National Park After Dark - Trail Tales 17

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Today’s stories include lights over Idaho, forest knocks, tornado camping and Colorado moms. All stories shared with consent.Join us for a LIVE show in Denver! Tickets HEREWe love our National Parks and we know you do too but when you're out there, remember to enjoy the view but watch your back. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe from wherever you’re listening to NPAD! Become part of our Outsider family on Patreon to gain access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more. Follow our socials Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. To share a Trail Tale, suggest a story, access merch, and browse our book recommendations - head over to our website.Thank you so much to our partners, check them out!Microdose: Use code NPAD to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.MasterClass: Use our link and give one annual membership to get one free.Uncommon Goods: Use our link and get 15% off your next gift.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hello everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. We have another trail tales today. And happy early holiday. I mean, we're releasing this a day early so you guys can get some good

tales in, maybe share it around with your family. Be like, I heard the craziest story the other day on this podcast. You want to hear it. And then you can go ahead and spread it with all your friends and family and totally creep them out. Yeah. But they're not our stories. They're your stories. They are. That you're telling us. We have quite a few cool ones today. I have a theme, and I didn't even really realize until just now. What's your theme? They all have to do with, like, mother, like mothers. Oh, interesting.

And babies, but not just human mothers. Okay. My selection has absolutely no theme at all. Great. Okay, well, then do you want to start? Sure. My first one is titled Yosemite Bigfoot, question mark, plus bear magnet, because why not? I'm confused, but okay.

Hello. First off, I have just recently learned of your podcast and have been absolutely hooked. I do a lot of driving for work. I'm a farmer's market manager and go all over Southern California. And your podcast is literally all I've been listening to on my drives. I haven't been listening in any particular order, just jumping around based on which title grabs me. I just listened to your Bigfoot episode earlier this morning and it inspired me to tell you my own story. So my girlfriend Cindy and I, Rob, have been going to Yosemite two to three times a year for the past five years that we've been together.

We've gone all over to many different national parks, but being that Yosemite is only about five and a half hours away from us, it's basically a hop, skip, and a jump. So we know it very well and are always trying to find new hikes. We especially prefer finding hidden gem, secluded trails away from all the crowds. Well, Cindy is not so interested in these type of trails after this particular hike. I believe it was August of 2020, so COVID restrictions were still a thing, and Yosemite was still on a reservation system. Most years, we avoid going during peak season to avoid crowds, but this was even more quiet and desolate than a usual offseason would be pre-COVID. The park was the most dead I've seen it, and I've been going since I was a kid. I'm 33 now.

Anyway, we hadn't really hiked many trails off a Glacier Point Road before, so this day we decided to do a small out-and-back trail, maybe 20 to 30 minutes up Glacier Road, with the intent of doing a couple more trails off of the road afterwards. We park at the trailhead, and just as we love to see, no other cars parked there, keep this in mind, also important is that there are not really any other connecting trails that meet with this trail. As we always do when out hiking in any bear country, we're being sure to make noise. Cindy is always terrified of running into bears, so she usually is the one to make sure that there's noise, especially with me, as my family calls me, bear magnet, because I literally always have bear encounters whenever I'm in bear country. At this point, we are both actually noticing that it was very eerily quiet out here. Normally what I look for in hikes, but this was just different.

And as if out of some movie, we even comment on this feeling to each other. So she's maybe 15 to 20 feet in front of me and clapping every so often to make noise. We are both scanning side to side and just kind of listening to the eerily silent forest and not saying a word at this point. What we absolutely did not expect was for something to respond to said claps. Cindy, clap, clap, clap. The forest? Knock, knock, knock. We freeze.

She turns around to look at me to see if I had heard it as well. No words spoken. We look up the small hill off the trail to our right. Cindy claps. The small hill off the trail to our right goes knock, knock. Every time she claps, the forest mimics the clap with a knock. Now I have always heard stories and know that it has been reported that they, quote unquote they, tend to knock on trees. And this is exactly what it sounded like. Like if someone had a lot of large piece of wood or rock and was using it to knock on a tree. It was very loud. Maybe someone is fucking with us, Cindy asked. I said, maybe, but there were no other cars at the trailhead. We decided that we should head back to the car. We figured whatever is responding to our claps, whether it was another person or not, it certainly had some form of intelligence and definitely was not an animal and we didn't much want to find out what it was. As we were heading back, she continues to clap and we notice the knocking is following us up the hill off the side of the trail. We continue walking a little faster at this point. The knocking back continues, but seems to have

