National parks and forests can be both beautiful and terrifying at times. Chirping birds, friendly squirrels, pleasant trails, and impressive views aren’t the only things that you get. When you actually have to work there every day, you see many more bizarre things than most visitors ever do.
#1
1) I interned at a National Wildlife Refuge in the Bay Area, and lived in housing provided on-site. There was a ground squirrel burrow near my window. We also had quite a few foxes in the area. On more than one occasion, in the middle of the night, I was woken up by what sounded like screaming kids. It was creepy AF. And that was how I learned what foxes sound like when they're raiding a ground squirrel burrow.
2) Trail running in the Seattle area, I had just finished a tough hill and was starting to drop down the other side. I got a good head of steam and was just enjoying letting gravity do the work. All of a sudden, a coyote darted out of the bushes right in front of me. I had too much momentum to stop in time, so I instinctually jumped over it to avoid a collision. I kept running, and he disappeared into the bushes on the other side of the trail. Pretty sure both of us kept running thinking "What?".
2) Trail running in the Seattle area, I had just finished a tough hill and was starting to drop down the other side. I got a good head of steam and was just enjoying letting gravity do the work. All of a sudden, a coyote darted out of the bushes right in front of me. I had too much momentum to stop in time, so I instinctually jumped over it to avoid a collision. I kept running, and he disappeared into the bushes on the other side of the trail. Pretty sure both of us kept running thinking "What?".
59points
#2
Ranger/guide in Greater Kruger Area here.
A while ago I was guiding student groups on a farm in Balule reserve. We stayed in an old farm house, some rooms were turned into dorm rooms. One day a staff member went to fetch some sand from a dry riverbed nearby (he needed to make some cement). He came back saying he saw "tracks of an animal that he'd never seen". He had some of his colleagues have a look. They all said the same thing. So by now I'm intrigued and I go down to the riverbed to have a look. Sure enough; there they are. Like a buffalo, but not exactly the round shape you'd expect. Seemed like two pairs of buffalo tracks.
Then I saw it; that's not two pairs. It's four pairs ...of an animal walking upright! Goosebumps all over. Hair on my neck standing straight up. I called the warden. He came with his new sniffer dog.
That dog went to work, but it was obvious those "strange animals" knew we were on them. Out the reserve, over the railway line, back in the reserve, then again onto another farm, all the way to the horse stables at the edge of Hoedspruit town. That"'s where we caught the last one; hiding in the stables. But there were four in total. The one we got first broke a leg when jumping over the fence of the reserve. Two others try to hide under the railway line.
Later we also found the rifle, which they had thrown away while running; a .308 with a silencer. We also found bullets and a panga. Now we could charge them with something else than trespassing.
They didn't make a victim, that time. But they are successful regularly. All our anti-poaching efforts are like mopping with a running tap. I think our rhino are on the way out. We try to fight the symptoms, but cannot fight the cause. And no one seems to care on the whole planet; for just a few species (lion, rhino, elephant, pangolin) no one puts political pressure on any country in the far east.
A while ago I was guiding student groups on a farm in Balule reserve. We stayed in an old farm house, some rooms were turned into dorm rooms. One day a staff member went to fetch some sand from a dry riverbed nearby (he needed to make some cement). He came back saying he saw "tracks of an animal that he'd never seen". He had some of his colleagues have a look. They all said the same thing. So by now I'm intrigued and I go down to the riverbed to have a look. Sure enough; there they are. Like a buffalo, but not exactly the round shape you'd expect. Seemed like two pairs of buffalo tracks.
Then I saw it; that's not two pairs. It's four pairs ...of an animal walking upright! Goosebumps all over. Hair on my neck standing straight up. I called the warden. He came with his new sniffer dog.
That dog went to work, but it was obvious those "strange animals" knew we were on them. Out the reserve, over the railway line, back in the reserve, then again onto another farm, all the way to the horse stables at the edge of Hoedspruit town. That"'s where we caught the last one; hiding in the stables. But there were four in total. The one we got first broke a leg when jumping over the fence of the reserve. Two others try to hide under the railway line.
