I just start this thread for a trigger, and may the others could think something interesting in his/her journey before~ and have a smile on face, that's the target~ My story is, in one hike before, just one hike friend and me got lost in the deep forest in the Qinling Mountains in China, and the mobile phone cannot get any signals at all, that's bad, and we worried about how can we get out there, because the time is 5 o'clock PM, and its in autumn, so the night could be cold and dark; but after one hour's finding, we encountered one boy (maybe from the county of the mountain?), he also a Chinese, but we don't know the language of him, but the lucky thing is, after give some gestures, he leads us the way out! of course, at last we give him some gift for the thanks, but we really feel lucky to meet him, or we could be lost in the forest ~

I am sure we all have a few, as do I, but I think I wanna tell you this one. So I was fresh out of the cities and suburbs of New Jersey and just had moved to extremely wooded rural Maine. I met a few awesome people who have a homestead out in the woods. I went and visited there homestead. We drank and sat around a huge bon fire, played music and had a great time with my new woodsy buddies. Well, I was camping outside in the yard and we were winding down on the porch. I was just about to hunker down and go to bed so I started walking to my tent. When all of a sudden I heard coyotes for the first time in my life. They sounded close! Maybe the closeness was exaggerated by my new-ness in the woods. I was used to highways, trains and plains and the only camping I did was in state parks with a ton of people in New Jersey where a squirrel is wildlife. But my god that startled me. My woodsy buddies all laughed at me and said they would be startled of my shadow and run away so there was nothing to worry about. I heard them through the night but I trusted them, and it turns out they were right. Since then I have encountered them on the trail a few times and they run away pretty easily.

-hi Stonemark! I did not realize you are posting on here as well lol.

We have posted a lot of stories on our website--in fact, we have a whole section called "stories."

That said, I'll just post one of them here:

The Easy Opening Volvo

There was a time when we spent a week at Lassen Volcanic National Park every summer. We love the place, and compared to some of the other parks in California, Lassen really is undiscovered.

This was in the days when we car-camped with the kids, and we usually stayed at Manzanita Lake Campgound. This was before bear boxes.

The first day we arrived, we set up our camp and had a lovely visit to the lake. At dinner, we grilled some sausages on the BBQ, opened a bottle of wine, and had a delicious dinner on the picnic table.

Manzanita Lake is over 5,000 feet in elevation, and we always feel quite sleepy that first night. We tidied up our campsite, put all the food carefully into our Volvo stationg wagon, and tumbled into bed by about 9:20, and were fast asleep in minutes.

As we slept, we kept hearing odd noises outside. Our older daughter actually expressed some concern about them, but to P they just sounded like someone trying to break up firewood by leveraging it between two trees. Creaking and breaking noises.

After a while, the noises stopped, and we all fell into a deeper slumber.

That's when our neighbors from Sweden woke us up.

"Excuse me," they said. "I think you have a problem with your car."

Hmmm. That didn't sound good.

It turns out that a large mother bear had climbed onto the top of our car, and had pulled open the sunroof. With one paw on the roof, she had used the other paw to peel back the sunroof like a tin of sardines.

She was too big to climb into the car through the opening, and so had finally given up. But the car was now wide open to raccoons or any other animal who wanted to visit, and so we knew we had to come up with a plan.

With our youngest daughter still asleep in the tent, we threw everything else into the car. At the last moment, we woke her up and tossed her sleeping in, and the tent on top. And we drove down to Redding to find a motel for the night.

The next morning we visited a rental car company, where we rented a nice Ford Explorer and headed back up into the park. After all, we only had one week of vacation, and we weren't about to kiss it goodbye.

As we entered the park, the ranger at the entrance station warned us about bear activity. "You know," she said, "last night a bear peeled open a Volvo station wagon to get at the food inside!"

"We know," we replied. "That was our Volvo!"

Epilogue:

At the end of the week, we returned our rental car and picked up our Volvo to drive it home. P got on top of the sunroof and jumped up and down with all his might and weight. He couldn't budge it a millimeter. We drove home with the roof peeled back--by a bear using only one paw.