stopped following us. We're not far from the trailhead now. Cindy, who is about 15 feet in front of me, stops dead in her tracks and turns to look at me with absolute fear in her eyes at this point. She whispers, bear. I scan to her left and right, and then about two feet away from her, a fair large bear stands up from behind the bushes and stares at me. Cindy whispers, what do I do? What do I do? And I tell her, walk backwards towards me slowly. She does and stands behind me, grabbing me. We walk slowly backwards about 40 feet down the trail. Now we have a bear in front of us and whatever this was knocking behind us. We freeze. Unsure what to do. I clap a couple more times and sure as shit, the mimicking knock continues and has moved closer now. We don't see anything, but we know it's

just right up the hill off the side of the trail. The bear is now on the trail and moving towards us, but not aggressively, thankfully. It stops to inspect some bushes for possible food, I assume. We clap, we hear knocking. After what seems like an eternity, the bear turns off the trail opposite the knocking side and scurries into the woods. Finally, we can continue to our car. We keep clapping, And again, distant knocks. The knocking continues but isn't following us anymore. We get back to the car and drive off with the biggest sigh of relief either of us may have ever had before.

I know, I know. We didn't see anything and no harm came to us. But holy shit was that an intense series of events. I understand that it absolutely could have been a person, but where did they come from and what were they doing up that small hill off the trail? Also, most people tend to make a lot of noise when moving through the forest, especially off of a trail through leaves and sticks and twigs. Whatever this was had a lot of experience at moving quietly through the woods.

I don't know what that was that day, but I believe. And then just throw a bear into the mix because why not? Right, Rob, a.k.a. Bear Magnet, aka Bigfoot Whisperer. Okay, for a second, I was a little confused. I thought the bear was, ended up being the knocking. but coming from opposite directions, opposite sides of the trail. But they were two totally separate things. And two totally separate things.

Yeah, because I was like, wait, how the hell is the bear knocking? That's wild. That's a lot of overstimulation for me. I feel like I'm in, even though Bigfoot is the end all be all for me, I feel like that's just someone fucking with you. I just have a feeling. I just picture a woodpecker, you know, just like in the trees that whole time. And it's just like, it was just a coincidence.

or like maybe the clapping was just like, oh, I'll woodpeck back. You know, I just picture it being a... But it was following them? Yeah, but they're up in the tree, you know. I just picture it being a woodpecker or something. I'm sure it's not. The person's listening to this and they're like, it's not a woodpecker. It was scary.

Rob's like, you weren't even there. It was Bigfoot. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting.

Watch only on Prime. Okay, so my first one is titled A Mountain Lion Took My Baby. Not really, but I was afraid it would. ladies first i just want to say thank you so much for all of the work you put into the podcast my friend recommended it to me a few months ago and i started at the very beginning and you all have been my constant companions whenever i get alone time to do chores knit or relax with the pup i'm almost caught up don't worry i plan to hop over to patreon and binge everything there next second i want to extend my deepest sympathies to you all for the loss of ian i had seen the title of his episode when i was scrolling down to the single digits. So I knew something awful was going to happen, but it was still a shock when I got

to the announcement. It's hard to lose someone so special. Please know. So many hugs are being sent your way. Thank you. We appreciate that. I love your podcast because it is such a fabulous intersection of different things that interest me, and I especially love learning about the parks and park units you tell us about. I've always loved nature and traveling and now getting to all national parks is on my list. My kiddo is now seven years old, and the only job he has ever said he may want to be is a park ranger, and he has become obsessed with earning junior park ranger badges. He wants them all. He has five so far, two for the Teton's, a Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National Park, and great sand dunes.

Yes, we live in Colorado. At four, he actually told the ranger, when getting his first Teton's badge, he wanted to be chief of the park rangers. But since then, we have explained that being in charge mostly means at a desk and paperwork. now he thinks a backcountry ranger sounds far better. It's pretty, pretty, uh, he has his ducks in a row for being seven. I know, he knows more that he wants to do than I do. Right. But when he was just under a year old, we had a terrifying encounter that could have ended us both. Your episode on The Dingo took my baby reminded me of the story from when my kiddo was a baby, and I know how much you love mountain lion stories, so I hope you enjoy it. My friend and I went on a little two-night mom baby getaway to the

town of Breckenridge, where they owned a condo right in the little downtown area. I love Brecht. It's so nice. I know it's kind of like a lot of people go there, but I love it. We decided to walk to dinner and just wear the babies in our carriers since it was too icy for strollers and finding parking was a pain. It was only a handful of blocks and we had plenty of warm clothes and good boots. What could go wrong? We had a great dinner and we snuggled the babies into their wrap carriers for the walk back. We were almost to the alleyway we needed to walk down to get home when I quietly told my to stop. Just half a block away, right in front of us, a huge mountain lion went strolling across the street and down the alley we needed to walk down. I think my friend said something like,

