25, third backpacking season, fifth backpack ever, poor poor so cheap gear, during my trout fishing days, carrying flimsy backpack and one of those large Coleman rectangular sleeping bags, orange open ended tube tent, no camp stove era. Hiked the 11 miles from Crabtree trailhead to Woods Lake in cheap sneakers. Feet soles were horribly sore. Worse it was peak mosquito season in arguably the most mosquito prone zone each year in the range, and I was wearing clothing squeets could bite through like a cotton t-shirt and 501 jeans with thin worn spots. So had one full bottle of Cutter's repellent with the little white plastic bottles full of white goop and a second 1/3 full used bottle. The full bottle had been in my jeans pocket. A design issue with those old Cutter's bottles was if one squeezed a bottle, sometimes the screw on top popped off despite plastic threads. So by time I reached Woods Lake with the bottle in pocket often under the waist belt duh, most of the repellent had made a mess in my pocket.

Persevered over 4 days enjoying great rainbow trout fishing. Most mosquito bites ever. Lived and Learned.