The next year, Lassen installed bear boxes in its campgrounds. We'd like to think we are responsible for that.

So, I have this hiking group - huge group. Lots of folks of different skill levels/experience levels.

I say in the hike description, here's a list of essentials for a dayhike pack - I called bug repellent "bug spray" in the list - negligent of me, assuming everyone would understand what that was in context.

One hike we are crossing on trail through a mosquito ridden meadow - out come bottles of DEET, Picardin, lemon-eucalyptus, and a can of RAID.

Another one -

The first backpacking trip for our hiking group. I was not the one organizing it. I hadn't got to that level of confidence, and it took me a while to, since this was such a ... well.

We were supposed to meet at the trailhead. If you are not familiar with meetup.com, some context - this website allows people to create group calendars for events that interest them, inviting the random everyone (you can also do invitation only stuff or private groups) into your group, say, a hiking group. People who want to hike can rsvp to your event and for our group, we meet in public places, go hiking, and get to know each other - primary goal of the group is to meet people who like to hike.

So. At the trailhead, which is on Glacier Point Road in Yosemite, I drive in and park. Across the lot there is a man. I do not recognize the man. (There were pictures on our meetup profiles.) I wait. People I recognize arrive, I begin talking to them, the man comes over and reveals himself to be part of the group, and also, older than his profile picture suggested.

We were backpacking overnight, six miles, not terribly difficult trail - I think there may be a couple hundred feet of gain over the length of the trail with one steep section. The rest of us had 50-60 liter packs. This gent has a huge Jansport that I could have used as a bivy sack, full, with stuff tied on outside - I gently suggested that for an overnight he might not need so much, so he removed several bath towels, the chair, and some random bundles I didn't examine too closely as I was backing away to get my stuff. One of my friends, who works in the medical field, murmured something about the man's knee brace.

So. Slowest six miles in the world.

At the lake, the man unloads a three person tent, his "down" bag (some prehistoric synthetic that filled half the large pack that he SWORE was a down bag), a Thermarest, a Snowpeak canister stove sans canister, a stainless steel pot set, a Garcia full of food - to the top, full, of Clif Bars, Mountain House meals, and other items he never took out of it. Three flashlights. Three emergency kits with sewing stuff, space blankets, and a bunch of random stuff I never got a look at. A five pound softcover book on computer languages as related to websites. A number of clothing items, including a pile of t shirts.

Over the course of the weekend we learned that:
* he had back surgery recently
* he has diabetes(!!!!!) tho we did not once see him with any of the things one would associate with such condition
* he has some other condition he wouldn't/couldn't name that decreases his appetite
* he has orders from his doctor not to carry more than 15 pounds in a pack on his back
* he has trouble sleeping, and tossed and turned and sighed most of the night

We did not observe him to eat anything other than oatmeal. I have to wonder what the troop of scouts he approached trying to give away all those Clif bars and meals thought.

At one point he muttered "I wish someone would just shoot me."

On the way out he sat down on a log and said he couldn't move. I made two miles in half an hour, dumped out my pack contents in my trunk, came back, and filled my pack with some of his stuff. The sleeping bag filled a friend's backpack all by itself. Someone else took the bear can. We let him carry the book.

Haven't seen him again. Last we heard of him he had plans to take a nephew or cousin or something dayhiking the following week.

People wonder why I obsess about safety and harp on them to dayhike first... I tell them the story of the guy who stored his gear in his pack in the garage for 20 years, picked it up, stuffed in a bear canister full of food, and went hiking without even putting new batteries in any of the flashlights.

