STAY ON THE TRAIL. There are all kinds of lovely groups that manage the hiking trails and put in trail maintenance time (Including the lovely Mid-Atlantic Hiking Group) in order to keep these the safest paths.
I learned three very important things from this encounter with quicksand:ġ. In fact, I’m pretty sure they were laughing with me about 60% of the time, and I really can’t begrudge them for the other 40%, because I DID look pretty darn goofy. We continued our hike without further incident, and the group actually found the whole thing to be pretty funny. Just for reference those shoes are supposed to look like this. I live to tell the tale, make quicksand jokes (mostly involving Indiana Jones), and take this picture: I grab on and crawl my way out of the mudhole/quicksand/puddle-of-misery-and-mortification like some kind of Wild West cartoon. Somehow, this magically, gloriously stops the whole sinking process. There is hope!Īs a few people start to gather the intrepid hiker that went before me comes back with a gigantic stick. Wait, I remember something about this… you’re supposed to increase your surface area or something…Īt this point it’s up to my knee and I somehow maneuver my foot so that I’m sort of kneeling in the quicksand. Just some mud?!?! Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure this is QUICKSAND you idiot. I’m mortified, so of course I stupidly reply, “oh yeah, just some mud, hahaha….” OMG this is so embarrassing.Īt this point, some people start to notice and someone says “Hey are you ok?” Is this quicksand? Northern Virginia doesn’t have quicksand does it? I actually have no idea. I can’t move my foot, maybe if I… oh sh*t it’s going deeper. Oh crap oh crap, this is some serious mud. She walked right over the area with no problems, completely safe. To this day I have no idea how she made it across unscathed, but I would like to point out, before I sound like the dumbest hiker on earth, that this seemed like a safe path. To be completely honest, this required some scaling up some steep dirt that was probably just as difficult as what we were trying to avoid, but you live, you learn. So, instead I followed a fellow hiker as she walked down to the river and around said hazardous canyon. In reality, it was probably only 4-5 feet down, but at the moment it seemed like: I didn’t really feel like sliding down it on my backside like everyone else. I stumbled upon a hiking Meetup group via Google, signed up for a hike, and showed up at the trailhead.Īs people started to show up we all sort of awkwardly introduced ourselves, our hike leader told us some cool stuff about the trail, and we set off. Five minutes in, we were all talking, laughing, and generally having an awesome time.Īt this point we come across a pretty deep washed out… ravine? Dry river? I actually have no idea, but it was practically horizontal down one side and up the other. Getting lost, bears, copperheads… hiking with a friend seems like a good idea, if only to have a partner with which to share the low-grade anxiety. I love hiking, but taking on the outdoors, solo? Not for beginners like me.
There are a lot of wonderful strangers out there that are willing to share their knowledge with you/save you from quicksand.
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