The Storm, The Ferry, And The Pit Bull Ride

We compare what changes when you camp and backpack across very different environments, from stormy Texas trails to the dry, exposed high desert of New Mexico. Along the way we swap hard-earned stories about mud, heat, water, gear failures, and the judgment call that matters most: when to turn back. 

• weather as the biggest driver of risk on trail 
• how Texas rain turns trails into mud and injury hazards 
• desert access problems, including dirt roads and flash floods 
• water planning in Big Bend and the Southwest, including carrying heavy loads 
• Isle Royale recap, from heat waves and mosquitoes to a tent-destroying storm 
• lessons from soaked gear, dead phones, and backup shelter planning 
• sun exposure and shade scarcity, plus simple gear that helps 
• decision points for bailing safely, including medical and heat issues 

If you have any kind of comments, questions, whatever, please let us know and we will try to answer those best that we can.

Transcript

Meet Craig And Mark

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, everybody. We've got Craig and Mark here. A special edition. We're trying a format out here. Mark is in Texas right now. You're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Yep. Yep. I'm right next to Frisco. Actually, you're the pedal back behind me. It'll say little Elm, which is where we're actually at. I'm on the border. I'm a city block away from Frisco, Texas.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

So yeah. Okay. And of course, I'm in New Mexico. I'm in Farmington in the Four Corners region of the southwestern U.S. And I used to live over there by you, Mark. And Mark and I have done several backpacking trips together. We wanted to talk about some differences tonight versus our current situation and rehash some adventures or misadventures in the past. Mark's been on the podcast before as an audio, but this is the first time for him to be on video. So I'm going to give Mark a minute or so to talk about himself and then we'll carry on.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

Hi everybody. My name's Mark Wilcox, but I'm so used to doing webcasts for my day job. You can find me over my website at campingforge.com. So back over to you, Craig.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

And of course, you're if you're watching this, you're probably watching this on YouTube for the full length. I'm going to also have this available on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, all that. And maybe even Substack or something. Who knows? Of course, I'm from either even further east than you are, Mark. I'm from East Texas and where it rains a lot. But now that I'm now that I'm in Farmington, where it rains like I think they said the average here is 8.9 inches. So definitely some concerns for changing strategies versus being in North Texas or East Texas or the more populated regions of Texas. What do

Texas Rain And Mud Reality

SPEAKER_01 1:55

you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:56

It is important to talk about the the weather. Regardless if you're going any kind of outdoors, I've just been on a back-to-back car camping trips in the central Texas area. So that basically the area between Waco and Dallas. And to your point about rain, it feels like it's rained eight inches just this month of May. It's rained, but almost every day, because May is the wettest month in Texas. As a result, like I actually booked shelter sites because I didn't want to deal with wet tents. And so, yeah, to your point, also we say when you're going to go on any kind of backpacking or hiking trip. Now I know most of you are thinking backpacking, you're thinking more closer to like where Craig lives now, up in the mountains and that. But you can hike around and backpack or go in the wilderness anywhere, and rain can really impact you from multiple ways. I'll use this as just talk touch point quick, is because maybe we're going to talk about it here in a minute, which is my trip from a couple years ago, where when Craig and I have been on a trip, we were actually on a backpacking trip where it was just like raining a lot in the trail we were on was what should be a simple trail turned into a difficult trail because of so much mud. In fact, I was talking with Craig last night, and uh I went there last year with another buddy, and the trail, because a part of the trail it has a hill, and it's about I don't know, 500 feet straight up. And in dry conditions, it's just strenuous, and you just have to really have to worry more about dehydration getting up the hill. Oh, yeah, for sure. Meanwhile, a couple years ago I was actually in A Royal, and which should be a simple trail, but it was raining so much the rocks were covered, were just rent and I fell three or four times. I've twisted ankles. I came a couple times very close to hitting my head on some very large rocks where I started thinking, like, I volunteered to come here. I paid money to come. I flew half across the world, it felt like. Because like I said, going from North Texas to Isle Royale, which is just off the coast of Canada, it's definitely American territory, it's an island, but you're a lot closer to Canada than you are in the United States. And I was going in June thinking it was going to be dry and cooler than Texas. It was actually warmer in Aisle Royale that week than it was in Dallas that week, especially with the humidity.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah. It's