that was a dog, right? Tell me that was a dog. To which I'm sure I responded something along the lines of, no, that was a fucking mountain lion. Despite it being February in a ski town, there was no one else around. What the hell? Of course. You know, of course. The time you need somebody around. We stood there for a long couple of minutes frozen in place trying to figure out what to do. We clearly could not walk down that alley. It was icy. We were wearing our babies, both of whom were fast asleep and completely oblivious. We had no weapons or bear spray. Panic was washing over us when at last car lights appeared on the road ahead. We were saved. We quickly agreed we would flag that car down and see if they could help. A big black SUV slowly drove up beside us and rolled down

their window. But the woman driving seemed super sketch. She was smoking. She was smoking. and didn't seem fully sober. Okay, maybe we weren't saved. We quickly explained the situation, but my friend and I gave each other looks that silently agreed we were absolutely not getting into the car with this person. Thankfully, she agreed to slowly drive us down the alley while we walked right next to her car. We made up some excuse for not getting into the car about not having car seats. That's actually pretty smart. That is smart. Quick thinking. She kept her window down and said if she saw the cat coming, she would yell and honk her horn to try and scare it away. Walking down that alley was absolutely terrifying, and I don't think I have ever been on such high alert.

We finally got to the condo but had to walk maybe 25 yards from the vehicle to the door through the garden. It was so dark, there were so many shadows, there were trees, and big cat Heidi hole places all around. The woman in the car waited and watched us as we quickly rushed inside. Thankfully, we made it into the house, locked the door, and then just stared at one another shaking and wondering how the hell that actually just happened. The next morning at the coffee shop, someone told us there was a couple of mountain lions who had been regularly hanging out on various houses rooftops, just chilling and watching people. They said that residents had been warned not to leave even second-story windows open because of this. Big cats are so scary. Yeah, they are.

If you decide to read my story on Trail Tales, feel free to use my name. On a side note, I have a very healthy fear of Mountain Lions since we moved to Colorado, and we started hiking when I was in middle school. That fear was intensified when I worked with a man whose young child went missing while hiking with a big group of family, some 20 years prior to me knowing him, and the leading theory was that a mountain line took him. There was something about there being a fast group and a slow group, and the child was running between the two. He ran to catch up with the fast group, went around a bend, out of eyesight of the slower group, and all they ever found of him was a shoe. I believe his name was Jared and his dad wrote a book, though I have not been able to bring myself to read it. It was somewhere in

Colorado, and I would really love if you did an episode on it. Again, thank you so much for your amazing podcast and being such awesome, genuine humans. Enjoy the view, but watch your back and your front for prowling mountain lions, Stacy. That's a scary encounter. It is a scary one, because you least expect it. You're walking home from dinner in a town, like, albeit it is Breck, and there is lots of wildlife there. You just don't expect it. And, you know, like I just, The visual of having two big cats just like lounging on rooftops, just watching. That's so scary. That's so scary.

Just like waiting for them to pounce. Yeah. Big cats are. I'm sure, obviously, nothing happened clearly to her or anybody else because I have a feeling she would have mentioned that. Hopefully they were just passing through. But yeah, scary stuff. Big cats are really magical and they're really scary at the same time.

All right. Well, my next story is titled UF. those in the potato state. Hi ladies, of course I have to start off by saying how much I've enjoyed y'all's podcast. I drive a lot for work and it gets me through these long days behind a windshield. Keep up the good work, sending love to you both. For some background, my boyfriend, his mom, stepdad and I have begun a new tradition of taking a backpacking trip every year. We each put a suggestion in a hat and draw one to decide where we go. This year, my pick got chosen, the Sawtooth Mountain ranges in Idaho. Now if you've never been to Idaho or even heard of the sawtooth, I cannot

recommend it enough. It was an absolutely magical experience. Now on to the story. We spent three days backpacking around Alice Lake area and two days in a cabin at the foothills. We joked about how crazy it would be to see a bear or a UFO while out in the middle of the wilderness. Turns out, one of those would come true. Our final nights of the trip were spent around a campfire on the river bank in the backyard of our cabin. We would gaze up at the stars, admiring how bright they were, and how we could even pinpoint the Milky Way. We saw airplanes, shooting stars, satellites, and planets twinkling in the sky. Our necks would be sore by the end of the evening from gazing up for so long. On the very last night, we built a fire as we always did and craned our necks

up towards the sky. Shooting star after shooting star, we stood mesmerized at the vastness above us. As we were winding down, my boyfriend's stepdad began pouring buckets of water to put out the fire. The rest of us were still gazing at the sky, facing in the opposite direction. Suddenly, we hear his stepdad exclaim, Guys, what the hell is that? Of course our hearts stop, and the first thing we think is, oh shit, it must be a bear. The three of us turn around to find his stepdad pointing up at the sky. Directly above us was a massive object emitting light.

