Most Dangerous Hikes, and walk to a lake...

[shadowkat]

As you can tell from the photo, assuming of course anyone can actually see the photo - one never knows with these FB links (annoying I know, but there it is), I took a two mile hike Prospect Park Lake and back. People and water fowl were out in force, mainly because they can't really frolic to the beach (dangerous rip tides) and it's Sunday. Sunday is never a good day to wander about the Park. Ran across my neighbor along the way, who recently retired from Crazy Org, he's loving retirement and says his social security check and pension check are bigger than his actual pay check was. I should be fine then, since mine is railroad retirement. But I want to live at 62. He left at 66, because his wife who is 14 years younger than he is, is still working and pushed him to work a bit longer.

By the end of the hike, my stomach has having a hissy fit, and I felt out of breath, perspiring, a touch off balance. I don't want to say light headed or dizzy, just like I wanted to collapse into a heap on the sidewalk. I did not. I made it home. And drank water instead. But, it made me aware of the fact that I can't do long hikes yet, and need to build up to them. Slowly. I may start with long walks to and around Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery and my neighborhood on the weekends. And shorter walks during lunch. Also doing the eight flights of steps at 4th Avenue and 9th Street station from the R to the G/F line, except on bad weather days.
Also start doing more yoga exercises. (I don't like yoga - because I hate floor exercises - but I can probably do chair and standing yoga for a bit.)

I've requested to join "Trail Dames" on Meetups, which is a group of over 50, curvy women, who like to go hiking. It's not really safe to go hiking by yourself in the US, people do of course, but they usually know what they are doing, and don't have my health issues. Also, my cousin, who was thirty nine years of age, was killed on a solo hike. They'd found him dead on the side of the road with his head bashed in. He was an avid hiker, who did a lot of solo hikes near his home in Oregon, that had hiking trails in the backyard. It was tragic, and happened in 2022, the same year my Dad died.

Speaking of dangerous hikes. I was trolling about the internet at work one day and found a list of the most dangerous hikes, also HERE.

So, I asked my brother, an avid hiker, what his most insanely dangerous hike was - and he told me it was last week, hiking along a lake in Glacier National Park, where they came upon a mother Grizzly Bear and her cubs. The Grizzley became aware of them, they didn't sneak up on her (you never do that) and stood up on her hind legs. The walked quickly away and she pursued them for a good fifteen minutes before finally taking off into the brush. She was about fifty yards away.

Niece, also an avid hiker, most dangerous hike was probably Mount Silliman in the Sierras. Where she hiked off-trail and had to scramble up a sheer granite mountain face, with a thousand feet drop offs. It had beautiful views at the peak, but it dropped off in a 1000 foot cliff on the other side. The views were epic, but she doesn't do many dangerous hikes, preferring flora to epic views.

Epic view from Mount Silliman below:



And a photo from the hike in Glacier, where alas, all the glaciers have melted long ago, along with most of the snow. Silly humans, if we'd been more careful and mindful of the environment, the glaciers would have lasted longer.



Niece's need to travel overseas to Europe, ended, after she went to the Western United States and fell in love with the mountains. Our world is seriously awe inspiring. I'm in awe daily, just looking at the mountains of skyscrapers, ships, and harbor, plus lakes, trees, and bird. I would like to visit China - the pictures of China's landscapes and culture are mind-blowing.

My most dangerous hike - was most likely a tie between Barr Trial Hike on Pike's Peak with two girl-friends in undergrad (this was in the fall of 1988, I think) and a back-packing trip in Bandlier National Monument, where we hiked back country trials and ran into a black widow spider and a couple of huge raccoons. That was a wonderful trip. I did a lot of camping and hiking in my teens and early twenties, when I was in a lot better shape.

If you've made it this far? What were your most insanely dangerous hikes?

I want to visit Watkins Glenn and hike the seven waterfalls, which looks like it is right out of Lord of the Rings...but most of it is closed until the summer of 2026, so I have time.

Leaving with another pretty photo from my niece:

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

My pit bull Lillian and I were staked by coyotes in Arvada, Colorado on a hike but Lillian was formidable and they kept their distance.

