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Lost in the Wichitas
September 04, 2007First and foremost... I will admit this at the very beginning. I was lost.
I was lost on a mountain with my girlfriend in the Wichita Mountains and I wasn't sure which way to go.
It was a scary feeling...
So the long version of the story...it goes like this.
My girlfriend Amy and I decided that for our Labor Day weekend, we'd go camping up in the Wichita Mountains. I have never been camping up there and thought it'd be fun, especially since the weather wasn't 10000 degrees for the first weekend since the monsoon season in June.
We took off about 8 a.m. Saturday morning and had all of the needed items (tent, camp stove, marshmallows, ice chest full of stuff). We plopped down in Camp Doris (for only $8 a night...not bad).
The plan was to get up there, set up the camp, and take a nice hike on one of the trails before it got to the heat of the day, then go on in to Medicine Park for a bit of touristy fun.
The trail I wanted to check out was The Narrows near Eagle Mountain. Not too long and probably shaded a lot because of the high canyon walls.
But for some reason...the Kite Trail caught my eye on the map. It winds around Lost Lake (which should have been my first clue to avoid this trail).
In all of my past experiences...Lost Lake would equal Lost Jason. My sister April even warned Amy about the dangers of spending time with me in the great outdoors.
The trail started off fairly normal, nice granite inclines, picturesque landscapes such as:
It was as this point the trail started climbing the canyon and getting farther and farther from the river bottom. This little rock-strewn creek flows out of Lost Lake and through a section of the park.
Finally...the deepest part of the canyon opened up. It was breathtaking to say the least.
It was after this point that our hike took a bad turn...literally. We got lost. And lost on a granite-faced mountainside isn't the best place to be.
As we hiked past the deep part of the canyon, the trail became less and less defined. We ended up going up the mountain a bit, while the actual trail went downhill towards the river.
Here's the topographical map from the area....the red is the trail from Lost Lake to the Boulder Cabin Picnic area...
The green is where we got a bit wayward....
The trail kinda vanished and I didn't have the handy topo map with me (dumb mistake #1). My GF thought that the trail went higher up in the hill and that was where we started to deviate. I thought it went closer to the river (which it does as one point) but I wasn't sure where we were in relation to that.
From the top of the hill...you could see the occasional car drive on the road (the thick black line)...so we started moving in that direction, knowing that the road would be there somewhere....then we ran into the steep canyon and river below. We decided to turn back to the top of the hill....and rested for about 30 minutes.
Now, I had two bottles of water and a bottle of Gatorade, and despite my usual pension for downing an entire beverage in about 25 seconds, I knew to hold off and conserve my water for such an occasion.
I was actually pretty worried for a while. I hated it because I knew what mountain I was on...just didn't know which direction to go to get us out of there.
We found a shade tree and sat there for a few, most of it me apologizing profusely for getting us lost. But I must admit, Amy was a total trooper and wasn't really that mad at me. She was tired and sunburned but she says she wasn't mad.
I on the other hand was fairly furious with myself on the inside. I didn't want to be lost...I wanted to have fun.
Finally, I heard voices on the trial below us and saw two hikers moving perpendicular to our location on the high ground....we started moving downhill and my g/f located the trail just above the river. We followed it to the end of the hike.
All in all, the trail ended up being about two miles with elevation changes of about 400 ft. That was the rocky trail part.
Then, the second error in judgment, I forgot that the trail wasn't a circular one. We had to walk back up the road from the Buffalo Cabin to the Lost Lake (most of it uphill). That was another two miles.
The moral of the story....stop in the Visitors Center and pick up a Topo map of the area for $4....it could save your freaking life. :-)
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Comments
At least you were lost in a pretty place .....
