Off The Map: Fifty-Five Weeks of Adventuring in the Great American Wilderness and Beyond
By Bryan Snyder
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About this ebook
Explore the serene, surreal and scenic corners of the world... but watch your step.
Off The Map is a collection of fifty-five outdoor adventures that take place along the rougher and more precarious edges of our country's natural splendor.
Within these stories, the author engages in ill-advised confrontations with the bears of Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness, the mosquitoes of Yellowstone, and the voracious marmots of the San Juan Mountains. Driven by an unhealthy obsession with cliffs and mountaintops, the author also ventures into such serene and surreal landscapes as the redrock ravines of Utah, the abandoned gold mines of Colorado, the icefields of Iceland, the volcanic peaks of the Cascades, the depths of the Grand Canyon, and the lightning-scarred summits of the Southern Rockies.
If you enjoy tales of haunted hotels and hot springs, hypothermia and heat exhaustion, as well as snapshots of the most scenic locations this continent has to offer, Off The Map will satisfy your inquisitive and adventurous spirit. Add it to your library today and start your journey!
From the author of Renegade Car Camping: A Guide to Free Campsites and the Ultimate Road Trip Experience. Originally printed in New York's Evening Sun newspaper and collected here for the first time.
Bryan Snyder
Bryan Snyder grew up exploring the rolling hills and shady creeks of upstate New York. After college, he taught natural science to young students at various outdoor schools from Maine to Hawaii before settling on the West Coast. His outdoor adventure column "Off The Map" is printed in Chenango County, New York's The Evening Sun. Additional photos, trail descriptions, maps and contact information may be found at www.facebook.com/offthemapbooks and www.offthemapbooks.com. Bryan currently resides in Santa Barbara, California.
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Off The Map - Bryan Snyder
Off The Map
Fifty-Five Weeks of Adventuring in the Great American Wilderness and Beyond
By Bryan Snyder
Text copyright © 2013 by Bryan Snyder
Photographs by Bryan Snyder
All rights reserved.
www.offthemapbooks.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Also by Bryan Snyder
Renegade Car Camping: A Guide to Free Campsites and the Ultimate Road Trip Experience
Download Your Free Copy Here
Further Off The Map: Fifty-Three Tales of Adventure along the Rougher Edges of American Wilderness
Discover It Here
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DEDICATION
For my family, who opened the door for me.
And who didn’t hold a grudge when I rarely looked back.
Table of Contents
Introduction
YEAR ONE
Week One: A Journey Begins
Week Two: The Fruit of My Labors
Week Three: Music of the Mountains
Week Four: Shards of Memory
Week Five: End of the Line
Week Six: The Wheels of Justice
Week Seven: School of Rock
Week Eight: The Great Western Hero
Week Nine: Point of No Return
Week Ten: Blood, Sweat and Tears
Week Eleven: Taking It Easy
Week Twelve: The Lonely Hour
Week Thirteen: Notes from a Battlefield
Week Fourteen: The Cost of Freedom
Week Fifteen: Beneath the Chinese Wall
Week Sixteen: The Rain Will Wash Away
Week Seventeen: Walking the Edge of Myth
Week Eighteen: Skulls and Glass
Week Nineteen: Road’s End
YEAR TWO
Week One: The Seat of My Pants
Week Two: Bald and Battered
Week Three: Sticks and Stones
Week Four: Alone Before the Storm
Week Five: Keeping the Dust Down
Week Six: Yellowstone Traffic Report
Week Seven: When Things Start to Go South
Week Eight: Disappointment and Acceptance
Week Nine: Head in the Clouds
Week Ten: The Civil and the Savage
Week Eleven: Taking the Plunge
Week Twelve: Dog Days
Week Thirteen: Stacked Against Me
Week Fourteen: Mud in Your Eye
Week Fifteen: Nightsounds
Week Sixteen: Northern Exposure
Week Seventeen: Calling in the Cavalry
Week Eighteen: To Misery Hill and Beyond
Week Nineteen: For Kinship and Country
YEAR THREE
Week One: Barbarians at the Gate
Week Two: Of Fire and Ice
Week Three: Penniless in Oslo
Week Four: Haunted Hotels and Hitchhikers
Week Five: An Ill Wind Blows
Week Six: Cruise Control
Week Seven: Life in the Balance
Week Eight: Salvage Operations
Week Nine: A Photo Finish
Week Ten: Going to the Chapel
Week Eleven: Bitten by the Bug
Week Twelve: The Rebound Relationship
Week Thirteen: Troubled Waters
Week Fourteen: Political Misfortunes
Week Fifteen: Thieves in the Woods
Week Sixteen: Meditations and Milestones
Week Seventeen: The Home Stretch
About the Author
Postnote
Introduction
The world’s big,
and I want to have a good look at it
before it gets dark. – John Muir
From the beginning, the lure of the forest was hard to resist.
