Crossing Mesa Arch

Every trip seems to have its defining moment, the one detail that's remembered long after everything else has become a blur. It might be a close encounter with a bobcat, or my first glimpse of a rare species. Or it could be a memorable quote from a local character, like the waitress in Montana who had lived in a tent for three years: "It was the seventies, I thought I was Sacagawea." Or Sam, the tow truck driver near Baker: "I been out in this desert twenty-five years and ain't seen one God-damn flyin' saucer." In Canyonlands National Park, it was Laurie.

Even if you've never heard of Mesa Arch, chances are you've seen a photo of it. It's not the tall, flat-topped one that's pictured on Utah's license plates – that's Delicate Arch. Mesa Arch is long and low, and curves gracefully out over the canyon below. What makes it unique – and attracts a crowd of photographers every morning, each of them planning the perfect shot – is the way the rising sun lights up the underside of the arch.

As a Californian, I've grown accustomed to having my wilderness experience punctuated by warning signs and guard rails, the result of too many people in too little space. But the parks in Utah are different, and nowhere is that difference more apparent than at Mesa Arch. There might be a caution sign at the trailhead, but once you get to the arch you're on your own. You're expected to know what gravity is, and how to avoid getting too much of it.


The arch is located at the edge of the mesa, on a cliff that would make Wile E. Coyote nervous. On my topographic map of the area, all the contour lines between about 5,000 and 6,000 feet are squished together into one solid band. In other words, if you were to stand at the edge and drop a rock held out at arm's length, it looks like that rock would fall about 400 feet before hitting anything, and then roll for another 600 vertical feet before finally coming to rest a thousand feet below you – and still less than a quarter mile away horizontally.

Now that I think about it, if you were to stand at the edge for any reason I'd have to congratulate you, because that's something I wasn't able to do. I've never thought of myself as being afraid of heights – I've scrambled up and down some pretty steep slopes – but whenever the distance from my feet to the edge of the cliff was roughly equal to my height, my legs would just quit working. The only way I could look over the side was to lie on my belly, keeping my feet as far from the edge as they would reach.


Geologically speaking, it's a pothole arch – a piece of rock that is eroding away from the rest of the mountain, and will eventually land in a pile of rubble at the base of the cliff. The south end looks like it's barely holding on, an illusion created by the way it attaches to the cliff face about twenty feet below the edge, leaving a four-foot gap at "ground level." The north end, on the other hand, appears firmly attached, and in fact a person could walk from there right out onto the arch – that is, if a person really wanted to walk across a narrow, uneven strip of slippery rock with a thousand-foot drop on either side.

And that's where we met Laurie.

My cousin Jeff and I had shot a few photos and were mostly just enjoying the grandeur of it all, when suddenly we saw her. She walked from the north end, moving with long, confident steps, neither hesitating nor hurrying. At the center of the arch she paused to look over her shoulder at her boyfriend, and then continued to the south end, where she turned around and walked back. As she turned around, Jeff turned away, saying he just couldn't watch. Meanwhile, I was in emergency shooting mode, running and crouching here and there, looking for the best angle and background for a moving subject. In less than a minute, she was back on solid ground.

Well, what could we say? She was either the bravest or dumbest person we had ever seen, so the least we could do was show her the photo on my camera's monitor (and ask her to sign a release, of course). And for the rest of the trip, whenever our hiking brought us to a particularly challenging situation, we asked ourselves, "What would Laurie do?"

We already knew the answer: She'd go for it.

Déjà vu

I'm always cautious about thinking I can identify an individual animal, especially where reptiles or amphibians are concerned. In the absence of some clearly unique characteristic – often the result of an injury –  two snakes or frogs of the same species and the same age will generally look the same. It's especially hard to tell them apart when they're young, before they've had time to accumulate scars or other differences that come with variations in diet and experience.

But when I revisit a location and find a snake of the same rare species and the same size, in exactly the same spot on the same log – I'm pretty confident in saying I've found the same snake. In this case it happened on Mount Diablo, where an Alameda whipsnake was hunting for lizards on a fallen tree.

Whipsnakes can move with impressive speed when they need to, but rely on stealth and patience to catch their prey. When dealing with a potential predator – or a pesky photographer – a whipsnake will use whichever tactic fits the situation. This one demonstrated the advantages of moving slowly.

As I approached for a photo, I only had a partial view of the snake, without a head or tail to tell me which way it might be going. The lateral stripes and slender build gave me no visual cues, so I couldn't even be sure it was moving – until the tail passed by, at which point the snake just seemed to get thinner until it disappeared. A minute later, it reappeared about twelve feet away, at the other end of the log. I approached again and saw the same disappearing act, followed by another reappearance in the original spot.
  
