last saturday, my son and i were riding in the gold hill area and took a quick trip over to doublehill...the whole mountain has come down at least once..normally there are a bunch of tracks in the "parking lot" at the bottom, but this day there were only 3 tracks that came in and left with no tries at the hill....it was near the end of the day and we left heading northeast on the wide ridge that goes to the warming hut at whitney....crossed these same 3 tracks a couple of times, didn't think much of it, other than they were the only tracks we came across all day...on the way back to the hut, we dropped off to the north of the ridge to catch some of the super deep ravines..we had just crossed the 3 tracks again when we saw a single sled in the super soft snow of a ravine...looked like someone had worked a while to get it out, but was not successful....maybe it was broke or something, but the same 3 tracks were right there, but no rider for the sled ???? we called out, but no answer...must have gone out with his buds, but something not right...figured out the 3 tracks were going up mountain, this dude had started walking in his own track down mountain, crossing the 3 tracks and walking in them for a while before abandoning them altogether...i kept following the footprints and after a while, there was the dude standing in the middle of a meadow by himself, still 15 miles or so from the parking lot and almost no day left....turns out the abandoned sled was his, just bought it, only ridden a couple of times before, was following the 3 tracks and got stuck...couldn't get out, sat there 3 hours before starting to walk...made it maybe 1/4 mile in an hour or so...he knew he had f'd up big time...figured he had beat himself up enough in the last 4 hours, so we took him back to his sled, rode it out for him to a good track, and took him to the road at whitney...turned him loose and then followed him the parking lot at bear river service...not sure what might have happened to someone who did that, clearly not thinking about possibilities too good...all's well that ends well, i guess...
We all need to have each other's backs out there in the back country.