The backyard spaces of my childhood in upstate New York brimmed with the ingredients necessary to give rise to an inveterate explorer. Deep within the woods lay decaying cottages, rusty machinery and networks of crumbling rock walls – the remains of marginal farmlands and pastures that had long ago been abandoned to the elements. I turned a blind eye to the ‘No Trespassing’ signs and roamed the overgrown backcountry with pencil and paper, mapping the ruins of a forgotten civilization. Slate cliffs and outcroppings loomed like castle walls in my imagination, and from their battlements I felt more courage in facing the questions of who I was, and who I wished to become.
As a young adult, I journeyed to Scotland to study literature, but spent much of my time wandering the highlands, seeking remnants of actual castles and towers. By then I knew that a sedentary office job would be the death of me. Fortunately, our local nature center informed me of a career path that would allow me to live and work on the edges of wild country. I became a naturalist, employed by a series of outdoor science schools that taught students geology, ecology and astronomy in a camp-like setting. The wages were minimal, but food and housing were provided, and I couldn’t help but exult in my good fortune; I was getting paid to hike in the Adirondacks, the Rockies, and on the beaches of Hawaii.
After a few years of rustic living, I realized that if I had a place to stash my books and clothes, I could afford to take summers off and travel across the country in my trusty Jeep Cherokee, Charlie. The numbers worked, as long as I cooked my own food and camped for free on public lands. For a single man with a taste for adventure, it was a fulfilling lifestyle.
At the dawn of the internet age, I began to collect the e-mail addresses of people I met along my travels. They received postings on rainy days when I sat huddled up next to a library computer, waiting out the storms. Until the skies cleared and I could safely return to the mountains, I shared my stories of wild creatures and savage landscapes… of natural wonders and reckless folly.
Eventually, I expanded into the sports section of my hometown newspaper, filling the void left by high school athletics during the summer months. For the first time, I was writing for complete strangers. I had to learn to construct themes that were universal and compelling for readers who did not know me personally. And I needed to be believable as a literary character. If my audience could not identify with my outdoor passions, at least they might be sympathetic to my thoughts and emotions. More likely, I would come across as crazy… but crazy can be captivating as well.
This book contains three summers’ worth of my earliest prose, written when I was finding my footing as a mountaineer and an adventure author. The unspoken, underlying questions in these stories are: When will he crack his skull open? When will he finally bring a GPS device with him? When will he get a year-round job and settle down? Ten years on, these questions remain unanswered. I’m lucky to have survived, both as a writer and as a foolhardy explorer, for the avalanches haven’t buried me, and neither have the critics. I’m still writing… still dashing blindly out into the wilderness. And in another ten years, perhaps we’ll have our answers.
Until then, let’s explore the other side of that forest… somewhere off the map.
Bryan Snyder
May, 2014
YEAR ONE
Picture 3Week One: A Journey Begins
Picture 1When you’re about to go hiking in the Rockies for four months, don’t make the same mistake I did and leave your hiking shoes behind in California. It’s only common sense. Well, if my intelligence was lacking, at least I could look about the streets of Las Vegas, where most tourists willfully abandon all common sense, and know I was in good company.