When I was a kid we did backpacking trips for our summer vacations for several years. On one trip when I was about 13 we went to the area around Uncompaghre Peak. We hiked in and set up camp and did day hiking for a couple of days. The second day the whole family (my sister was about 11 and my brother was about 7) were on a dayhike along this narrow little trail above timber line with a relatively steep drop on one side far. We were all walking along in single file happy as could be with my dad in front and my mom in back. We'd been on that trail for quite a while and everyone was doing just fine until my brother looks down and says: "mommy, is this a dream?" "No, honey, we're really here." My brother completely lost it and he and my mom and sister headed back to the campsite while my dad and I decided to go on to Uncompagrhe Peak. For reasons that neither of us remember today we ended up on Wetterhorn Peak instead.

I invited a friend of mine to do a relatively simple overnight in southern ohio. Loaned him most of the gear for the trip and everything. He was very familiar with doing day hikes and such, but never had done an overnighter.

Anyway, we get to the trailhead and start gearing up. He attempted to put on the pack that I had loaned him the week before. Unfortunately, the hipbelt was too small and would not cinch around his waist. I guess I was pretty surprised that he hadn't even tried the pack on in the time he had it home with him.

I was 11 and had just started boy scouts. According to the dads, we needed 3 shake down backpacks to ready ourselves for a 73 miler in the Sierra. Our first trip was up Mt. Baldy. For early spring it was hot and the troupe was dominated by 11 and 12 year olds so there was LOTS of grumbling going up. One of the dads started saying that there was a malt shop at the top and it worked! All the scouts were talking about what they were going to get, ect. Needless to say, we were all disappointed when we got to the top...even some of the dad's who were newbies to this stuff. Years later, I used that on my kids once. Only works once though.

sk

some funny stories! hahah.

Balzacomm I can't believe the strength of that mamma bear. WOW!

I just thought of another one. About two years before the Uncompaghre trip we were in the Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico. This was the first big backpacking trip for us kids and I'm pretty sure my little brother stayed with grandma. We were on a trail going up toward Santa Fe Baldy when a herd of probably a dozen elk stampeded across the trail going down the mountain. They crossed the trail not twenty feet in front of us. My little sister pointed and yelled "Antelope! Antelope!" At the time I thought it was funny that she didn't know the difference between antelope and elk but looking back we're lucky no one was killed. It was an absolutely amazing thing to see.

Wow, I had totally forgotten about this until I read the thread topic. I think it will get a few laughs. I'm not trying to be obscene or graphic, I just have to tell it exactly how it happened.

A few years ago, two friends and I were doing a 5 mile day hike. We arrived and were the only car at the trail head parking lot. We were excited to have the peace and solitude of the woods all to ourselves. It was in early September in a very densely forested wilderness area on a very narrow trail. This particular trail is one of the least used trails in this wilderness area and the day happened to be a Monday. I mention this because it later became a part of the explanation given to us for the predicament we all found ourselves in. We were headed downhill at a very fast clip on the stretch of trail in question. As is usual, I lead the group because I walk at a faster pace than my companions. As is also usual, I often find myself walking with my head down a lot, keeping an eye on the path for obstructions. Without much warning via sight or sound, I suddenly find myself startled in an encounter with what I really can only bluntly say were two very large female breasts. "WHOA!" I yelled out. I was so shocked that I didn't know [/i]what[i] to do or say. We were almost quite literally running into naked hikers. I'm really not sure who was more surprised or embarrassed. It happened so quickly and suddenly that I just kept walking and staring. They were like, "wait, wait." So we gathered ourselves and went back up the trail a little way to give them some privacy and time to put their clothes back on. They obviously didn't expect to see anyone and had done this before. They had parked at the opposite trail head and thought they had the woods all to themselves too. They told us "we just didn't expect to see anyone on a Monday during the day on this trail." I guess they expected to hear us coming with enough advance warning to hide or something if they really needed to. Anyway, it was quite hilarious after we got over the shock of the whole thing.

Anyone who's had their car torn open in Yosemite can believe it. You should go watch the videos on their bear safety website. Hopefully they still have them available.

I agree, Lori. The body shop in Redding where we took our Volvo told us that the year before they had a Ford F-100 pickup in there. A bear had torn the door off it!