Later we also found the rifle, which they had thrown away while running; a .308 with a silencer. We also found bullets and a panga. Now we could charge them with something else than trespassing.
They didn't make a victim, that time. But they are successful regularly. All our anti-poaching efforts are like mopping with a running tap. I think our rhino are on the way out. We try to fight the symptoms, but cannot fight the cause. And no one seems to care on the whole planet; for just a few species (lion, rhino, elephant, pangolin) no one puts political pressure on any country in the far east.
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54points
#3
I was hiking in the Carpathian mountains and got a chance to talk with the local mountain rangers. A lone hiker had passed the rangers' cabin wearing sneakers as footwear and without gloves. It being winter, the rangers had told the guy that he's not properly equipped and should probably turn back, but without effect. Once it had been dark for a few hours and there was no sign of the hiker returning, they headed out for rescue.
The guy was luckily found alive. He was lying bleeding in a pit in the snow with bloodstains all over himself and the surroundings. It turned out he had read that cutting your hands will keep you warm and prevent your fingers getting frostbitten. Maybe this guy got his mountain survival tips from the same source antivaxxers get their medical advice?
The guy was luckily found alive. He was lying bleeding in a pit in the snow with bloodstains all over himself and the surroundings. It turned out he had read that cutting your hands will keep you warm and prevent your fingers getting frostbitten. Maybe this guy got his mountain survival tips from the same source antivaxxers get their medical advice?
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48points
The biggest challenges of national park employees may not come from the environment, but rather from other people.
As NPR News points out, rangers often have to work with little backup and face a wide range of perils in remote territories. “One of the most dangerous places to be a law enforcement officer is inside the nation's national parks and preserves.”
Their jobs are a bit of everything: “In the course of a patrol, rangers are information booth, nature experts, jailers, evidence technicians, even coroners. Calls come over the radio about people they will have to rescue [...] and patients they will have to keep alive until an ambulance can get there.
This wide range of roles can confuse the public. The result is that some individuals don’t take park rangers as seriously as other members of law enforcement.
#4
I work in a National Forest in California. Every day I drive on a very narrow, very twisty road that snakes through a river gorge. There are gaurd rails on some sections of the road but majority of it has a steep drop off into the canyon.
This summer I was making my rounds, driving merrily up the road when I see a person with a blue sheet over their head (think like a Halloween ghost costume but with no eye holes) walking down the center of the road. I jaw drop and frantically honk my horn. There is no way I can swerve without driving off the road. The person steps out of the way just in time for me to avoid side swiping her. Before I can pull over and radio for help a truck comes around a blind curve and hits her, making her tumble down the ravine.
After her body was retrieved and identified we learned that it was a girl who had been missing for over a year.
This summer I was making my rounds, driving merrily up the road when I see a person with a blue sheet over their head (think like a Halloween ghost costume but with no eye holes) walking down the center of the road. I jaw drop and frantically honk my horn. There is no way I can swerve without driving off the road. The person steps out of the way just in time for me to avoid side swiping her. Before I can pull over and radio for help a truck comes around a blind curve and hits her, making her tumble down the ravine.
After her body was retrieved and identified we learned that it was a girl who had been missing for over a year.
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47points
#5
I was walking through the woods once with my cousins and we found a very large half-eaten mushroom. A few paces after it was an abandoned pair of pants.
May have been unrelated to each other, but it was weird.
May have been unrelated to each other, but it was weird.
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47points
#6
I wasn’t a ranger or anything, but I worked for a ski resort in Colorado for a couple years. One of the places I worked, my boss and I rode snowmobiles up the gulch road every day to get to the restaurant we worked at. Anyway, we saw a couple things that were out of the ordinary.
Coming down the road one afternoon a couple miles down, we found a little girl sitting on the side of the road, barefoot in the snow. Apparently she had somehow managed to veer off the ski trails and skied down the road for a little bit. When she realized she was lost, she decided to walk. She walked for a while in her ski boots, but then I guess she figured she could walk faster barefoot? So she took off the boots and her socks and walked a good ways barefoot. She was freezing and terrified when we found her. Poor thing. We radioed for ski patrol and wrapped her up in blankets and gave her some hand warmers while we waited.