Southwest Roads And Flash Flood Risk

SPEAKER_01 4:14

not a big concern here like that, as far as rain. But of course, things you have to consider. A lot of the roads out here when you get off of the paved road, so to speak, you're on BLM lands where there's a lot of oil leases, you're accessing some of these hiking areas like Chaco Canyon and other places like that around here, and even up in Colorado, you're accessing a lot of these dirt, sandy, whatever roads. And if it rains, even with a four-wheel drive high clearance vehicle, you're not gonna get through. You're gonna get stuck.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Oh, or what about do you have to worry about flash floods where you're at too?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Or oh, yeah, definitely flash floods. You have all these areas back where I'm from and back where we have done backpacking around the Dallas area, above and below you have all these little creeks. Then the difference is they are a creek because they have water in them. But out here you have washes, which at some point in the year there might be some water in there, but there may not. And then it may be during that monsoon time, which usually for this part of the world is late summer into early fall sometimes. You have a huge amount of water. So you have to be a little cautious about their accessible routes and how they can turn around real quickly, just from an excess standpoint of actually getting to the spot. Yeah. It's a little different than Isle Royale, where you have to actually get up there, get on a boat, and then take out that boat across the water, and then you're like stuck over there, right? Yep. Yeah. So a little bit different strategy. And with that in mind, it's super dry out here. As I said, the rainfall nine inches a year. Any backpacking or day hiking trip or camping trip, you're probably gonna have to be carrying in a lot of your water that you're using because uh you're not gonna be able to get it. Kind of in similar terrain down in like Big Bend and stuff, and I have as well, which is pretty similar to New Mexico in a lot of ways. But you're having to carry liters and liters of water sometimes, and that can be detrimental to your trip plans when you've got to hump so much water in.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I was gonna say the the ultralight people, I remember when I was talking about playing my Big Ben trip who claimed to be an ultralighter, and they're like, I said, Yeah, I have to carry eight liters of water. And they were like, Why are you carrying so much water? Just get your water on the trail. I'm like, There's no water, officially, there's no water in Big Bend. There is uh and now there are it's like you're talking about there are some places during the backpacking season, the guides keep in touch with each other, the backpackers can say, Here's where water can be found. But I know, for example, my guide service that I use, I think they've actually moved away from doing the full backpacking trips to Big Bend because of the water situation. That it's just they moved it to day hiking. So you oh yeah, because the campsites there will have potable water. You guys can get it from one of the local convenience stores. But yeah, the desert, you just you can't you watch these camping videos and they're like, oh look, I just go down and and they'll complain about maybe the difficulty of getting water from having to filter it, but like, at least you have water.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Oh yeah. That's that's the biggest change from some of the stuff that I've done because I've been backpacking in Arkansas and Oklahoma and Louisiana where it's still green and you still have water. Yeah. Even when we were doing that trail, what is it called? The cross timbers. The cross timbers. Yep. And I'm filtering water out of the Red River. Yeah, and the water is obviously it's reddish brown. But I'm able to filter it out. It doesn't necessarily taste the best, but it's filtered and it's clean. Things that can harm me. Yeah. Some places out here, you may be miles and miles away from the water source.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Yeah. I remember talking to a guy at the REI and he told me he had to filter water out of basically a depression that had some water in it, and then sitting in the middle of it was a cow paddy. And he said the filter took care of the bad stuff in the water, but it still smelled of cow paddy. That's what you know. That's when you know you hard up for water when you're oh sure. You know, again, kids. Don't write follow the instructions of whatever filtration system. That was an emergency, but you don't want to find yourself in that predicament.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I think versus Central Eastern US versus out here in the southwest, especially, you're gonna have to take water into consideration in a multitude of ways. Yep. That's gonna change your strategy quite a bit. So