A week later I was back at the same log – and the snake was still there, right where I had left it.

Can we still experience wilderness?

A recent op-ed in the New York Times described the proliferation of PLBs – personal locator beacons that send a distress signal along with GPS coordinates so the user can be rescued – and how they have led to an increasing number of unnecessary "rescues." Some of the examples were stunning: in 2009, a group of backpackers in Grand Canyon National Park used their PLB three times in four days. Each time they were met by a rescue team in a helicopter.

At Half Dome, hikers routinely ignore warning signs and/or storm clouds, then use their cell phones to call for help when they find themselves atop a slick granite dome in a lightning storm – and are shocked to learn that helicopters can't fly in that weather.

My first response to the article was that people who abuse PLBs, or otherwise waste the time and money of emergency services, should be billed for the cost of those services – or prosecuted for calling in a false alarm. But the more I think about how that would work in real life, the more complicated it becomes. For those of us who have spent our lives hiking and backpacking, it's easy to say some people are just too stupid to venture off the sidewalk – but of course that won't stop them.

I'm really curious about those guys at Grand Canyon. Had they never backpacked before? Did they not understand the concept of wilderness, the purpose of a PLB, or the definition of an emergency? Were they prone to panic attacks? Did they grow up in extremely wealthy families where calling for a helicopter – and then changing your mind about needing it – was considered normal?

But the Grand Canyon guys are outliers, or at least I hope they are. What about the cases that aren't so clear-cut? Who gets to decide what's a real emergency? When someone calls 911 and says, "I'm having a heart attack," the paramedics respond immediately. If, after a bunch of tests at the ER, the doctor says it was only indigestion or a panic attack, does that mean the 911 call was unnecessary? What kinds of mistakes are forgivable, and which ones should be punished?

I've been hiking since I could walk, and I know how to take care of myself on the trail. But I can think of plenty of times when I've made careless mistakes that could have ended in tragedy.

Twenty years ago at Point Reyes, I climbed down a steep cliff to photograph harbor seals on the rocks below. Halfway back up, I got stuck. Each time I moved a hand or a foot, I felt myself slipping as the cliff started to crumble out from under me. How long did I stay in that position? Five minutes? Half an hour? I really don't know. Eventually, somehow, I found my footing and was able to continue. If I'd had a PLB, or even a cell phone – if they had existed then – at what point would I have used it?

One afternoon in Lundy Canyon I parked at the trailhead and took what I intended to be a short walk, a look around to see if I wanted to take a longer hike the next morning. Before I knew it, I was a couple miles up the mountain, with no water or food, not even a long-sleeved shirt – and I could see storm clouds gathering. I headed back to the car. If I had twisted an ankle, or been struck by lightning, I could have been in serious trouble to say the least.

Last year I hiked to Thimble Peak, in the Grapevine Mountains, for the first time. It was a perfect day for hiking – temperature in the low 70s, a light breeze, blue sky, puffy white clouds, a view of Death Valley that goes on forever – one of those glorious desert spring days when nothing could possibly go wrong. And, in fact, nothing did. But as I was scrambling over loose shale, up the last couple hundred feet to the peak, I did have a few thoughts about the consequences of a careless mistake. How long would I have lain at the bottom of that canyon before someone discovered my body?

If any of those situations had turned out differently, I can easily imagine what people would have said about me. How could such an experienced hiker do something so stupid?

Well, the truth is we do it all the time.

Raise your hand if you read Into the Wild and thought, "That could have been me."

A recent blog post by Jill Homer sums it up: as we gain experience with potentially dangerous situations, we become more confident. As we become more confident, we take more chances. Nothing bad happened last time, so everything should be fine this time. If we want to continue to enjoy the wilderness, and survive for our next adventure, we need to be vigilant against overconfidence and the carelessness it produces.

Back to the question of all those electronic gadgets that keep us connected 24/7. What really bothers me is not that they get abused, but that they have led to a generational shift in the definition of wilderness, and how we relate to it. Inappropriate use of PLBs, 911 calls from Half Dome, or just checking email on the trail – they're all part of a world in which we're never really alone.

Hiking has always been a kind of meditation for me. I seek out wild places because of the isolation, the solitude, the distance from the everyday stresses of modern life. I know a lot of people share my perspective, while for others the wilderness is a place to test their limits, whether by climbing, kayaking, or simply surviving in a difficult situation.

Can you really experience that sense of isolation or challenge when you know you're carrying a device that will instantly put you in touch with a rescue team, standing by with a helicopter and all the medical supplies you might need? Or, for that matter, a device that puts you in touch with your boss, your family, and a Nigerian prince who wants to give you $43 million?

John Muir wrote, "Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness."

 Is that journey even possible anymore?