WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Hiking Horrors

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! On today's episode they cover their worst hiking endeavors. 

Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. What up? I'm Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Segueratau and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. Before we dive into the bulk of today's episode, we're going to give some background on our relationship with the outdoors, kind of our history and if we were raised in an outdoorsy family or not. Want to go for a storm? Yeah, sure. I've been outside. once or twice, I think. I've crossed some thresholds and doors. No, but all kidding aside, I grew up with a family who liked to go camping, hiking, all that kind of stuff. My dad has been a nut for the outdoors ever since I can remember and always dragged the rest of us to do crazy,

crazy adventures, much to my mother's chagrin. But yeah, I love the outdoors. We've been on lots of hikes all across the United States, and I don't know. I've seen some weird stuff outside, so I'm excited. Well, that's good. It's good. You have some experience and you just have like only been outside once or twice. Well, you know, what about Unicle? I grew up in a very outdoorsy family. I mean, since before I can remember, my parents have just taken me everywhere to all the national parks and taking me climbing and hiking. I hiked my first 14er when I was five. And ever since then, it's been an annual tradition where my family goes and hikes a 14er. So I have quite a few my belt, but besides hiking and climbing, I love to ski, I love to sail, I live in Southern California,

so I surf. I'll do it all. I'll try it out. I may not be good at it, but I'll give it a shot. That's why we pay her the big bucks. Oh yeah, definitely. All right, so today's episode is going to be focused on our worst hikes ever. What a downer for the first episode. No, I'm just kidding. I have a funny story. Yeah, they're always, they're always really fun to hear about. But before we get into that, we're going to share our trail markers of the week. This is going to be a segment at the start of every episode we do. And that's going to focus on either a highlight or a low of the week in relation to something that took place outside. So the focus is something that stood out in your brain that happened outside this past week. Yeah. So we're in Michigan right now.

And Michigan has a lot of outside downers at this time of year. Specifically what comes to my mind immediately is on the way here. I was walking down to the studio and I walked outside and it was like kind of raining and then it was kind of snowing and it was just kind of both for the whole walk down here and there was just sludge everywhere. God, do not move to Michigan. I'm kidding. I love it here. But today was particularly just disgusting. No, I would say it's in general pretty, pretty gross. We had negative 25 wind chill last week. So the weather just fluctuates a lot because today genuinely felt like spring up until this afternoon when it decided to start snowing. So that's super fun. Anyway, my trail marker of the week actually took place on Wednesday. So I have had a cough for the past

two months. The doctor cannot diagnose it. You're telling me this now that I'm in the studio with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You probably have it at this point. Oh, geez. No, it's fine. I'm not contagious. We don't really know what it is, but I've had it since November. Thanksgiving break-ish. And because of that, I haven't been able to go running. And I used to hate running, but now apparently I love it. And so it's been a little depressing because I haven't been able to get out and run. However, finally, for the first time this week in two months, I went for a four-mile run, which is not a lot, but it's a lot of progress. And I went at sunset. So it's absolutely beautiful. The weather had warmed up a bit in comparison to last week where it was super-noper-cold. So it was just

beautiful and nice to be outside and able to run at least somewhat. We do have phenomenal sunsets here. That's true. Just every now and then they're gorgeous. And I was like out in a field so I could see the whole sky. No trees were blocking my view. I love those. And it gets like crimson and oh, it's amazing. Yeah. Good sunsets. You're diseased though. There might not be an episode too, you guys. We might lose her. This might be the end. I mean, I just coughed a little bit right there. Oh gosh. That's gross. Sorry you had to hear that. Anyway, you're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and we're about to get into some of our worst hiking experiences ever.

You want to go first this time? Sure. Okay, so in all honesty, when I came up with the topic for this episode, I couldn't actually think of a worst hiking experience off the top of my head. Because it's sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows whenever Nicole goes hiking, right? Exactly. It's always a great time. Or if it isn't, your brain will remember only the best parts and will choose to forget all the pain and misery that you went through. So I had to call my dad and ask him to give me some inspiration about really bad hiking experiences we've had. And he mentioned a couple, but one in particularly was just an emotional roller coaster. Oh. Yeah. So I was seven years.