Water Strategy In Dry Country

SPEAKER_01 8:49

speaking of your like a summary of your aisle royale trip, what what was the plan of your aisle royale trip? Yeah, so the I was like what we bad.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Yeah, so it was. I went on a group trip, it was a guided trip. But it was supposed to be a six-night trip through Ohio Royale, which again is an island. It's it's a three-hour boat ride from Minnesota to to the island. It's the least visited United national park in the continental United States. Um apparently has the distinction of being the most revisited national park in the United States. And you're like, I want to go back. And it's very pretty, it's known for the fact uh a couple things also useful, unique about it is that while it is in the northern part, you would expect to find bears. There's no bears on the island, and there's no raccoons. So, but there's plenty of moose, there's some wolves. Anyway, so it's a relatively flat terrain, too. So I wasn't expecting that much of an adventure, but it was June, and I was there in June. A heat wave came in, it was 90 something degrees, almost like a monsoon season, turned it into a swamp. The mosquitoes were so thick, as soon as you hit the trail, the mosquitoes didn't leave you 24-7. Uh, and by like day three, we had a severe thunderstorm come through, destroyed all my gear, my tent gone, all backpack, everything soaked, everything. So we decided to bail. Like we talked back to base camp back on the mainland, and they had already booked, they called and got me a ride on the ferry if I could get to them, but I had to get to a fishing camp that day to make the ferry ride the next day. So 10 mile, 10 mile forced march hike through an unmarked 2-0 trail that basically hadn't been on by who knows how long. Anyway, got on the boat the next day, took a three-hour boat ride. Of course, the way this went, my phone by now is about almost dead. And I intended to say, I'm gonna go on the boat, listen to a podcast. I'm just gonna relax, and then when I get back on mainland, I'll figure out how to get to a hotel and everything. And anyway, phone's almost dead. My charger was completely soaked, so I couldn't even recharge my phone. And got on mainland. Now where the dock is, it's a town of 150 people. So there's not even how much I still have to get 75 miles to my my suitcase and all this other stuff in the motel. So they got the people at the town, they call this guy to pick you up. He says, 100 bucks, I'll take you to where you want to go. So pay the hundred bucks. Talk about surge pricing. He drops me off of this motel, and outside the motel, the guy in the room next door to me is this old guy smoking a cigar and he's got a pit bull. And you're just like, okay, is this situation gonna go from bad to worse? And anyway, I go to the front desk and I ask the girl at the front desk, hey, I need to get a ride to Duluth. That's where my hood, my airplane is. And she's oh, there's no fairies here, there's no Ubers, but guess what? She's dude, the only people who are here, they're either going, they either came from Duluth and going back to Duluth, or they're going from here back to Duluth. There's no other way to go. Oh wow. And I go back, I end up getting back to my room, I gone back to 7-Eleven, got some chips and sodas, came back to my room, and the guy outside with the pit bull, he goes, Hey, I work the weekends at this motel, but during the week, they in exchange for work at the weekends, they let me stay in their hotel for free. If you need to ride somewhere, let me know. And I'm like, dude, I need to ride a Duluth. And he says, Pay for the gas, I'll take you. So we get in the car. Dog is the friendliest dog I've ever met, and he drops me off. And to me, the miracle of all this is just the kindness of people here. But in terms of the backpacking stuff, and right the fact is that it doesn't matter how well you're prepared and how much experience you have, stuff can just go bad. I had my gear, I had a tent that'd been through many rainstorms before. I just we got eight inches of rain and 70 mile per hour winds on an island and it just flooded out. I have friends who say it doesn't matter how waterproof your tent is, eventually it's gonna fail. I don't believe that. I think modern tents, particularly if you got the dynemas and stuff, they they're these things are it if they're flooding out, you're probably but Noah's Ark has returned. I think you're it you know it's part of it too was because when the tent was starting to fail, like you haven't slept properly in a couple days. I definitely had too much stuff open in my backpack. In hindsight, because the thing is I did actually have an emergency bivvy, which is what I used to sleep overnight before waiting for the ferry. In hindsight, what I should have done is thrown everything once it was raining that bad and I realized water was like flooding the bottom of the tent before it completely became a swimming pool. I should have just taken my sleeping bag because it wasn't that cold. I should have just taken everything, shoved it back in the dry sack, wrapped that all up, and just got in the bivvy and just waited it out, and I would have been fine. Yeah. But the thing was, things got wet, sleeping bags soaked, the tents were a disaster. Oh my steak. I was gonna have to bushcraft something out of it to try and make things work for the next day. And I could have done it, but I was just like, okay, I literally I could have died last night. I didn't. I'm done. I want to go home. So it's time to bail. The island will be here. And I would definitely go back to I Royale. I'm not so sure I want to backpack it again, but because given I'm like, I'm not sure I'm open to if I was 25 and not 53, I'd be more open to go back to it. But at this point, I've reached it. I said, you know what? Unless it's an easy trip, a truly easy trip, like maybe for a couple nights, like I'm not so open for wanting to do the weeklongs anymore. More of the like, hey, let's go and we'll hike for a little bit. Not so much inclines, declines. I don't need to do a lot of adventure scrambling anymore. Right. And just enjoy camping and hiking and hanging out. But the you young kids out there, get out there and get to it.