It looked pointed at one end and was moving very slowly across the night sky. Its lights were extremely bright and appeared segmented. It was very clearly not a shooting star as we had seen a ton of those just minutes before. This was much more massive, brighter, and closer than anything else in the sky. We stood there. Domfounded as the object continued to slowly drift across the sky and just as quickly as it had appeared, it faded to black. It was gone. Not even an outline left to be seen.

It had only been visible for maybe 20 seconds, but never made its full journey across the horizon. My boyfriend did attempt to record it with his phone, but was just barely too late. All you can see is grainy blackness narrated by our astonished voices, though our commentary is pretty funny to listen back to. Now, before anyone assumes it might have just been a satellite or a Starlink, trust me, we looked into that too. According to the Starlink online tracker, there were no satellites nearby. This object almost seemed rocket light. To this day, we still have no idea what we saw. We just know that we did see it.

I'm still completely convinced it was an alien spacecraft, and once they realized that humans were watching them, they turned off their lights and disappeared into the darkness. Well, I hope you appreciate this fun little story, even if it doesn't make it on the pod. We're already planning our trip for next year. This time, my boyfriend's suggestion was chosen. Olympic National Park. We're all super pumped. I wish so badly that I had a picture of whatever we saw that night in Idaho,

but instead I've included a photo of me and my boyfriend just a few days prior, adorned with our way too heavy backpacks in the rugged yet breathtaking soft tooth mountains. Thanks again for all that you do. And remember, enjoy the view, but watch out for what might just be above you. All my love, Ashley. Ooh, that story just pumped me up because, obviously, this is going to come out. recording a little early because for once I'm going somewhere. Cassie is usually one bouncing around, but I'm going to be in Canyonlands for a few days and I am so excited because I just have my fingers crossed for a UFO sighting. It would be a good place to see one. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You've got to look up. My next one, like I said, I got a theme going

is titled, Mothers Will Do Anything for Their Children. Love the Pod. Love you girls. Can we be friends? Yes. Yes. After listening to the story of the aggressive elk in the Grand Canyon in Trail Tales 14 and Pico's Wolf Attack in Trail Tales 15, I figured it was time I sent in my own animal attack story. Let me just start by saying, we don't deserve dogs. I live in Estes Park, home of Rocky Mountain National Park, where the elk are plentiful and the tourists are dumb. All right. Okay, that got me. That's classic. Also, everyone you're choosing, everyone's from Colorado. So far, I might surprise myself. I don't remember if the last one is or not, but if it is, it's the perfect trifecta. I tried to figure out a nicer way to describe Torons, but just the other

day, I saw a woman try to put her toddler on the back of a bull elk for a picture. Dumb is just about as nice as I can be. Locals and Estes know that there are two seasons to be on high alert, the elk rut and calving season. For those who don't know what those are, I'll briefly explain. The elk rut occurs in the fall, and it is when male elk are seeking a female. Bull elk are known to be very aggressive during this time. Calving season takes place in the spring, usually from May to June, and it is at the time where female elk have their babies. Like any mothers, female elk can get aggressive when people get too close to their young.

Growing up in Colorado, I know all of this information, and because of that, always keep an eye out when walking my dogs. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for one particular day that I walked my dog bear around the lake. Sometimes you can know all the right things and do everything in your power to help yourself, but still get unlucky. Spoiler alert, since I know we are all animal lovers and can't handle the stress, Bear is fine. He just sits a little lopsided now. A little background on Bear. I rescued him from a puppy mill situation when I was fresh out of grad school and had no business owning a dog.

He has been with me through so much, including an abusive relationship, a major life transition, the sudden passing of a partner, six moves, the pandemic, and a top. toxic job that made me change my whole trajectory. It sounds a lot like Chaska. My dog. Me and Chaska's relationship is like kind of lining up. You both have been through some shit together. He is the first dog that I took in as my own and I truly believe he's my sole dog. Needless to say, we tight. During this particular time, Bear would come to work with me so we would spend our mornings walking the three miles around the lake before heading to the office. Those mornings were my chance to find some solace before heading to my toxic job. This was during the start of the pandemic and I was stuck.