old. Oh, boy. Great intro. This was a long time ago. This was your first 14er. No. No, it wasn't. This was, so it actually was a 14er hike. We were going to be hiking Whitney in a day. So I had done Whitney an overnight hike when I was six years old. But now that I was seven, it's like, okay, time to do it in a day, pull out the big guns. Good grief. And so my parents and I had gone up and we had acclimated on a different mountain, and that's a whole other story that I'm not going to share today. All that to say, there was really, really bad weather on our training hike, and ultimately, that ended up impacting our ascent on Whitney. So we woke up at two in the morning. Where is Mount Whitney first? Oh, sorry. It's in the Sierra Nevada's in California. Okay. Yeah. Have you

ever been there? I haven't, no. Okay, well, you should go. It's the prettiest mountain range. Well, I'm not seven years old anymore, so that might pose a difficulty, but I will get out there at some point. I would imagine it'd be a little easier for you to get there than when you're seven, because you can drive. That's a great point. And seven-year-olds cannot drive. That's a great point. So there you were. There I was.

So it was 2 a.m. And we're at the Whitney Portal, which is the trailhead for Mount Whitney. And we're hiking the traditional route, which is 22 miles round trip. So 11 miles one way up and 11 miles one way down. Oh, man. And on seven-year-old little legs. But, you know, I was a tough cookie. And so we started our ascent up.

We were moving at a decently good pace. We were extremely acclimated and wearing very light day packs. So ultimately, everything was going great. We made it up to trail camp, which is right before you get to the 99 switchbacks. And if you don't know, the 99 switchbacks are kind of infamous on Mount Whitney. it's as the name goes, 99 switchbacks up until you get to Trail Crest, which is then taking you on the back side of Whitney. They couldn't have made one more switchback? Actually, it's not 99.

I have counted several times, and I don't remember the number off the top of my head right now, but it's not 99. Is it less than 99 or more than 90? It's more. More. It's 100 and something. The 101 switchbacks. But everyone calls it the 99 switchbacks. So anyway

Maybe there's a few in there that are like Not right angles or something That aren't they are too obtrusive angles to count as a switchback Well you know And my definition for a switchback is pretty generous So I could have been over counting I guess But you just turn four degrees to the right You're like well

It's a switchback I don't remember if I counted it when I was seven or not But I definitely have In more recent history So anyway we're going up the switchbacks Everything's fine in day Andy and my parents are super proud of me because we're moving at a good pace. And as we're getting higher in elevation, probably around 12,000, 12,500 feet, we start to notice some snow on the trail.

And mind you, it is August. Oh, man. So bad sign. Yeah. And in August, there typically is little to know snow in the Sierra's. I mean, you'll have little patches here or there, but they're going to be, you know, on northern facing slopes and out of the sun. But this is facing east, eastward. So you get some direct sunlight. But there was some snow. And we're like, oh, it's fine. It's nothing.

We're just going to keep going. Is that like how moss grows on like the north side of a tree? Snow grows on the east side of a mountain? Snow grows. Or snow falls on the east side of a mountain? Well, it falls all over the place. Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. What I was saying is snow on northern facing slopes tends to stick around more because it's not in direct sunlight versus like eastern and western facing slopes.

Yes, sunrise. Yep. See, I'm getting it. That's why you go to Hillsdale College. Yep. Yeah. So anyway, we're around 12,500 feet and Trail Crest is at 13,100 or so. And that's the top of the switchbacks.

Okay. And that's where the snow is? Yeah, 12,500 is about where it started. So you're like, man. We can't turn back now and go back down all 100 in one of those switchbacks. Well, not only that, but the summit of Whitney is 14,505 feet. It is the tallest mountain in the lower continuous 48 states. Wow.

Fun fact trivia, if you didn't know that. And so at 12,500 feet to go, we still have 2,000 feet of elevation, which means there's probably going to be some more snow. Anyway, we get to the top of trail crest. And at the top, it's very rocky up there. It's not a dirt trail. It's a rocky trail. And the rocks were iced over and very slippery.

And as soon as you go onto the backside of Whitney, you're now westward facing, which means the sun hasn't risen over the mountain to hit it yet because it's still 10 o'clock in the morning. It's still very early. Sure. Maybe even earlier. And we get there. And there's a bunch of people there.

And they've all basically decided to turn around. And because the backside is so slippery, it's very exposed on the backside of Whitney. And so if you slip, you'll go down a big rocky hill. And it's not exactly the safest thing in the world. Another reason why everyone had basically decided to stop and to turn around is because there had been a guy that was stranded on the summit for, I believe it was either three or four days. He made it up there, got caught in the rainstorm that turned into a snowstorm. So he was up there with very little food or water. He ate all of his provisions.