Coming down the road one afternoon a couple miles down, we found a little girl sitting on the side of the road, barefoot in the snow. Apparently she had somehow managed to veer off the ski trails and skied down the road for a little bit. When she realized she was lost, she decided to walk. She walked for a while in her ski boots, but then I guess she figured she could walk faster barefoot? So she took off the boots and her socks and walked a good ways barefoot. She was freezing and terrified when we found her. Poor thing. We radioed for ski patrol and wrapped her up in blankets and gave her some hand warmers while we waited.
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43points
Veteran rangers Leslie Reynolds and Grady Bryant told NPR that during their time patrolling Yosemite, in Northern California, they have seen everything, from substance misuse and people bringing weapons to assaults of the very worst kind.
What’s more, park rangers also sometimes face violence from criminals and even ‘regular’ campers. In some cases, rangers lose their lives due to gun violence.
“This place is the world. It's a microcosm of the world. We have everybody. I've been on five homicides since I've been working here. Not a lot of homicides, but for a park--we're talking about a park where Mom and Pop and the kids come,” ranger Bryant said.
#7
Not my own personal story, but it's my brother's. He interned for the forestry department one summer after college. He was setup in a cabin in a remote part of some state Park and alone all summer. After his internship ended he came home and we all had a nice family dinner to welcome him back. We all were excited to hear about living in the sold and what it was like. He told us about the serenity of nature and how loud yet quite it was at the same time. Someone, not sure who, asked what the creepiest thing was. He looked at is all with this look of pure confusion and fear. Almost like if you saw Bigfoot? He went on to tell us about this strange creature that loved under his front porch. He kept saying it was the strangest thing ever. It was like a cat that barked like a dog and it would bars at him every night. He swore up and down that it was something out of an old native American myth and had to be supernatural because, of course, cats can't bark. We were all very curious and asked him to describe it. He said it was red, the size of a small dog, and had this big fuzzy tail. My other brother held up his phone and asked him if this was the strange creature he saw. He explained yes with the most amount of pure shock I've ever seen. It was a fox, my 24 year old brother who wanted to work as a forest ranger had, apparently, never seen a fox before. Needless to say he didn't get a job offer.
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30points
#8
Our volunteer fire department was called out to assist in a search for a missing man. When we arrived on-scene, we were informed that he was a convict, out on work-release, and hadn't returned to the prison.
They found his car on a backwoods road, near a gas pipeline trail. He went missing on Wednesday, it was now Saturday.
We split into 2-person teams and headed into the woods. We figured we would wander around for a few hours, not find anything, then go home- someone came and picked the guy up, and he was long gone.
About 20 minutes in, our captain calls in on the radio.
"Found him. Subject deceased."
We came up over the rise, and the guy was standing there, facing away from us. He looked like he was taking a leak.
He had walked about 1/2 mile back in on the gas line, tied a rope to a small tree, and hanged himself. The tree bent over so he was standing up. He asphyxiated instead of breaking his neck.
He stood there for 3 days.
They found his car on a backwoods road, near a gas pipeline trail. He went missing on Wednesday, it was now Saturday.
We split into 2-person teams and headed into the woods. We figured we would wander around for a few hours, not find anything, then go home- someone came and picked the guy up, and he was long gone.
About 20 minutes in, our captain calls in on the radio.
"Found him. Subject deceased."
We came up over the rise, and the guy was standing there, facing away from us. He looked like he was taking a leak.
He had walked about 1/2 mile back in on the gas line, tied a rope to a small tree, and hanged himself. The tree bent over so he was standing up. He asphyxiated instead of breaking his neck.
He stood there for 3 days.
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24points
#9
After spending so much time in the field and hanging out with other wildlife people, I suspect that there are many things the average person would find very weird but I find normal. At the same time, there are things that the average person might see as normal that are weird as hell to me. Something as simple as seeing Crows and Starlings flocking together unnerves me while for most people they would probably be like "Huh. A bunch of birds."