So many places had hiring freezes and I couldn't get out no matter how hard I tried. Bringing Bear to work was the only positive of that place. I was keeping my usual eye out for any wildlife and listening to music with one earbud when I came upon a man walking towards me. Most people in the morning will wave and smile and say good morning, but this man stopped short and had a look of terror in his eyes. He pointed at something behind me to which I turned around and found myself standing nose to nose with a female elk.

Something to know about female elk with calves is that they will often put their calves in the tall grass or bushes so they are hidden while the mom goes out to eat. I had just walked past a patch of tall grass that was taller than me. This mama elk saw me, came out of the grass, and viewed me as a threat. It appeared she had been following close behind me for a few minutes before I ran into the man who pointed her out. The man came up behind me and started yelling and clapping his hands to try and scare the elk away. I thought it was working, but she would only turn around and walk away from us for a few steps and turn right back and charge us.

This is typical behavior, but that doesn't mean it wasn't scary. Bear had had enough with this elk's shenanigans. Without me knowing or feeling it, he slipped out of his collar and went for the elk. Remember how I said I got him from a puppy mill? Well, when I brought him home, I discovered that he was fearful of anything and everything, that he would sometimes become aggressive. We worked through it with a lot of training and exposure, and he turned into the sweetest good boy. but this bear that slipped out of his collar, this bear was reminiscent of that scared dog.

He bared his teeth and growled and barked, sneaking closer and closer. With a new threat to take care of, the elk forgot about us and turned on my dog. She reared up on her hind end and came down stomping bears backside. I lost my mind. You know those stories that people tell about mothers who do extraordinary things when their children are in danger, like lift cars off the ground or move at warp speed? I'm going to use that as my excuse for what I did next. Before the elk could get another shot at bear, I ran at the elk and body slammed her,

moving her away from bear and giving him a chance to get away. Yeah, I rough housed with an elk. Was it dumb? Totally. But no one messes with my kids and gets away with it. When it comes to fight, flight, or freeze, apparently, I'm a fighter. I braced for impact, but the elk simply stared me down and began prancing in the other direction. She was probably like, what the fuck? She was like, what is happening right now?

After a few minutes of waiting to see if she would come back and locating Bear who had managed to sneak away and hide himself, I started making my way back to my car, which was still a mile away. The nice man who helped me offered me a ride to my car, but for some stupid reason, I declined. I was crying and on the verge of hyperventilating, and I didn't want to do that in a stranger's car. Multiple times during my mile walk carrying bears 45 pounds in my arms,

people approaching me asked me what happened. After briefly explaining the story, many said that it made sense because they thought they heard screaming. Yep, my screaming carried over almost a mile. After a lot of begging and crying over the phone, I found a vet that would take Baron right away to examine him. Of all the things that could have happened, he came out with an inflamed backside. Super lucky, that could have been really, really bad. Yeah, that could have been paralysis. Yeah.

All jokes aside, this incident was terrifying and I am thankful for all the days after that Bear has grace me with his presence. Something or someone in the universe knew I would need him in my life. At 12 years old now, I can tell he's slowing down with age, and while that makes me tear up at the thought, I am thankful that we will get to experience it together. I've attached photos below of Bear and Foxy, the dog I recently added to the family. I cannot say enough how important it is to adopt and not to shop. Foxy herself came from a high kill shelter in Texas where she was 30 minutes away from being euthanized because she was too old. She's seven. Rescue dogs are some of the most loyal companions you will ever have the pleasure of knowing,

and I know for a fact that my life wouldn't be completely different without them in it. Enjoy the view with a friend, Becca. I love that. Anything for your dog. Your dog is your child's. Even body slamming an elk. I just imagine her just like, you know, like, what's that superhero that like rips like his shirt apart? Hulk?

Is that the Hulk? Like turns, like you don't. And then like body slamming? Oh, my God. I just imagine body slamming an elk and then like stopping and being like, did I just do that? It's like, oh, shit, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I just have to react.

I'm so sorry. I'm just like staring at the elk like, what now? What, no, I'm sorry. You know that meme of Spider-Man? They're all just pointing at each other like a stalemate. Yeah. It's like your move. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad everyone's okay. Me too. Yeah, that's wild. I also appreciate the clarification that bear was okay. before the story happened because when she said that the elk stomped on his back, even though I knew he was going to be okay, I was still really upset. He's good. He's fine.