I've seen rattlesnakes on a hike in Golden once.

[shadowkat]

Yikes to the rattlesnakes. Coyotes aren't too bad, they are unlikely to attack unless at night.
Colorado is interesting because it moves from desert to non-desert terrain fairly quickly, also flat to rugged mountains.

[kazzy_cee]

I wouldn't want to go on a hike by myself - we don't run the risk of grizzly bears (!), but I always worry if I might fall, or twist an ankle if I'm on my own.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, walking around NYC is one thing - but no, I'm not going on hikes in areas with uneven ground and off trail or on trails by myself. It's dangerous, and any number of things can happen. My brother does it all the time - but he's in better shape than I am, and my niece goes camping and hiking all the time. She is going to graduate school at The University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. It's Big Sky Country.

Where they went, was a big National Park just north of her, and not that far: Glacier National Park. She sent me a video of the Grizzlies - from a distance, I had to enlarge it to see them. They apparently got closer. She carries bear spray with her. And my brother has had a lot of encounters with black bears (he lives in rural upstate NY in the mountains, which is frequented by bears) - although he said that Grizzlies were nothing like black bears. Much bigger, and far scarier.

I've never run the risk of the Grizzly, but they are confined to the back country, and unless you are back packing or camping and in the back country, it's unlikely you'll run across them in the big National Parks. I don't think they are in Yellowstone any longer - I think they moved them way back into the back country, mainly to protect the bears. You see them more in Canada, and in Glacier, and those areas, I think. They are native to the mountainous areas of the Pacific Northwest in North America.

[yourlibrarian]

Beautiful shots but yikes to Grizzly encounter! Glad she decided not to keep following.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, so am I. Although they were carrying bear spray with them - they didn't want to use it and were relieved it didn't become a serious encounter. Grizzly encounters have become more rare though - in recent years, since they move them to the back country, and it's really only the serious hikers and campers and back-packers who may run across them. They are no longer in the roads or near the picnic areas like they were in the 20th Century. They moved them - to protect the Grizzly, not the humans.

[trepkos]

I guess the most dangerous was on a beach in Australia, where my SO picked up a pebble and found a Funnel Web Spider underneath. He put it back very carefully!
I don't like heights so generally don't go near cliff edges, or up cliffs if I can help it.
We've been walking in a jungle with a guide armed only with a "Tiger Stick" (a stick) where we could have encountered - you guessed it - tigers; also sloth bears, wild boar and rhino. The only one we saw was a rhino, ahead of us on the trail - it moved off the path soon after. The guide, Dipak, did give us instructions as to what to do if we were in danger from any of them. Wild boar - climb a tree. Sloth bear - stand all together and shout very loudly (they can climb). Tiger - back away, slowly, never taking your eyes off it. Rhino - run away in a zig-zag fashion, throwing off items of clothing at the farthest point of each zig or zag, because they smell better than they see, and can't change direction easily.

[shadowkat]

Eww. Funnel Web. (Thankfully I never saw any when I visited Australia. Actually my family never saw anything other than your run of the mill garden variety spider - which we have well in the US.)

The guide, Dipak, did give us instructions as to what to do if we were in danger from any of them. Wild boar - climb a tree. Sloth bear - stand all together and shout very loudly (they can climb). Tiger - back away, slowly, never taking your eyes off it. Rhino - run away in a zig-zag fashion, throwing off items of clothing at the farthest point of each zig or zag, because they smell better than they see, and can't change direction easily.

This made me chuckle aloud at work. Thank you for the laugh. I have no idea what a sloth bear is - but that's a hilarious way to fend them off. (Actually climbing trees doesn't work for most wild animals - who can either climb or in the case of bears shake the tree and wait you out. I've seen one too many nature programs with monkeys attempting that approach when there's only one tree available.)
The way to avoid the Rhino is also hilarious. Actually that's funnier than the sloth bear. Strip teasing while running in a zig zag pattern. LOL!

[trepkos]

We were also very amused. We renamed his weapon a "Chicken Stick", bless him.