I appreciated this write-up. The line between "mildly interesting story with some great photos" and "we made a wrong turn or wrong decision and died" is a lot thinner than I think this post makes clear.<p>There are very few roads and people in the High Sierras, and Red Meadows pack station is basically it when it comes to services.<p>Surrounded by smoke, changing winds, and uncertain information, they had to try and get information through very low bandwidth, high latency satellite text systems (I have an InReach, and it's great, but leaves a lot to be desired).<p>I'm impressed with their retelling of the story and am glad they made it out safe.
Maybe I'm just being harsh, but after reading <i>several</i> times and figuring out what was going on, it's an instagrammer's slight inconvenience and detour being dramatized (or implied, given the photos and hour-by-hour narrative) into a life-or-death hike out, yet with "smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice".<p>They had a weeklong backpacking trip planned, hiked to where they thought they would start it, encountered smoke and potential fire, and had to hike back out. Leisurely. Enough to get a solid 9 hours of sleep. Doesn't quite qualify as the life-in-jeopardy kind of event that the polish and presentation of the blog make you think you're in for.<p>I'm a little more interested to hear about the folks who were actually in danger and barely escaped.
> <i>One of the best decisions we made that evening was choosing to only bringing the best snacks and dinner option available. Which happened to be smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice. This ended up being just the magic we needed to keep morale up as the evening came to an end.</i><p>Exactly this. Never underestimate how important a good snack can be to improving morale in a difficult situation.<p>In many situations just a bit of chocolate can literally be the way to lift the mental fog of war and make it significantly easier to keep plodding through whatever stressful situation you are dealing with.<p>A good snack really does work magic.
I feel pretty dumb for reading this whole thing. I kept waiting for the part of this story where they said "yeah, maybe the first time people told us to turn around, or the second, or the third, we should have actually turned around". At least <i>hindsight</i> is supposed to be 20/20 :D Also, is it an "escape" if you walk toward something dangerous for longer than you should, and then turn around. D- guys. You made it, but BARELY.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was known well ahead of time that there were going to be severe temperatures and a high risk of bushfire, right?<p>Given that, who in their right mind decides that this is a good time to go hiking in this area?
Definitely a very risky time to be out in the wilderness, anywhere west of the Rocky Mountains. And that’s probably understating it.<p>It’s really something to see the entire west coast on fire right now. We live up in a forested valley in northwest Oregon, and got blanketed with smoke yesterday. Happened quickly and was the worst smoke I’ve experienced since the Camp Fire blew into Los Altos, CA, a while back. Our area of Oregon hit the top of the wildfire risk chart yesterday for the entire west coast, at “critical” — hot and dry with gusts of winds reaching 65MPH.<p>Happily woke up to relatively calm, clear-ish skies today.<p>We’ve spent a decent amount of money getting rid of brush, and trees, to create a “defensible zone” around the home. That’s one of the most impactful things that can be done to mitigate the risk — make sure flammable plants and trees are far from the house, use hardscaping (stone, gravel) around the foundation, and keep anything within 30-100’ well irrigated. Also, don’t allow leaves etc to gather under porches, gutters. Make sure vents are well screened.<p>The forest becomes more wilderness but we’ve been doing a bunch there as well: limbing trees up to reduce the risk of “ladder fires”, getting rid of brush, cleaning up old access trails in case a fire crew needs to come through.<p>Fires are pretty awesome events — experiencing them first-hand gives you a sense of scale that’s impossible to convey through pictures alone. The people in this story had quite an experience, and it’s fortunate how many people escaped that fire.<p>But fires are both natural, and increasing in destructiveness due to a combination of factors (including climate change). Definitely stay aware, and if you live in a wildfire zone, get moving on preparations and preventative measures.<p>This is the future, folks.
This looks harrowing and I appreciate the person taking the time to share their experience and their lessons.<p>Total technical aside: is this a submarine for a new version of exposure?
With @kepler1 on this one. This is an overly-dramatized Instagrammer's take on a pretty low-stakes situation with plenty of leeway. I'm not even particularly outdoorsy and I've got crazier stories (involving bears, pulling people out of overturned cars, etc.). I was out kayaking this weekend, and even though we were just barely 2 hours out of LA, we were acutely aware and tracking smoke/fires in the San Bernardino Mountains.<p>With that said, hiking <i>into</i> a high-risk area with <i>already</i> a few known fires nearby is just stupid and it could've been really bad. I'd like to hope they learned their lesson.
If you are interested in stories like this, and how people make life or death decisions in difficult situations, I recommend Laurence Gonzales's book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.