He's fine. All right. Well, my last story is called Tornado Sleepover in Missouri. Howdy, darlings. My name is Hannah, and I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I work at a native plant nursery in Wisconsin and listening to your stories while I weed plants is a sweet morbid bliss. Your trail-tale episodes are some of my favorite, and I've always been bummed that I couldn't share my own. However, I realized, Hannah, you ding-dong,

you work for the Forest Service. You have so many stories. So, without further ado, I want to tell you about my first night in the Hercules Wilderness. Hercules is a wilderness area within Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri. Since it's a designated wilderness, no more motorized vehicles or machinery are allowed. Hiking and equestrians are the only form of transportation and chainsaws are a no-go. When I was an intern in 2017, Hercules was in need of some serious TLC. Years of high traffic reduced the once clear paths into a jumble of side roads and trails that led nowhere. In addition, Hercules is a combination of prairies, forests, rivers, and gullies, which makes a sudden change in terrain confusing to visitors.

People were getting lost at a concerning rate. At one point, local search and rescue threatened to refuse help if changes were not made to bring some sense of order to the trail system. That, my ladies, is where I come in. Literally, a day after I graduated college in Wisconsin, I started my internship in Mark Twain as a wilderness intern. My role was to overnight in multiple wilderness areas so we could update the trail map with a GPS tracker I could.

carried. While I was in the wilderness area, I would mark locations of established campsites, destroy makeshift and dead-end trails, and even break down doomsday prepper camps. There were more than you'd think. However, before I could be trusted to go in for days with my co-worker Matt, we needed a guide to show us the most popular route. Matt, a guide and myself set out on a hot May afternoon for one night in the wilderness. We each had our own tent, sleeping bag, water filters, trail, food, raincoats, and toiletries. We were given one GPS tracker and radio for the three of us, as we would never split up. This was a three-hour hike after all, and the campsite was well established. However, our boss explained that to save battery power on the tracker and radio,

we would turn both off once we'd reach the camp and settled in for our night location. The hike was beautiful and breezy, as it was downhill and mostly shaded. I took so many pictures and splashed in the water. Our campsite was easily found, and dinner was relaxing and full of laughter. When the sun went down, we crawled into our tents and discussed the possibility of rain overnight. The humidity had been unbearable for the past few days, and our guide was certain that we would have rain.

This was a comfort as it would cool us and sound comforting if we were to wake up in the wee hours. Now a side note, when I camp, especially in summer, I am naked as the day I was born. It's hot in there, and I refuse to wear clothes in a space that is entirely my own. I realize now that this is frankly a bad idea, especially if I had to get up and move quickly. But when I'm hot, I don't think straight. I need the coolness immediately. So on this night, I was a nude lady in a solo tent. Cool as a cucumber. Around 2 a.m., the rain came in, cooling the valley we were sleeping in, and drenching the soil with much-needed water.

I woke up a little cold and sleepily decided it was time to search for my t-shirt and shorts. As I began to wake up, I realized that the rain was a lot louder on my tent than I had expected. It sounded like a hose was being sprayed on and off the rain tarp. That's when I noticed the wind. It whistled in the trees and around my tent. Then it roared. The tent pulled at the ties in the ground, secure but unnerving. The trees groaned around me.

I slipped on my clothes, scurried into my sleeping bag, and peered out of the mesh of my tent. I could barely see the campsite under my tarp as it was pitch. black with no light. Then I felt the wind slapped my face as a gust slipped under the tarp and a flash of lightning turned the forest floor white. I squeaked and immediately laid down and hid inside my sleeping bag. Thunder followed with a boisterous crack and I slipped further into my humid bag. It was like being a kid again, covering my face and ears to shut out all sounds and light. It did nothing for the experience. The wind seemed to be multiplying while the rain pelted my tent as though it was trying to rip through the.

protective tarp. Somewhere in the valley, I heard a tree strain against the wind before releasing its grip onto the earth. It fell in time with another round of thunder. Its contact with the ground deafened by the onslaught of wind and a chorus of thunder. What if a tree fell on me? On mat. No one would help us. No one was there to answer our calls. I'm not a religious woman, but I felt like praying for God to protect me. However, I could not bring myself to send a prayer. It felt wrong. Instead, I'd be. began to soothe myself by repeating the phrase, it only sounds worse because you're outside. After what felt like 20 minutes, the wind eased slightly, the rain calmed itself and the thunder

bounced over the hills out of earshot. I fell asleep again, exhausted from fright. In the morning, I hastened out of my tent to see if my companions were okay. It was still raining, but this was a whisper compared to the concert we experienced during the night. Everyone was shaken as we cleaned out our camp. No one was injured, but no one slept. We donned our backpacks to hike out and turned on the radio and tracker. Matt spoke into the radio. Matt to Ava, Matt to Ava, we're okay and we're heading out of Hercules. Within seconds, we received a reply. Ava to Matt, we're glad to hear from you. See you in a few hours. Matt replied, the radio battery is low. We may lose you before we reach HQ. A minute passed. Copy that. We have your location. Keep the tracker on. Now to begin our