And basically it got to the point where he was like, I either have to risk staying up here and hope someone hikes up and has food and water they can give me. Or I have to take the risk of hiking down the icy trail. Could perhaps fall to my death, but I will starve otherwise. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, he was up there when you guys were heading there? He was up at the top. Well, he was at Trail Crest when we got to Trail Crest.

So we heard this story from him because he was... So that had just happened. This had just happened. He had just gone to Trail Crest, basically as we got to Trail Crest. And he was like, the mountain gods demand someone take my place. He was like, all right, well, like on. No, no. So because of this and because I am seven years old and have quite a bit of life left to live,

and my parents are decently responsible, they decided that we were going to turn around. And I did not like that. Oh. I decided to. You were like more switchbacks. Come on. Well, I was like, we can't turn around now. We're almost there.

We have less than two miles to go. So I decided to cry. As a seven-year-old would. Yep. So I started sobbing because I was very distressed. And I was like, we can't turn around. I made it all the way up here. This is all for nothing if we go down.

Why even bother? You know? But ultimately, my parents aren't. and they made the call that we had to go down. So I tearfully walked myself down the switchbacks. Like, I remember tears were dripping down my face pretty consistently for 30 minutes. And then I think I stopped crying because. Because you were at the 51st switchback and no tears can be shed below that.

Yeah. But anyway, we got back down to trail camp. And from there, you can see the big face of Whitney. And I remember I looked at it again and started crying. You were like, I could have been there. I could have been there. And the guy at the top was like, no, do not go there. Yeah.

But anyway, we hiked all the way down and it was very sad. However, because we're persistent and are determined to succeed, we ended up coming back three or four days later. And we did hike Whitney in a day. Nice. Yeah. And to make myself feel better at the time I was obsessed with American Girl Dolls, So you brought one with you to the top? And I carried one in my backpack to the top of Mount Whitney.

Which one? McKenna. She's a girl of the year adult 2012. Wow. Never heard of her. She was a gymnast. She was my absolute favorite. A gymnast?

And you stuck her on top? Did you, like, you know how people leave those like stacks of stones? The ducks. D-U-C-S? How do you spell that? D-U-C-S. Like a mallard? Oh, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the official name. No, what's the official name? I don't know. You're talking about those stacks of rocks. People make at top of mountains to mark where they've been there. Those are called ducks? I've never heard of this before. Okay, so they're actually

not just on the top of mountains. They are trail markers. They're supposed to guide you on the trail. So if you're climbing a mountain where it snows a lot and you're not going to be able to see the trail you know, there'll be these ducks in the distance that you can see. Make them out because the silhouette is off from everything else. Yeah, that you can see and he'd be

like, ah, that's where the trail goes. so I don't get lost. There's an official name, but I am blanking on it. So did you balance McKenna or whatever her name was on top of those rocks? No, what I did is, you know, the salute gymnasts do at the end of a routine? For the sake of the story, yes. You put your arms in the air and you salute the judges. So I did that on the top of the mountain, and it started a tradition because now I take a picture

on the top of every single mountain doing that. That's pretty good. So there's a picture of 19-year-old Nicole doing that on the top of a mountain, which is a little silly. but it has happened. Hey, it started at a good story. So it's a tradition worth carrying on, right? Absolutely. So anyway, that was my worst trail story.

You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. And we're going to get into Storm's worst hiking experience. Yeah, geez. I've had a few bad ones. The one that I thought of, though, earlier was it was a backpacking experience that was, that ended well, it ended well, and it started well. But this is a point halfway through that was just brutal. So, um, there's more context to the rest of the story. Stories that I can tell from days prior leading into this and days afterwards, other fun things that happened. But this was on the

Incan Trail. For those of you who don't know, this is in Peru and South America, which I have had the absolute pleasure of getting able to, or being able to visit. And when you go to South America and you go to Peru, most people go to see Machu Picchu, which is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. That's my dream trip. I want to go there and hike the Incan Trail. It's fantastic. But you

can take a train out to Machu Picchu and be boring and lame, or you can, it's four or five days, I think, hike the Incan Trail, which is the road that they would have carried the Incan King on out to the temples to have him to have some ceremony or something. Sacrifices?