The weirdest thing that comes to mind is a bizarre beaver dam I was dealing with yesterday. A beaver had clogged up the control structure for a stormwater pond. That isn't that weird because they do it all the time. Usually, they just pile up some sticks on the outside then pack a bit of mud into it and call it a day. Not this guy. Instead, he decides to crawl into the drainage pipe with the sticks and build the dam in there. He then stacked up more sticks and mud until he reach the top of the structure. All told there was probably about 5 or 6 feet of concrete pipe that was packed solid. I don't even know how he managed to do it because even when we just got a trickle of water running through, the current was enough that we were getting worried about being sucked in. Once it was actually clear, it was a powerful torrent that should have swept any beaver away long before they could build anything.
The weirdest thing that comes to mind is a bizarre beaver dam I was dealing with yesterday. A beaver had clogged up the control structure for a stormwater pond. That isn't that weird because they do it all the time. Usually, they just pile up some sticks on the outside then pack a bit of mud into it and call it a day. Not this guy. Instead, he decides to crawl into the drainage pipe with the sticks and build the dam in there. He then stacked up more sticks and mud until he reach the top of the structure. All told there was probably about 5 or 6 feet of concrete pipe that was packed solid. I don't even know how he managed to do it because even when we just got a trickle of water running through, the current was enough that we were getting worried about being sucked in. Once it was actually clear, it was a powerful torrent that should have swept any beaver away long before they could build anything.
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24points
Meanwhile, ranger Kirk Gebicke, who is stationed in the Mojave National Preserve, states that backup is “non-existent” in their area. “You can't depend on somebody else to come bail you out pretty much ever,” he said.
The ranger added that, in his experience, one of the most dangerous parts of his job is to (un)intentionally stumble into a lab that criminals use to make illegal substances. Other major challenges include having to deal with body dumps and container train robberies.
#10
I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service. I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time they just wander off the path, or slip down a small cliff, and they can't find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old 'stay where you are' thing, and they don't wander far. But I've had two cases where that didn't happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on. The first was a little boy who was out berry-picking with his parents. He and his sister were together, and both of them went missing around the same time. Their parents lost sight of them for a few seconds, and in that time both the kids apparently wandered off. When their parents couldn't find them, they called us, and we came out to search the area. We found the daughter pretty quickly, and when we asked where her brother was, she told us that he'd been taken away by 'the bear man.' She said he gave her berries and told her to stay quiet, that he wanted to play with her brother for a while. The last she saw of her brother, he was riding on the shoulders of 'the bear man' and seemed calm. Of course, our first thought was abduction, but we never found a trace of another human being in that area. The little girl was also insistent that he wasn't a normal man, but that he was tall and covered in hair, 'like a bear', and that he had a 'weird face.' We searched that area for weeks, it was one of the longest calls I've ever been on, but we never found a single trace of that kid. The other was a young woman who was out hiking with her mom and grandpa. According to the mother, her daughter had climbed up a tree to get a better view of the forest, and she'd never come back down. They waited at the base of the tree for hours, calling her name, before they called for help. Again, we searched everywhere, and we never found a trace of her. I have no idea where she could possibly have gone, because neither her mother or grandpa saw her come down.
24points
#11
I was doing some fieldwork for my masters thesis on the local river habitat. I have trail cameras out to catch wildlife. On my way to one of my cameras(I was walking) I heard leaf rustling from the top of a tree and then a body of a deer fell from the tree on the ground. I made some noise and walked away. I thought it was either a bobcat or mountain lion and I didn't want to investigate in case the animal was still there. As far as I know bobcats don't climb on trees to carry their prey and this was a whitetail that looked pretty heavy. I went there a few hours later and the carcass was gone.
As for mountain lion we only have rumors of one around our parts and although I saw tracks, they were not near the camera.
As for mountain lion we only have rumors of one around our parts and although I saw tracks, they were not near the camera.
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23points
#12
When I was 11, I went tent camping with teenage cousins on the Sioux reservation (they lived on the reservation). We were in an area we had followed several trails to find. We were inside the tent and they were telling me a story about shape shifters as the sun was going down. Suddenly, there was a beautiful glow, like when the sun bursts out through clouds and makes everything golden. It highlighted shapes going by the tent and casting shadows, and started as a nice experience. Then there was a loud boom, and the shadow of a large bird came right at us and the tent fell down on top of us. They were genuinely scared, which made me even more terrified. We hightailed it back through those trails and went home in the dark, barely able to breathe we were going so fast.