hike out, uphill in the rain. It took us about four hours to leave Hercules and then another hour to reach headquarters. The guide dropped us off and we walked towards headquarters with our gear. Before we left the parking lot, half of the Forest Service staff was out with us. They bombarded us with questions. Where were we camped? Why was your radio off? And more. Matt and I were confused. We'd done everything our boss had instructed. All of our senior staff members looked at one another and one higher up left for the office. Apparently, we weren't supposed to have our radio off. Our boss hadn't charged the walkies or replaced the batteries in time and sent us into the wilderness hoping our radios would last if we turned them off. Second, we had camped in the path of a tornado.

Sirens went off around 2 a.m. The senior employees called one another and met up at headquarters as they had all woken up and were worried about us. They attempted contact with us for almost 30 minutes with no response. To make matters worse, none of them had our GPS coordinates. Our boss did, and they were answering their phones. Everyone was convinced we were trapped or worse, dead. Around 4 a.m., they agreed that there was nothing they could do until morning when they were required to check in. If we missed our 8 a.m. deadline, search and rescue was coming for us. When we called in, there was a cheer in the office. The interns survived. Although we were all tired, most of the team went on to move trees and clean up the community.

Matt and I were driven to a forest preserve road to move brush. Straightline winds had cleared a section of the forest about 500 feet wide and three miles long. Multiple trees had fallen in the road. Massive trees were stacked on top of one another in the brush, and others were stripped of their leaves and bark in the surrounding woods. One of my co-workers pulled me aside and said, You see the end of this line? Your GPS coordinates from last night showed you about half a mile downhill from this site.

You were that close to death. I have so many more stories from my time in the Forest Service, including an encounter with a wild boar. I'm happy to share with you, and you can feel free to share this one with everyone or keep it to yourself. It might be a bit too long for a trail tale anyway. I love the podcast and look forward to whatever you share next, your unintentioned, death seeker, Hannah. That's really frightening. It's so scary. I have been stuck out in a tropical storm before, so I know what it's like to hear a lot of rain and

trees falling around you and it's very scary, but to see that amount of destruction the next morning in close proximity to where you were sleeping is very scary. Well, that's the worst part, you know, because obviously being frightened in the moment, but you don't have the ability to see anything. And then once you realize like, oh shit, we were so close to being in a huge amount of trouble. Yeah. I mean, it's almost a saving grace because if you knew that that was going on around you and you were stuck there, then I would think I would be more scared than hearing some trees and some rain and being like, ooh, this doesn't sound good. Well, I don't know what's worse because not known. The unknown is, I think, scarier, but yeah, I don't know. They're both scary.

All right, my last one does happen in Colorado. So it's a theme of moms and Colorado. Right. Colorado moms. There we go. It is titled Moose for Thought. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. My name is Catherine and I've been a big fan of your podcast ever since my friend Lexi introduced it to me. Lexi, Kate, and I are three friends who met in nursing school five years ago. Our friendship blossomed when we took an educational trip for class credit to Thailand. Ever since, we have been traveling, trying to see as much of the world together. We have been to several national parks together, including Olympic, Rainier, and our story today is from a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Are these all, I think these are all based around Estes and, oh no, the first one was Breck. Okay. It's not that specific of a theme. Okay. I was living in Denver at the time as a travel nurse and was super excited my besties were coming for a visit since we all call North Carolina home and it had been some time since I'd seen them. Of course, we planned a trip into the park for a hike during their visit because it's one of our favorite things to do together. My husband Patrick also joined us and we were really hoping to see a moose as we had been living in Colorado for several months at this point and had yet to see one. While driving through the park on the way to the trailhead, We passed an area where many cars had pulled over on the side of the road. With the chance of it being a moose that people were gawking at, we decided to turn around and pull over. Sure enough, we pulled over and saw a female moose in a clearing along a stream. We were ecstatic. We started taking selfies from a far distance, of course. We had no interest in being featured on the Torons of Yellowstone Instagram.

We were super excited and cheerful about having this wildlife sighting when we were approached by another onlooker asking if we knew what had just happened. We were confused and replied no. They told us that just minutes before, a female moose had given birth to a baby, after laboring by the stream for quite some time. Right after birth, the baby moose fell into the stream and couldn't get out. Some other onlookers saw the baby moose struggling and went down to the stream and pulled the baby moose out of the water, but it was too late.