Yeah, feed somebody to Jaguars, you know the kind of thing. Didn't they do bloodletting? Like extreme bloodletting? They did lots of crazy stuff, yes. But the point is that the trail is really cool because you're not confined to a train. You don't just get to look at ruins and then get to the big ruin.

You're like, wow, I'm here, but I can't really touch anything because there's lots of people around and they have fences, stuff everywhere. But if you hike the trail, there's lots of cool stuff to see. So tons of fun things and outdoor stories happen along this trail.

I might hark back to it in a later episode. But the really bad experience was, I think, three or four, three days in, I'm going to say. And you kind of pass over one set of mountains, go down into a valley and up another set of mountains. And this is in between those two. And they were kind of like checking the radar, the weather, because somehow we still had service out there in the midst of these South Peruvian villages. I can't get service like two miles away from Hillsdale College. Yeah. I'll go on a run and I'll lose service on my phone. We had some stuff, something coming through, but they were like, oh, it's going to be a little cold tonight.

So just bundle up. We were like, okay. We, for context, we had been, like, hiking through, besides the mountains, the snowy mountains, we've been hiking through, like, jungle, like, tropical, you know, kind of atmosphere and climate. So we were, like, cold, relatively speaking, right? So we went to bed, not thinking much of it. In our little tents, we each had, or we were paired up into, like, three, I have a family of six, and so we were paired up into, I think, two tents.

And in the morning, we woke up, it was really, really cold. That wasn't necessarily the problem. But once you kind of got all your layers on, we were like, all right, time to start the day. And we went to unzip our tents, and the tent was just like a solid piece of object. Like the flap of the tent was just, like, rock hard. Was it completely frozen solid? Yes. Ice had coated the entire outside of our tents and frozen in, and there was layers of snowdown.

We had to open our tent flaps like they were a door. Like they swung open. Like we cracked. Like a hobbit door? Like a Hobbit hole. Exactly. Oh my gosh. So cracking that open.

Her fingers burning from just being freezing cold and then getting out and trying to start a fire to get some breakfast going. You guys didn't have like little camping stoves? We know we had some stuff. And there were some other, we had a guide. We had a guide with us who was a native in the area and he was doing all kinds of stuff. But it was freezing. And the problem was, as I said, we were between two mountains.

So there just wasn't sun. because as soon as the sun would hit one mountain the shadow would crest and hit the other mountain and we'd have to wait hours and hours and hours for it to be noon. There wouldn't hit sun in that valley till like 11 or something. That's kind of depressing. So it was just freezing and we were in the shadow

and there was no reprieve from that and there was just snow everywhere and we had to pack our tents up or we didn't have to pack our tents up but we had to take the tents down by like getting the ice off of them. It was crazy. And like cracking and breaking ice. So that was very, very cold and very, very unpleasant. Would you consider that as staying in an igloo kind of?

Yes, maybe. A little bit? This is funny that you bring this up. I was on a phone call with a friend recently. This is a worthy side story, very brief. And we were talking about that. And I was like, aren't, like, igloos, you know, you think of like the ice block stacked up. I was like, I don't know.

I think igloos are propaganda. Because I was thinking about it. And I was like, people wouldn't live in snow. That's like what animals would do, right? There's no way they don't like go find wood or timber or something. Like there's no way they build igloos. Okay, Storm, you know, up in the Arctic where they don't have wood, snow is a pretty good insulator. Snow and ice can insulate decently well.

And if you don't have wood or dirt to crawl under and hide from the elements, you're going to use snow. So instead they like carved out blocks of ice and they stacked them? They did. I didn't think that was true. And then I looked it up and I found I was terribly wrong. Okay. It's not that I thought all igloos were propaganda. I was just like, you know, you see those like, those like pictures of like Eskimos and like people living in Arctic.

No, I didn't think that was fake. I just thought that it was. I just thought, okay, I thought it was fake. I was like, there's no way. But apparently people do, in fact, live in igloos. And due to my minor experience in Peru with cold temperatures way south of the equator, I can't imagine. living in the Arctic. Yeah, no, I don't think I would survive. Even here in Hillsdale, walking to class with the wind can be pretty brutal at times. Yeah, you're from Southern California. I'm from

Georgia. We are from the south. Places closer to the equator. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We hope that You have a great week. So hopefully we'll see you out there. Happy trails. Go touch grass. Bye guys.