Isle Royale: Heat, Mosquitoes, Disaster

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, for sure. It definitely takes a toll on us as we get older. I just turned 51 and I was in Joshua Tree on my birthday, and of course, the another desert environment. And the good thing about it is I was there in early April, so it wasn't really hot yet. But one of the biggest things I would say about being out here, they call us a desert, I guess, because of our here in the high desert on the Colorado Plateau in Farmington. One of the biggest things here compared to where you are is we don't have shade. Yeah. Like we have some little trees, yeah. Like little pinion pines and junipers here and there. But sometimes you're just out in the middle of a field of sagebrush, and there's nothing oh god, it's the worst. Yeah. So you really have to prepare with sun protection gear, cover yourself up with sun hoodies and wide your wide-brimmed hats and good stuff.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Yeah, I would say people, for example, one of the most underrated pieces of gear to bring is those survival ponchos. They've got the mylar on the inside, like a space blanket or survival blanket. Okay. But the thing is what I'm bringing up here is that because during if you're suddenly to find yourself in a rainstorm or something and you got cold, you can put it over you. But also in a mylar, make sure it's actually true mylar. Mylar reflects, you can flip it inside out in a heated environment, and it will reduce your temperature. So it was invented to reflect the sun on spaceships. Oh what it does is it reflects 95% of incoming infrared. So if you were to make a like a flip it on the outside, it will lower temperatures. I'll be conservative, somewhere between two to ten degrees really depends on thickness and that, but that's important. And also, it's another reason too to keep a tarp or punch or something like or like a tarp with you, lightweight tarps for backpacking. I used one on one of our trips to Dinosaur Valley, where you can use it to make shade. You can tie a trach and pole to it and or tie it to a little brush or something. You can make shade, because heat of the day, you can you you gotta I said, yeah, because beginners will go out there, people who are not from the area, they'll just underestimate it.

What Went Wrong And How To Pack

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Oh, for sure. Because people in the Big Ben groups and subreddits, people are all asking, Oh, I want to go out there right now. We're all like, no, you don't. Yeah, you don't. It's the heat.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, July is the wrong time.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

It's it looks beautiful on the photos because you're sitting in air conditioning. If you go out there, and people don't and the other thing too is people don't realize how remote your places like this are. Grasp when you're in Big Ben and you're at I think at one of the junctions that we're going to north you're going north to go to Marathon, it says next gas station is 56 miles. And because I remember being I was driving my friends back, and I told I remember telling them, I said, because we were we didn't have GPS yet. I said, I'm gonna turn the corner and I'm gonna see what the mileage marker says until the next town and see if I need to turn around and go get gas before we hit the road. Because I was driving my pickup truck. Nowadays I have a Hyundai Santa Fe hybrid, so I'm like, I got I feel like I can go 600 miles like and I and if I go slow enough the the electric kicks in and uh then I I can really extend it. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

But yeah, the average the average person may not be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