The water was too cold and the baby moose did not have a heartbeat. Someone tried calling the National Park Service, but they were informed that the rangers were already responding to too many human, injuries and events that they couldn't prioritize an animal injury at the time. The two people then started performing CPR on this baby moose at the streamside. Oh my God. The mother moose was pacing nervously around them at this time. I was worried she was going to get aggressive, but they informed us that it seemed like she

knew something was wrong and knew that the humans were trying to help, so she was letting them be. I wish I could bring this story back around with a happy ending, like so many other trail tales, but unfortunately the CPR on the baby moose was unsuccessful, and they laid the baby's body by a tree near the stream. We arrived at the point when the mother moose was licking her deceased baby, but from our far distance, we couldn't see that it was a baby moose until someone pointed it out. The story of what happened to this mama moose and her baby immediately brought us to tears.

I hate that when we happened upon the scene, excited to see a moose, that it took such a tragic turn. It makes us sad to think about the potential effect human presence had during her, her laboring hours and might have pushed her closer to the stream than she wanted to be. It makes me realize how much of a privilege it is to have access to these animals' habitats, but it definitely takes a toll in more ways than one. Thinking back on the situation, the onlookers were all at an appropriate distance from what I can estimate. Based on the rules of the park, I can't really place blame, but always wonder in the back of my mind if that baby would be alive if no one was watching.

Just some food for thought. Thank y'all so much for doing great storytelling and also keeping your listeners informed about safety and conservation. Maybe one day we can join you on one of your group trips. We know it would be a blast. Keep up the great work. You are so appreciated. Catherine, Lexi, and Kate. Oh, that's such a heartbreaking story. It's a sad one, but I wanted to share it because it reminded me kind of like a little bit of our conversation with Dr. Grant about how just being present can alter animal behavior in ways that we're still understanding and studying. And like she said, like, based on what she could see when they first got to the scene, it appeared that everyone was doing the right thing as far as being a good distance away.

I don't know how going in and pulling the baby out and doing CPR is, I don't think that's appropriate. I think she was referring to before that happened. Yeah, before that. But yeah, it's true. Like whether or not they were close or if the moose was just already kind of spooked and happened to be closer by the stream, or it was just a complete accident and people had nothing to do with it.

Who knows? But it just brings up a good point to think about that your presence does alter animal behavior. And it's also, that kind of ties into the Patreon story I'm doing a little bit, which we haven't. We haven't recorded it yet. You haven't told me that either. Yeah. So just something to think about, you know, when you're out there. even if you're not putting your toddler on a bison back or something like that.

Like you never know how your presence is going to alter behavior. So just something to keep in mind. Please don't put your toddler or anyone you know on a bison's back. Not advice. I feel like it's weird that I even have to request that. Sadly, yeah, you do. Which is, yeah, I saw a toron thing today actually on the torrents of Yellowstone. It didn't have to do with an animal.

but just kind of like the blatant disregard for signs. So it was somewhere in Canada and it was on some big like bluff overlooking either a Great Lake or some type of ocean water source. And there was a huge fence with all, there was at least three signs in view of like no trespassing, do not enter, blah, blah, blah, just because of the erosion. Sure. I guess there was a lot of erosion and also the water levels have had risen a lot and combined. It was just really, really dangerous. And you just see, like, this law enforcement officer rolling up. And he's, like, yelling.

At first, you don't see anyone. And he starts yelling. He's like, all of you, get over here. He's like, line up. You're all getting a $5,000 fine. And then it's kind of like quiet. And he's like, this isn't a joke. Get over here.

And all of a sudden, there's, like, 10 people that come out with, like, their cameras and their phones, like, obviously taking selfies or doing something over by the edge. and he just like went on to kind of just school them about like how he's like this is dangerous like are you I think he said like are you guys fucking nuts I think that's what I said but he issued tickets to all of them and it's kind of like you had to physically hoist your body over a fence with multiple warning signs of do not enter yeah it's like even with it in your face people still don't listen so there's always going to be warnings needed to be vocalized, even though it seems like second nature. Yeah.

Kind of, it sucks. Oh, crazy. Well, I also feel like Yellowstone is a national park that I can't afford to give out warnings. It just has to be straight tickets because there's too many people there, disobeying too many rules that there has to be like a point made, you know? Well, there's only so much you can do. It's like, okay, it's on your paperwork. when you first enter the park. There's rules and regulations along with the park map.

There's signs everywhere. Like, no one's going to hold your hand. Yeah. It's like if you're going to disregard all of that, then you're going to get a ticket or you're going to get arrested. And it has to be that way because you're endangering yourself, others, and wildlife. Right.

Well, thank you everyone for writing in. We hope everyone has a great holiday with their families. And we will see you next week. But in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week.

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