I still don't know what happened or why, but I can tell you I don't go tent camping.
I still don't know what happened or why, but I can tell you I don't go tent camping.
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22points
What is the scariest thing that you’ve ever witnessed while out in nature, Pandas?
Meanwhile, if we have any current or former national park or wildlife workers here today with us, what are the creepiest and strangest things you’ve experienced while on the job? What are the biggest challenges that you faced?
If you’re feeling social, share your thoughts in the comments below.
#13
Worked for the Park Service for 7 years. For one winter I was stationed down in Kalaloch at Olympic National Park. I was one of only three employees that had full time employment during this time.
I lived on the premise in a small apartment and would often walk over to the main building at night to workout at the gym. It was always empty at this time, nobody else stayed / lived there during the weekend. When I was done I would make my rounds and ensure all the light were out and doors were locked.
Outside of one of the bunkhouses was an unfinished shed that had an overhead light on it. The control for the light was inside the shed and locked. I would turn that light off almost every night, only to find it on in the morning, without fail. It wasn’t on a timer. Nobody else was around that had access.
I’ve spent my whole life working in the woods, I’m completely at home when outside in the dark. I could not walk from my apartment to the main building, at night, without wanting to run every single time.
Random Employees would come to the bunkhouse throughout the winter to stay the night on weekdays while on assignment. Numerous employees complained of bumps in the night and odd noises. Some refused to stay in the 2nd floor entirely. One man even saw an apparition disappear through the wall of his room and refused to stay there any longer. All came to me with their stories, unprompted throughout the winter.
I have many more oddities over the years, just too long to type on mobile.
I lived on the premise in a small apartment and would often walk over to the main building at night to workout at the gym. It was always empty at this time, nobody else stayed / lived there during the weekend. When I was done I would make my rounds and ensure all the light were out and doors were locked.
Outside of one of the bunkhouses was an unfinished shed that had an overhead light on it. The control for the light was inside the shed and locked. I would turn that light off almost every night, only to find it on in the morning, without fail. It wasn’t on a timer. Nobody else was around that had access.
I’ve spent my whole life working in the woods, I’m completely at home when outside in the dark. I could not walk from my apartment to the main building, at night, without wanting to run every single time.
Random Employees would come to the bunkhouse throughout the winter to stay the night on weekdays while on assignment. Numerous employees complained of bumps in the night and odd noises. Some refused to stay in the 2nd floor entirely. One man even saw an apparition disappear through the wall of his room and refused to stay there any longer. All came to me with their stories, unprompted throughout the winter.
I have many more oddities over the years, just too long to type on mobile.
21points
#14
My dad is a warden at a provincial park in Canada, it's a wilderness park that mostly just has people's cabins and other stuff they want to do with LUPs (Land Use Permits) so most of his job is to deal with people not paying/breaking rules on their permitted land. He was told that somebody was living in the park without a permit, so he went to the area (alone) and found "about three dozen" doll heads on sharpened sticks surrounding a small cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney. He knocked on the door but nobody was home so he left a fine for building without an LUP (almost $1000). The next week it was paid for by an old man that came into the office, he said he put the heads up to scare away people. My dad said he seemed a bit off, but mostly harmless; needless to say, he was still super creeped out.
