Wayne's Adventure (In Motion)

One of the most satisfying and horrifying aspects of thru-hiking in general and the CDT specifically is Immediacy of Consequence.

Out here, just like normal life, you probably make about ten thousand little decisions a day.  However, in normal life, sometimes a bad decision results in no real adverse or vastly delayed consequences.  Out here, not the case.  Nothing has bumpers or is child-proof.  Choose a marginal footing, whiff a trekking pole plant, lose focus for a second,  you’re gonna bleed in 3..2.1..

Real hiking is falling.  You will do it often and spectacularly.  So far, I have had three (3) Grade Five falls.  Yes, I created a scale.  It’s a holdover from my Appalachian Trail thru-hiking days.  To be rated a Grade Five fall, both knees, both elbows and your head must make hard contact with the ground simultaneously.  That’s really a Grade 4.  Grade Five includes bleeding from your head.  (My grade 5 results: chin, ear and nose for those of you keeping score.  Thanks for playing.)  Facial stitches or lost teeth would technically be a Grade Six, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

The complete irony is all of my major injury falls (AT AND CDT) have occurred on some of the easiest and most benign trail I have ever hiked.  All my fault.  I was daydreaming or not paying attention or distracted and the Old Gods were watching.  Catch a toe on an imbedded rock, cue shambiling forward, giant stumble and 60 lbs. of pack driving me face first into a rock face or cactus or what have you.

You lay there for awhile, probably screaming in anger and fear, completely pinned to ground by 4 different strap systems, crushed under the packs weight, as secure as if Conner McGregor had you in a rear naked choke hold in the ring.  Eventually you manage to get a single trembling hand free and start undoing all the straps, buckles and braces locking you in.  Ten minutes later you are lying flat on your back beside your rig checking for broken bones and spurting blood.  Swearing (profanely) to the Old Gods they will never catch you woolgathering again…Until they do.

Immediacy of Consequence applies 10-fold to navigation.  As I have stated repeatedly (Why?  Because I did not believe it myself until I lived it !!).  THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO TRAIL TO FOLLOW.  OF ANY KIND.  EVER.  If you find a trail, IT”S THE WRONG TRAIL GOING THE WRONG WAY.  Go where the GPS says the non-existent trail is….regardless of how impossible, stupid, asinine or unbelievable.

If they ever erect a statue of a CDT hiker, it will be a guy holding his GPS unit above his head, staring unbelieving at the screen on his phone, with a WTF look on his face.  Caption will read:  IT GOES WHERE? (In a despairing voice if you can include that).  Just for laughs, the GPS survey of the CDT also includes things like entire mountains that slid off the face of the Earth in 2019 after the Gila fire that burned millions of acres.  The GPS just points off a cliff up into the sky.  “Hey, these idiots will figure it out…or not…someone has to win the Darwin award.” – CDT Trail Committee.

On the Appalachian Trail, in Six Months of full-time hiking, I got lost 3 times.  Wasted about 3 hours and maybe 4 miles.  I got lost on the CDT 3 times in a single day, wasting about 8 hours and re-hiking (up a damn cliff) for at least 12 miles.  The picture of the water tank above is  the consequence.  I was so cooked with no water after going the wrong way all day, it was all I could do not to just plunge my head into it and drink.  The half hour to filer and sterilize it was some on the longest minutes of my life.  And Yes, I drink out of stuff that looks like that ALL THE TIME.  Why?  Because dying of thirst is not on my bucket list.  Welcome to the CDT cupcake.   The algae adds vitamins and since it is 90 percent cow drool, it’s almost beef stew.