So again, you have to think about you have to take this seriously in the five years, like you and I have known each other. I don't I've never heard of anybody we have not lost anybody in Big Ben to a wildlife encounter. There's including bears. There's javelinas, there's mountain lions, there's there's rattlesnakes, there's bears, there's scorpions. Everything you can think of that could bite, sting you, you do not want to encounter in daylight or at nighttime is out there. Right, right, and yet they don't people don't they leave you alone, but every year we'll lose a couple of people to heat exhaustion, and it's just tragic. And it's always people who they weren't even trying to do anything outrageous. They're gonna go for a day hike, and they didn't go out there with the water, and they didn't realize there were an elevation. Heck, I was nearly one of those victims. I think about I was almost one of those statistics last year. We went out there, I was out there for with a friend who we only were there gonna be there for a day. So you're trying to get in as much. So I went on one trail, my favorite trail out there, i the elephant ears or the Batman ears. And it's I love about it, is no one's there, it's actually mostly flat up until you get to this great lookout point, and so I know I can hike it, and I was hiking it fast, but you're at 8,000 feet, so I'm kind of like going, my buddy's like suffering behind me, I'm not paying attention. And then while we drive over to St. Helena's Canyon, which is like the easiest freaking hike. Um, we drive over there, we drive over the canyon, it's big bands, it's still 40 miles away. We drive over there, we start hiking up this canyon, and the first half it's only a one-mile hike, but the first half mile is in concrete. They have a nice concrete pathway. But anyway, I ran out of water. I drank all my water, and I'm like, oh my, and then I'm like, started getting lightheaded and stuff, and I'm like, oh man, I gotta turn back. I can't, like, I'm not uh because the thing is at St. Lisa the only difficult part is actually getting up and down, getting on and off the trail. There's a very steep part over onto the Rio Grande. You know, I don't know what's gonna happen, be trying to get me back off that. But that's it, but that's the point. That's what happens. You go out there and you think I know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be fine. And it's like the combination of heat, dehydration, because it's dry air, and overexertion. And so you can find yourself, and again, if something happens out in Big Bend I said, because we were on one of the highways driving out there is the place where it has its but the speed limit says eighty-five miles per hour. And my friend goes, Man, look at that, the speed limit's eighty-five. I said, Yeah, that's the maximum speed limit because it's they that's the maximum speed limit we can have. And because there's no highway patrol out there. But I said by the other hand, that's also the sign that says if something happens to you, good luck. Or on your own. It's Mad Max out here. Yeah. Like, welcome. If you wanted to be a prepper, guess what? Have a car trouble on the road to the bend or the road to Farmington.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

It's like the classic, you know, entering the dungeon. Abandon all hope. And they're giving them that warning this you may not survive this.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah, if you're not prepared.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

And the biggest thing is if you get yourself into trouble, there's not gonna be anybody really to help you.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Yep. No, I thought you're really gonna be in a world of hurt.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah. I think some of the observations that I see out here, all the parks that I've been to out this way, whether it be Zion or Petrified Forest or Arches or whatever I've been to coming from central and east Texas and North Texas when you're losing water. Yeah. If it's July and you're walking down the sidewalk where you live or back in where my mom lives in East Texas, you're sweating. Yeah. You're realizing how much is coming out of your body. Over here, you're sweating, but you don't realize how much you are sweating until you're like, why is my shirt wet? Oh, evaporating. Yeah, it's all evaporating. It's such a different and I see so many people, like you were saying, that are coming out unprepared. They don't take into consideration that there is no water sources in the park. That they're gonna be they live at 400 feet in Dallas, Texas, and yet they're out here in Zion or in Grand Canyon and it's 5,000 feet elevation.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

And and life is a little bit different.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

Yep. You don't see a peak, so you don't think you're in elevation. That's what gets everybody.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Oh, for sure. And the fact of them having that mindset of just like I'm in the city, if I dial 911, there's gonna be a fire truck and an ambulance and a police car gonna show up in five minutes. Yeah. Like maybe not so much out here. So I think you have to think about being more self-sufficient. Yep. The further that you come in the western part of the US. Or if you're not in the U.S., like we're gonna look at a video here in a minute. A lot of the audience, you folks out there watching, probably are familiar with. Yep. One of the I think you know who I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Yeah. We'll go say it when we bring it up. But yeah, we can go. That's a good segue. We'll pull

Desert Sun, Shade, And Survival Gear

SPEAKER_03 23:40

it up. Yeah, because she actually talks about an adventure she's had recently in is it the New Zealand one, or yeah, that's what I was gonna pull up.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

So we'll go to share and we'll play a little bit of that video.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