Wait. Hold that thought. Allow me to back up so I may properly introduce myself and this creative enterprise.
What you’re perusing, my good reader, is the first entry in a four-month travelogue which will detail the explorations of one former Norwich High School graduate as he ventures into the majestic Rocky Mountains. I’m a naturalist by trade – a teacher of environmental sciences who dwells in the oak woodlands outside Santa Barbara, California. My career began a decade ago on the other side of the continent, at Rogers Environmental Education Center in upstate New York, and I’ve been involved in outdoor education ever since, walking in the footsteps of naturalist John Muir, though without his patience or his long, goat-like beard.
My teacher’s schedule allows for long, unpaid summer vacations, and I’ve established a tradition of cross-country travels, sensationalized through the e-mails I send to friends and acquaintances along the way. For your entertainment, I’ve been allowed this opportunity to expand my readership from a few hundred to the few thousand I can reach through newsprint. The challenge will be to get myself out of the woods and into a library once a week to type out these stories!
This summer’s adventure began not far from the edge of the Pacific Ocean, one week before my sanity-sapping stopover in Vegas. I loaded my camping gear into my trusty blue Jeep, Charlie, and set out for a cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on California’s eastern border. A rustic cabin this was not; no cabin three-and-a-half stories tall can lay much claim to rusticity. Nevertheless, this was the site where Acorn, Buzzard, Blue Jay, Coyote and several other naturalists came to decompress after eight months of teaching. I should explain… some naturalists use nature names
among their students, and usage spills over into our weekends and time off. Don’t laugh.
Tucked away in these mountains stood the remnants of once-vast sequoia groves. These trees don’t sway passively in the wind; they are immovable fortresses of wood and bark, sometimes thousands of years old… rugged as a brontosaurus leg and twice as thick. But despite their formidable appearance, most of the sequoia forests were decimated around the turn of the 20th century by timber companies who saw little or no profit for their efforts.
Not far from Buzzard’s cabin, a five-hundred-foot granite monolith named Dome Rock jutted out from the side of the Kern River Valley – a silent witness to the destruction and slow recovery of the sequoia groves surrounding it. We hiked to the base of this monstrosity so that I could experience my first multi-pitch climb. Technical rock climbing often gives me the shivers, since it takes a degree of faith to trust that a rope and harness will catch your weight, should you fall. When a route is multi-pitch,
the challenge is even more dramatic, because a single rope is not long enough to get you to the top of the mountain. You and your partners have to climb in increments, like an inchworm scaling a tree.
Coyote, who works for a university and does this sort of thing for a living, took the lead and set our first anchors two hundred feet up the granite face. I attached myself to the rope he lowered down and climbed second, feeling like an excited gecko as I scurried up the crack to where Coyote waited. But then my stomach dropped. Up close, the anchors seemed pitifully fragile, considering that they would need to hold the weight of four bodies until we started moving again. Sumac reached the same spot and waited calmly, thinking about how beautiful the mountains and granite spires appeared. Blue Jay arrived at the anchors last and clung to the rock, thinking, If I fall, will I have the guts to end my suffering quickly and land head-first?
Our intrepid band were eventually triumphant, and even if I misplaced a good pair of hiking shoes somewhere in the Sierras, I gained some confidence in my climbing abilities which should help in the months ahead. Whether or not that confidence can make up for lost hiking shoes remains to be seen.
The next morning I descended alone from the mountains in my Jeep and continued down into the scorching Mohave Desert. After driving for hours in 110° temperatures without air conditioning, I felt like an ant placed in front of a hair dryer. I used a water-filled spray bottle continuously on my skin to provide a measure of evaporative cooling, but my engine had no such system. It overheated, and I had to wait until water ceased to boil upon contact with the engine before I dared to press on towards Las Vegas.
Once I finally reached that neon-drenched capitalist aberration on the desert plain, an old friend gave me refuge, and I typed out this first report. I have one day of rest before I venture into the badlands of Utah. There I’ll strap on my pack and spend four days splashing through the remote Paria Canyon, where dozens of people have died in years past from flash flooding.