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21points
#15
I once escorted a church group, ages young kids through adults, on a weekend overnight outing to a camp in the Poconos. The camp was set at the confluence of two streams and was somewhat rugged. The group had lots to do - a climbing wall, boating, hiking, sports, all kinds of stuff, including a nature center and little museum. The nature center had interactive displays, fish tanks, small animals, etc, and a "touch table" - a large wooden table with sides, on which was scattered all sorts of artifacts the guests could pick up and handle. These items included deer antlers, bones, turtle shells, feathers, arrowheads and pottery, rocks, seeds and nuts, tanned hides, etc. Little kids especially loved it. All of the items were found by guests or staff while out in the camp, and returned to the nature center. I handled the items also, and I noticed one bone had a really odd shape. I am an environmental scientist by profession, and an outdoorsman and naturalist for fun, and can generally recognize what bones came from what parts of what animals. This bone was a HUMAN MANDIBLE - the lower jawbone of a person. It was severely worn smooth and had no teeth, but easily recognizable as such. It had been there for years, handled by thousands of people, and no one noticed or at least reported it. I reported it to the director who removed it and notified the State Police. They investigated it, it seemed very old, and no one was reported missing in the immediate area, so the camp was allowed to keep it. Possible explanation - the facility was the site of a timbering and ice harvesting camp up until the 1920's, and may have been the remains of a worker who died and was buried right there. But who knows the real story. And as far as I know, it's still on the table.
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18points
#16
I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service. A few times, I've been out on my own searching with a canine, and they've tried to lead me straight up cliffs. Not hills, not even rock faces. Straight, sheer cliffs with no possible handholds. It's always baffling, and in those cases we usually find the person on the other side of the cliff, or miles away from where the canine has led us. I'm sure there's an explanation, but it's sort of strange.
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18points
#17
Not something I saw, but rather, something I heard. This past summer, my girlfriend and I thru-hiked the Colorado Trail. One morning, we’re breaking down our camp and the sun had just come up so it was still pretty early in the morning, maybe around 6-6:30 am. We were camped in this long straight valley (in the Lost Creek wilderness, for any fellow CT thru-hikers). As we’re packing up and getting ready to start hiking again, we can hear this crazy screaming sound, over and over again for maybe a couple minutes. It sounded pretty far off but was echoing through the valley. We both sat there and listened to it, trying to figure out what it was. I have spent a lot of time in the Colorado mountains and have never heard this sound before. At first, we thought it may have been a person, but we were at a fairly remote section of the trail. Once we finished, we did some research and we think it may have been a Mountain Lion, as they sometimes will make a similar screaming noise, but who knows! We were both a little nervous to start hiking again after that!
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16points
#18
Hiker, but I saw this in my backyard, in the bushes beside my deck
Inspecting a couple spiderwebs and looking where they may be, I spot one right in the middle of its web.
I settle in with my beer and notice a wasp-looking thing head for the first web I noticed. I thought it would fly in and get trapped, but it seemed to notice it and inspected it.
Then the Waspy-Thing landed where an anchor point was on the leaf. And sniffed around. Took off flying and looked around before discovering the second web, which it did the same to, with the same success.
Then it flew to the third web with the spider in the middle and the spider just dropped! No web to defend from, it just let go of the web when the Waspy-Thing approached!
It hit the edge of my table and deflected to the ground where it balled up, for defence. The Waspy-Thing went to the table and sniffed around a bit before descending to the floor in search of the spider.
I looked for it and couldn't find it. The spider-ball was gone. The Wasp-y Thing searched for it, sniffing with it's antennae, and myself searching with my eyes. But it was gone. One more spider escaped from the Waspy-Thing Gang
The weird thing is the spider *KNEW*.
Inspecting a couple spiderwebs and looking where they may be, I spot one right in the middle of its web.
I settle in with my beer and notice a wasp-looking thing head for the first web I noticed. I thought it would fly in and get trapped, but it seemed to notice it and inspected it.
Then the Waspy-Thing landed where an anchor point was on the leaf. And sniffed around. Took off flying and looked around before discovering the second web, which it did the same to, with the same success.
Then it flew to the third web with the spider in the middle and the spider just dropped! No web to defend from, it just let go of the web when the Waspy-Thing approached!
It hit the edge of my table and deflected to the ground where it balled up, for defence. The Waspy-Thing went to the table and sniffed around a bit before descending to the floor in search of the spider.
I looked for it and couldn't find it. The spider-ball was gone. The Wasp-y Thing searched for it, sniffing with it's antennae, and myself searching with my eyes. But it was gone. One more spider escaped from the Waspy-Thing Gang
The weird thing is the spider *KNEW*.