All right, can you see that, Mark? Yeah, Miranda, yeah, Miranda goes outside. I think her channel's changed a couple names a couple times, so that's no wonder.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah. Of course, she was with REI for a long time and then she kind of split off on her own. So if you're not tuned in to Miranda, definitely take a look at her. We're not gonna get into that on this one, but let's take a look at see what she's got going on here.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

The rain and the wind are definitely picking up up here. Does not look like this weather's gonna clear anytime soon. This is not the video that I intended to make, but it is one that I feel compelled to share. My final backpacking trip in New Zealand ended the time we were hiking. We were talking to each other and trying to make the smartest possible decision for ourselves while still wanting to make the best possible video to share with all of you. It's not a proper trail. Now I made the decision to bail on this trip because of weather. Primarily, that was the choice. It was it was really bad, potentially very dangerous weather. But I also could have made the decision to bail simply because I wasn't feeling it, or because I didn't like the hike, or I wasn't having fun, or I just didn't want to be there. Whatever. Backpacking happens simultaneously with real life. And so all of the emotions and the thoughts and the feelings that we have in our everyday lives, there's no reason to think that those aren't going to come up and happen when you're backpacking.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

We have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, I can't imagine being out there, Mark. That would be like a dream come true, like Lord of the Rings. Yeah. But obviously, they're trying to follow this kind of general direction. It's an unmarked path. I guess it has a general place that people go through, but it's not really a marked path that they go through. The weather is bad. Yeah. A little comic relief there at the end. But uh I what decision point do you have, Mark, when you decide?

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Obviously,

Big Bend Heat And Remote Rescue Limits

SPEAKER_03 26:24

you have the one glaring example from our, I guess I have all the reasons to, yeah, because well, we have a mutual friend we've gone with who I told he he's my I go camping with him the most. And he and I and he's driven my wife to the point now where she's like, like, are you she takes internal bets on what if we're actually gonna make our camping trip. But we're mostly car camping, it's just kind of still annoying. But the point being is yeah, I've been through actually I have done all of the evacuations. I have bailed, like, for example, the first time I went out with my buddy, we were going to LBJ Grasslands, and it's a place outside of town called Decatur, and I swear Decatur gets the worst weather in the Dallas Fort Worth Metro. Like every time it's gonna be a bad storm, it's gonna hit Decatur first. And sure enough, we were out and my buddy and I were out there, and we knew we were the chance of rain. So I went to check to see what the weather was, and there was a storm coming through that was like the size of Rhode Island or something. Yeah, it was one of those giant storm fronts coming through. It ended up being a tornado. So we had to pack everything up and scramble five miles back to the car and get out of there to race the storm home. So I've done that. I did I've done ones where being in Texas, I've done where suddenly it got too hot for us. Like, you know, I've done where we're literally was like, it's because we're doing it, we're doing it for fun. It was supposed to be like 70 feet, it wasn't supposed to get warm on us until like for 48 hours until after we got home. Yeah, warm front came in or it came in a little sooner, and then we're in a place like you said, we're in a place without shade, and we could go into our tents and we'd be okay, but then it's like we're backpacking, so we don't have a tent where we could share and just hang out. Yeah, so I've done I came really close to having a medical emergency on a backpacking trip once. This was a few years ago. I developed it basically an affected prostate. I never thought I'd ever say that on YouTube. But anyway, if you're a man of a certain age, but one way or the other, you're gonna have to go see the doctor for this thing because it's built in for sure. Anyway, I started having problems. Thankfully, it was on the last day of the trip. So I was able to, but I did have to. I got off the trail and went straight to the emergency room. And yeah, I will, you know, it was also Super Bowl weekend. Watching the Ciro Bowl on your phone while in the emergency room is not the most enjoyable way to watch a Super Bowl. I don't know what the most enjoyable way it is to watch one, but I'll say that was one of one of the least enjoyable ways to watch a Super Bowl. Right. The part of it is yeah, I have gone out so many times, but also on the end, I positive, sometimes when you're like, because a couple weeks ago, just in terms of outdoors, we got a rare chance to have nice weather, to go camping in early May, and I had to work late on Friday, and I was mad at myself that I got stuck in a meeting that went longer, and so I was like an hour late going to pick up my friend, and we were going down to outside of Waco, and it turned out it's because I was an hour late, I missed the literal tornado that went through the town next to the campsite.

