Here's one...
One of my favorite hikes with my dog (a white German Sheppard named 'Chama') is along the Santa Barbara River to Jicarita Peak in the Pecos Wilderness. It isn't too far from home yet secluded enough that it doesn't get a lot of traffic. It has a lot of vertical and normally I hike it in spring or fall when it's not too warm. Chama doesn't do so well in the heat either. One year I decided to try it in December.
As I started on the trail, it began to snow a little. There were already a couple of feet on the ground. I don't know what the temperature was; I don't usually pay attention to temperatures as long as it’s 68F or less. After a couple of hours and a few miles in with some altitude gain, it was a whiteout. The pack trail I was following averages just a few feet wide and the terrain is steep enough that you can stretch your left arm out and lean against the hillside. With trees on either side it was pretty easy to stay on the trail despite not being able to see very far ahead. There were a few spots where landslides had wiped out the trees and I had to carefully pick my way across the open ground. During one of these crossings I slipped.
The ground seemed to go out from under me and I slid on my left hip down the slope. About a hundred feet down my right leg caught under a log as the rest of my body tried to go forward over the top. As my leg bent under the strain, I expected to hear a snap. Instead I fell back down on the upslope. Fortunately I had not been sliding fast enough to break it, but I was in pain. I pulled myself out from under the log and took a moment to figure out what happened and what to do next. Chama was sniffing around me trying to figure out what was wrong or what the new game was. I tried to stand but it hurt too much. I looked up hill and didn't think I could crawl back up. Checking my cool new Garmin Etrex Legend GPS that I had preloaded with waypoints, I saw there were no flat areas along the trail near there where I could pitch my tent. However, I had also marked the location of a forest service cabin just a couple of miles on the other side of the river below me. I never thought I'd be looking for the cabin as a haven; it was just something else I could program into my cool new toy. The river was farther down the slope than the trail was above, but I was sure it would be easier crawling downhill in snow than crawling uphill.
I half crawled/half rolled down the hill, occasionally hitting my elbows and knees on rocks just below the snow surface, until it flattened out to a small meadow next the river. I guess it would actually be more of a delta formed by the landslide. Near the river I could hear water flowing. That was a bad thing. The river wasn't completely frozen over and where there was ice it wasn't thick enough to support me. I wasn't going to risk getting wet and then cold looking for a cabin I had only seen on a topo map.
I knew my hands were cold while I was crawling around, but I have had cold hands before. However, I had never tried to remove a pack and set up a tent with no grip. Right about now I felt my first twinge of panic. If I couldn't make a shelter of some sort and get warm pretty soon, I would be in big trouble. Chama was oblivious, darting here and there, digging in the snow once in a while. How I envied him and his fluffy white fur coat. But I digress. How the heck was I going to get my pack off, pull out my tent, and set it up without feeling in my hands? Put on a pair of boxing gloves and follow along with me…
With the top of my hand I was able to release the straps of my pack enough to slide out from it. The same technique released my tent from where it was strapped to the outside of my pack. Getting the tent out of its bag was a little tougher. It has one of those little spring-loaded whozie-whatzits cinching a string tight around the opening of the bag. Holding the string between my palms, I was able to chomp down on the whozie-whatzit and slide it up the string. The bag has a piece of strap attached across the bottom that I was able to slip my hand through and shake the tent out. I had to stand a little to spread the tent out. My tent is a dome type (North Face Mountain Tent) that self-stands with just two poles in it. The poles snap together pretty easily with their shock cords, but feeding them through the slots in the tent was a little more challenging. Finally got the tent up and it was sad looking saggy affair. Nevertheless, it was home for now.
I dragged all of my gear into the tent and spread out my sleeping bag. It took some effort to get it open and as soon as it was, Chama slipped by me and curled up in it. Great, my nice dry sleeping bag was now wet. Didn’t know whether to yell at him or laugh at myself, so I did a little of both. Anyway, managed to roll my cloths off and get into the bag. Couldn’t zip it up though, but Chama helped warm my feet by sleeping on them all night. For me it was a cold, painful night without much sleep.
By morning my hands were warmed up and I could fire up a can of sterno to make breakfast and coffee inside the tent. I always carry a can of sterno for just such an emergency. It was a good thing I’d taken my pants off the night before. My knee had swollen up so much I might not have been able to get them off later. So there I lay for two days and two nights with an occasional hobble outside to take care of only the most pressing of business. On the third morning I felt capable of walking and was tired of lying there anyway.
I packed my gear and zigzagged back up to the trail. While that was painful, it was nothing compared to the ~6 mile walk downhill. I remember every painful step. I think it is far more painful to walk downhill with a knee injury than up. Getting into my Jeep at the trailhead was also ridiculously painful, and I would suffer that ever day for almost a month.
So anyway, not much of a ‘survival’ story really, especially compared to the mother-in-law experiences above. If this wasn’t too boring, I do have a few more that I’ll save till later. By the way, turns out I had entered the cabin coordinates wrong and it was about 5 miles away. I would have got wet crossing the river to get to a cabin that I wouldn’t have been able to find.
