Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarkey
My girlfriend, dog and I went on a hike by Waterton, we made it to the top of the mountain and it looked like the path continued over the ridge and down in a loop to the bottom. I think it was actually an animal trail because a little ways down it turned into a scree slope (not sure if that's the proper terminology) of gravel. We basically did a controlled slide down 500m which was kind of fun. The problem was that we reached a sheer drop. I had a panic attack because we couldn't scramble back up. Eventually I found a little rocky edge about 1' wide that my wife and I could crawl around and jump down to a safe place. The problem was that my dog couldn't/wouldn't do the 6' jump around the corner down to safety. I had to get my girlfriend to hold my belt while I swung out and grabbed my dog's collar and swung her over the drop down onto the safe part where we were. Just thinking about it gives me the shivers. I have always had a fear of heights and now it's worse, I've had a few panic attacks since while on the mountains, and get anxious whenever I think of the incident.
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Ha that sounds like 2 hikes I did this summer, I thought I was doing Mt Baldy (Kananaskis) but at the top I realized "fata wrong mountain," In the wrong-mount-Mt-Baldy, I apperantly did a mountain that hadn't been done in a while given the fresh moss with no visible tracktion lately, and what was supposed to be class 2-3 turned into class 3 with some occational dyno's... with no rope to protect me if I fell; and the second was when we took the wrong ascent up Roche Miette and what was supposed to be an easy class 2 scramble turned into some crazy loose gravel mounteering scramble, with pretty uncontrollable traction and very steep slide.
The cliffy part you described reminds me of a hike I did 2 months ago in Yosemite California, Echo Ridge, which was a class 3 scramble if you know what that is, but what was really sketchy was the final ascent to the summit was an open face, steep class 3 which was pretty much a ridge, and the other side was pretty much a cliff 200 ft drop. It was a full day hike, and I was already carrying about 15% of my body weight on my back of water, so I had a bit of a panic attack; I had to leave my day pack behind to finish the last part of the summit. Imagine the ridge like a trail that has about 200 feet drop on both sides, and the trail is about 2 feet wide and is class 3 meaning you have to use your hands as well to ascend. I got some wicked pictures for it, too bad photobucket doesn't work for it.