See you downstream!
Week Two: The Fruit of My Labors
Picture 9Before continuing to Utah, I first had to contend with that bloated monument to hedonism, Las Vegas. It’s tempting to try to partake of its pleasures, but you’re likely to wind up either broke or married. Still, one evening around midnight my friends and I tried our luck at getting into a nightclub called Rain
at the Palms Casino. The line of cosmetically and surgically-enhanced young urbanites waiting to enter seemed infinite, but a black-suited goon felt generous enough to let us through the V.I.P. line, since he happened to be a friend of a friend. In Vegas, it’s all about who you know. Within the nightclub, women gyrated in raised metal cages, and robotic arms flailed about, belching smoke and fire. Quite a spectacle.
Thankfully, I escaped the glitz and glitter of the Vegas Strip with my pride and pocketbook intact. After a long day on the road, I found myself at the mouth of dusty Paria Canyon, which swallows the Paria River and spits it out again thirty-eight sinuous miles later near the town of Lees Ferry in Arizona. My friend Aurora and I had been here once before, in April, but neighboring thunderstorms caused us to abort our mission. The chief danger stems from the fact that all rainfall which lands in a hundred square-mile watershed gets channeled through Paria Canyon and has to squeeze through passageways only six feet wide. Oh, it gets through…. but you really don’t want to be there when it does. I had chosen a less rainy season this time around, sacrificing the unpredictability of storms for the predictability of Utah summer temperatures. The first few miles before I reached the Narrows would be HOT.
But by sacrificing sleep and departing early that first morning, I escaped sunburn and heatstroke, finding refuge from the noonday sun in a shady region of remarkable beauty. A gentle stream traced the canyon floor, bordered by green grasses and willows, and framed stunningly by walls of red sandstone thousands of feet high. The height of the cliffs was a stark reminder that there would be nowhere to run, come high water. Beauty and danger in equal measure.
I trudged through long stretches of sand and cobblestones in my soggy sneakers, eventually finding a glorious campsite beneath a cottonwood tree, across from pools of refreshingly cool water where I could soak my blistered feet. Swallows swooped down, picking insects off the surface of the pool, while little green fish took tentative nibbles on my toes from below.
Around dusk, as I lay in my tent, I kept hearing what sounded like a small jet plane tearing through the canyon. I caught a glimpse of some bat-like creature swooping about like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, acting like it was trying to break the sound barrier. Possibly a nighthawk.
On the second evening, I was sitting on a log, digesting my dinner and staring blankly at the wall on the opposite side of the canyon when a thunderous crack split the air. As I watched, several plate-sized rocks came loose from the cliff face, falling 350 feet and plunging with a crash into the Paria River. I was grateful I hadn’t camped beneath the opposite wall!
The third evening I unrolled my sleeping bag and slept atop a square-edged boulder the size of a small house…. one of the best campsites I ever had. I didn’t see many fellow humans along my journey, but the solitude made bathing in the river pools much easier. No modesty required.
Not that there weren’t pains to balance out the pleasures. My tally of swatted deerflies exceeded seventy, and dusty winds periodically seasoned my soup with generous amounts of red gravel. But the best treats were saved for last. When I finished my thirty-eighth mile and stumbled into an orchard at the long-abandoned Lonely Dell Ranch, I discovered that the neglected peach and apricot trees were so heavy with ripened fruit that their branches were snapping off. My mouth watered, and I grinned from ear to ear, feeling that the journey was entirely justified. I rewarded myself by eating three peaches and fourteen apricots, and I carried away plenty more in order to repay the drivers who helped me hitchhike the ninety miles back to my Jeep in Utah.
One of the drivers, a middle-aged Navajo named Mike, asked me why I did these sorts of wilderness adventures. I thought for a bit, and told him that there was a degree of focus you can sometimes achieve when apart from human society. Away from human social structures, from language, from human engagements and expectations you can sometimes discover yourself interacting with the larger community of nature in a way that is inherently original and refreshing. In that context, the busy mind calms down and the soul rises to