unknown 29:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

By the time I showed up at the campsite, I was a little upset, it was dark, and I was happy I missed the rain, but I didn't know it was a tornado because the storm had all passed me by the time I got there. Oh yeah. But when I was checking it the next day when I was checking in at the Ranger Station, they're like, Oh yeah, we had the rain, the stuff we came through, we had tornado stuff. And I'm like, Wow, okay, man, you talk about luck. He just went the other way because I was late there, I missed a tornado. Yeah, the downside of camping in spring in Texas is that you will it's gonna rain, it's gonna thunderstorm, and you're more likely to bail on weather. Going back to Miranda's point, weather is the thing you've got to pay the most at I think you have to pay the most attention to because it is also the thing that you just can't. We're not sitting in four-walled streets, you know, we're not sitting in brick structures and things can flood, and rivers can flood, and creeks can flood, and lakes and and like you said, I mean they're talking about like where you're at. Even if you don't have to get stuck with a flash flood, you could turn into a mud pit that you keep you don't have a vehicle that can drive through it. Because it it's just never something you have to think about at home. But what about you?

SPEAKER_01 31:02

I just think that you have to take into consideration, like she was saying at the end of the video there, maybe sometimes you're just not feeling it.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I was on, let's see, I've done Eagle Rock Loop in Arkansas.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I've done it a couple of times. I think it was the second or third time I was doing it. I don't know, it was just really hot and humid. It wasn't really that hot and humid, it was like September. Yeah. So it was it wasn't like it was July. Yeah. Because it gets it gets probably just as hot, even though people think running to the mountains of Arkansas is going to r relieve the heat from Texas or Louisiana or wherever. It does reduce it a little bit, but it's still super humid, it still gets hot. And I can remember just coming around. Luckily, the nice thing about that particular trail is it makes a big loop and there's a bunch of access points where you'll see people from time to time. And feeling queasy, I didn't like vomit or anything. I was feeling nauseous. I think I'd eaten some I don't know, tuna on a tortilla earlier, which I normally have no problem eating. Yeah, I've eaten a bunch of those type of things on the trail. But the combination of it being hot, yeah, it was humid, maybe I hadn't been consuming enough water. I don't know. Even though that trail, you're walking through water.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

You're walking around the water. You're there's always water available. The resource that you need right there available. You have to you have to collect it and put it inside of your box. Right, right, yeah, exactly. It's not gonna go. And keep that balance going. Yeah. And that's sometimes that's difficult to do. Now, luckily, I was at that point of no return where I was gonna be miles and miles before I saw somebody. So I just contacted some people and said, Hey, I'm sorry to bother you folks, but could you take me back to my vehicle? Oh, right, yeah. Because I just wasn't feeling it.

Bailing Early As A Safety Skill

SPEAKER_01 32:57

And so the thing I'll leave everybody with tonight is no matter how much you prepare, I think you have to decide when enough is enough.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

And if that's your breaking point, then you need to figure out some way to get yourself out of there in a safe manner. Try it again, maybe. The mountain's always gonna be there, is like Marina says in that video. Yeah. The mountains are gonna be there. Yeah, that trail that you're hiking, it's gonna be there. You'll have other opportunities to get out there and do it. So I would say don't put yourself in danger to try to complete something that you may not be able to do safely. Think about safety. Prepare well for your environment. Even though New Mexico and Texas touch, you can see the differences between how I need to prepare being here in New Mexico now versus how Mark would prepare being in Texas. So keep that in mind. If you have any kind of comments, questions, whatever, please let us know and we will try to answer those best that we can. Thanks, Mark, for coming on. Yep, my pleasure. You got any final words? No, I'm good. We can wrap. Okay. Yeah. All right. Sounds good. Anyway, until next time, we'll probably try to do this as a regular meeting on here, meeting of the mind, so to speak.

SPEAKER_04 34:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

And anyway, thanks so much, folks, for watching. We'll see you later. Be safe out there on the trail. Bye.

unknown 34:18

Bye.