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16points
#19
I used to work at one of the big desert national parks out in the southwest US where a lot of mysterious stuff could happen in the middle of nowhere. One of my jobs was doing bat surveys, so my team would hike out to remote canyons and find caves and count/identify any bats we found inside. One one trip we were in a remote canyon, and found a cave half way up a cliff face. We carefully scrambled up there, and once we got deeper inside the cave, we found a tent. It looked like a stereotypical hobo camp: the tent was one of those family car camping tents, with a heavy tarp bottom, not a light backpacking tent. It was rundown and partially collapsed, and looked like it had been trampled, and it was surrounded by black plastic trashbags, food that had been chewed by mice, ratty old clothing, and used toilet paper. And it was way inside a cave, a 3+ hour drive from the nearest tiny town, and a 3 hour hike from the 'trailhead' (I use the term loosely, cause we weren't even on a real trail). It looked like it had been there a while.
My optimistic hope is that an unprepared hiker tried to do a hike that was out of their league. It was way hotter than they expected, so they camped in a cave to stay cool, and the long, nearly vertical hike back out of the canyon was too much so they ditched their tent and trash and food so they wouldn't have as much to carry out.
But on the other hand, this is a huge park with literally thousands of miles of backcountry that gets almost no visitation. In the year I worked there, 10 people (that I know of) perished in the park, and less than a month after this trip someone passed away of heat stroke in the same canyon. People go missing regularly, and are often never found. A lot of people try to hike across parts of the park, and hitch hike and get dropped off instead of leaving a car they have to hike back to. Once they're in the park, a lot of people set up basecamps, then take daypacks to explore even more remote side canyons, where they can easily get hurt or in trouble without anyone knowing where they are. Whoever left their tent and food behind must have been in really desperate shape or got hurt without help, and easily could have died out with ever being found.
My optimistic hope is that an unprepared hiker tried to do a hike that was out of their league. It was way hotter than they expected, so they camped in a cave to stay cool, and the long, nearly vertical hike back out of the canyon was too much so they ditched their tent and trash and food so they wouldn't have as much to carry out.
But on the other hand, this is a huge park with literally thousands of miles of backcountry that gets almost no visitation. In the year I worked there, 10 people (that I know of) perished in the park, and less than a month after this trip someone passed away of heat stroke in the same canyon. People go missing regularly, and are often never found. A lot of people try to hike across parts of the park, and hitch hike and get dropped off instead of leaving a car they have to hike back to. Once they're in the park, a lot of people set up basecamps, then take daypacks to explore even more remote side canyons, where they can easily get hurt or in trouble without anyone knowing where they are. Whoever left their tent and food behind must have been in really desperate shape or got hurt without help, and easily could have died out with ever being found.
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15points
#20
I just work for a county park, but I get there before the sunrise and I've definitely been weirded out once or twice.
First off--possums, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes all make a variety of peculiar noises, many of which I was not previously familiar with. Some sound like demons, some sound like crying children, some are just kinda their own thing and defy immediate description.
The only creepy thing I've ever seen have been lights in the woods. It's hard to tell how far away they are, I would guess 300-400m, but it's dark. They're a yellowish sort of white, and appear to quickly and smoothly fade on and off in the span of about a second. I've only ever seen one light at a time, and after it happens once there are no repeats. It's too bright to be a firefly, not bright enough to be a distant car, and too smooth and random to be someone with a flashlight. My imagination has drifted to stories of will-o'-wisps, but I think it's probably just some kind of bioluminescence or else an optical illusion brought about by squinting to see through a darkened forest.
First off--possums, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes all make a variety of peculiar noises, many of which I was not previously familiar with. Some sound like demons, some sound like crying children, some are just kinda their own thing and defy immediate description.
The only creepy thing I've ever seen have been lights in the woods. It's hard to tell how far away they are, I would guess 300-400m, but it's dark. They're a yellowish sort of white, and appear to quickly and smoothly fade on and off in the span of about a second. I've only ever seen one light at a time, and after it happens once there are no repeats. It's too bright to be a firefly, not bright enough to be a distant car, and too smooth and random to be someone with a flashlight. My imagination has drifted to stories of will-o'-wisps, but I think it's probably just some kind of bioluminescence or else an optical illusion brought about by squinting to see through a darkened forest.
15points