I was in Mexico’s Copper Canyon leading a group of “Chavochi” adventure travelers. “Chavochi” is basically the Tarahumara word for Gringo, non-indigenous, devil people. Various things happened while we were down there in Batopilas Canyon and the town of Batopilas, which may or may not be related. I think they are.
Interesting events late at night during a 24 Hour mountain bike race.
Things got progressively weirder as the Utah mountain bike race, known as the 24 Hours of Moab, continued. It was an event where riders, in teams ranging in size from single individuals to 8, rode as many laps as possible within 24 hours. I was doing it solo, which, among other things, created some intriguing late-night moments. At some point in the middle of the night, two tandem bikes with riders dressed as frogs rode in from a direction that had nothing to do with the racecourse. During the previous lap, I’d been concerned when another racer didn’t correctly yield the trail on a long climb. But by the time the frog thing happened, things like that were no longer bothering me. I was just pleased to see the frogs stopped and waiting off to the side of the trail for me to pass before continuing. From that moment on, as I rode up toward the crest of that hill each lap, I kept looking for the frog riders and continued to be concerned they might be riding the same section of trail as I was. I could only hope that if so, they’d at least be going in the same counterclockwise direction as everyone else.
Adventurers weather a violent storm near the Continental Divide in the Wind River Range.
It’d been a long day. But by mid-afternoon, our group of teenagers was finally up on the spine of Wyoming’s Wind River Range and walking along the Continental Divide. The “Divide” is an imaginary line along the crest of the continent that, in North America, separates the Pacific and Atlantic watersheds. When a drop of rain or snow falls anywhere along it, the water inevitably ends up in one of the other oceans. On multiple occasions, I’d straddled the line while it was raining, watching raindrops roll down my raingear onto the ground and envisioning their long journey to the ocean.
A group of backpackers attempts to climb Lizard Head and learns the true meaning of climbing.
Lizard Head is a prominent peak just north and east of the breathtakingly majestic line of mountains, ridges, and spires in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, known as the Cirque of the Towers. On one particular Outpost Wilderness Adventure trip, we backpacked with two groups of 7 via different routes up to Bear Lake. The lake is on the east side of Lizard Head and served as our backcountry base camp. Once there, we set up two close but separate campsites, each located between the lake and the mountain. The plan was to use each as a base for exploring and adventuring in the area. Since it was during the Fourth of July holiday, we figured there’d be a lot of people in the general area, but few would venture into that particular neck of the woods. And, as a special Fourth of July treat, we brought along freeze-dried hamburger patties to eat, a cutting-edge item back in the ’80s.
Backpackers learn the importance of avoiding high tide due to the realities of sharks and crocodiles in the area.
Hiking on the beach sounded like fun. I pictured us walking barefoot on the sand and carrying light packs. In my vision, there were palapas off to one side and multiple limbo contests happening on the other. A gentle sea breeze tousled our full heads of hair and kept the temperature within the perfect zone. The surf perpetually crashed onto what seemed an endless white sand beach. And the waves showered us with refreshing breaths of ocean air as we walked into the heart of Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
But that’s not exactly how it happened. Instead, it was more like this:
An interesting adventure trip down into the Oriente of Ecuador.
Omain
One main road snakes its way down into Ecuador’s Oriente, or Amazon Basin, from the highlands, and that’s how our bus went. We left the mountain town of Banos in the late afternoon and began descending immediately. A massive cliff loomed just outside the bus windows. The sight of it only added fuel to the worry-fire that had ignited when we saw the murals in the Banos church depicting angels rescuing vehicles falling off cliffs. Soon after the bus began moving, we noted that the local passengers were leaning into the hillside at regular intervals and wondered what that was all about. Then, one of our group members looked out their window and saw little more than hundreds of feet of thin air separating our bus from the river far below. At that point, we realized everyone was leaning into the hillside to keep the bus on the road.
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