Biggest D'oh "That Was Stupid" Moment

TEO said:

Perhaps, I should count myself lucky that my Doh! moment was merely returning to my car in the Spruce Lot at Stowe, only to discover that my passenger door was wide open, with the keys still in the lock. Nothing, including the several pairs of skis in the car, was missing.

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Same thing happened to me at IKEA, and nothing got stolen. I guess it look like you are going to be back in a second...

Leading a group of high school students on a 4-day trip in the Ishi Wilderness, Lassen NF, northern California, spring, 2001.

Big loop, about 40% on trail and the rest cross country, of which I had personally walked about 90%. The remaining 10% I had visually inspected from the tops of various nearby bluffs ... it looked passable. <--- HERE'S WHERE THE LESSON IS ...

Naturally this section, halfway through the last day out, was bisected by an impassable band of 20-30 foot cliffs, around which no easy end-run was possible. This blocked access to the moderate slope of open oak savannah which was our intended route upwards 2,000 feet out of the Mill Creek canyon. Instead we gained the summit of the pinery and eventually the ridge and the trailhead by means of a long class 3 scree gully (think 'Trap Dike full of loose golf balls') obstructed at intervals by bands of poison oak.

We penetrated these barriers in full rain gear and took very thorough Teknu baths a short carry away from a *miraculously* convenient spring near the pinery summit, and none of the students suffered symptoms afterward.

BUT I SURE DID! Having abused my system with bad exposures many times previously, I frigging exploded ... it was many months before I could go a day without one or more full-on histamine blowouts with all-over hives. I'd race home from work each day *dying* to just jump in a warm oatmeal bath and scratch, scratch, scratch. I still have scars ...

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I had some other good ones in and around the Ishi (amazing place, if you ever have the chance). There was the time that my wife and I blew two simultaneous flats on the way out, 30 miles from the nearest settlement ...

I have a custom made Moss tent. The tent has two bodies that share the same fly and poles. One body is for winter (fully enclosed panels) and the other body is for summer (netting panels). The tent is a small lightweight two-person model. Because of the tent’s versatility, I constantly switch out the fly and poles with either a summer body or a winter body, depending on the season.

About fifteen years ago, on a winter backpacking trip to the Bonds, my girlfriend (wardsgirl) and I stopped along the Twinway and set up camp in whiteout conditions, high winds, sub-zero temperatures, oncoming nightfall, and uncertainty about our position on the trail. We removed our packs and tamped down a flat spot with our snowshoes. I pulled the tent out of my pack and whipped it out of the stuff sack. I was shocked. I brought the wrong tent body. I was standing there holding a netted summer tent body and thinking that we are going to freeze our butts off. There was little time. We hurried to set up the body. After we set it up I reached into the stuff sack to pull out the fly. Instead of pulling out the fly, I pulled out the other tent body. I immediately realized what I did. I had packed two tent bodies and no fly. D’oh. Needless to say, we took down the ‘summer’ tent and set up the ‘winter’ tent to spend a relatively comfortable night without a fly.

Walking into a tree while reading my trail map. I'm glad nobody was around to see it.

I was totally blissing out about five few days into backpacking the New Hampshire AT (Grafton Notch to Norwich) when it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't reached the Osgood cut off yet. Moments after I started looking for blazes and signs, I saw that I'd reached the 6 Husbands Trail and had to retrace the last two miles to get back to the AT (if I had to do it again today, I'd have just gone up the Six Husbands(.

Bear sack hanging - the wrong way

Fisher Cat reminded me of my story. The first time I had to hang food, I found a nice branch and tied a stick to the end of the rope. After a couple of tosses the rope went over the branch. Thinking I didn't want too much rope to go over, I stepped on the remainder that was on the ground.

Wrong! The stick end of the rope pendulumed back up and around the branch, multiple times, wrapping the branch very tightly. There was no way to unwind it, so I had to cut the rope, and blew my LNT by leaving a piece of it hanging down to about 8 feet above the ground.

My next attempt was successful.

Car spotted at Randolph East, then headed over to the Great Gulf Parking area with LarryD and Sapblatt.

After hiking through Madison Gulf, summitting Madison (in rain, sleet and wind) we descended Howker Ridge. Upon our return to Randolph East, I found out that I left my car headlights on and killed the battery.

So, I opened a beer and stood on the road to flag down a passing vehicle for a jump start. Beer in hand, I flag down the first car by, who turned out to be a county sheriff!

Thankfully he was in a good mood and helped us start the car. He even gave Larry and Mike a ride to the GG trailhead.

Nearly hit a moose on the ride home, but that's another story!

WhiteMTHike said:

Walking into a tree while reading my trail map. I'm glad nobody was around to see it.

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Walked right off the trail at night following a waterbar...several times.

Beware of leaving a trail for a low impact pit stop ... make sure you're past the switchbacks ... it is not considered low impact to bushwhack between switchbacks and it could be embarrassing. I observed this possibility once when, after the pit stop and return to the trail, I saw further up the trail a very familiar log about 10 feet from the trail

Was going to head up Techumseh after church one Saturday. Thought we had everything in the car and ready to go. We ate on the way to save time. When we got to the trail head, I asked my daughter where her hiking boots were. She realized she had forgotten them. As I was ranting to her about how she could possibly forget her hiking boots when we were going hiking, I realized I had forgotten mine also! So, we hiked up the mountain in our church shoes. That was interesting. We got alot of weird looks.

I once met a friend at a park-and-ride lot, and before getting in his car, I grabbed two boots out of my trunk that were from different pairs. They were both brown, and in the dark, I didn't realize what I had done until we got to the trailhead, and I had two left boots. All I could say was "sorry". I would have worn the mis-matched pair if one was for the left foot and one was for the right!

Little Rickie said:

Walked right off the trail at night following a waterbar...several times.

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There is one particular waterbar on the Zealand Trail where I've done that 3 times - now I know to stop quick when it happens

I remember one time just after the shelters were removed in the Great Gulf that it seemed like the shelter area had a lot of waterbars - my sister laughed because they had put logs on the side of the trail to keep people off the revegetation and I was so used to waterbars that I was stepping on and off the trail instead of following it

One fine day I was doing the ice climb Chia, I was on a vertical section of the variation moving well, but gripped. I made a high step up and caught my right crampon on my back-up hammer leash, here I am 20ft above my last piece of gear with my leg stuck bent under me hopelessly hooked on the leash. I tried wacking at the leash with my tool, didnt work, I tried raising my leg higher, didnt work, I couldnt let go of either tool as I would have fallen for sure. Somehow threww all this my other crampon palcement held,as did both tools. I yelled down to my partner to prepare to reel in the rope as I fell to shorten my fall. Right before I was about to fall, my foot somehow just came undone. I regained my composure, fired in 2 ice screws, hung there for a minute smoking a cig, then climbed to the top.

My buddy and I had finished "Lotta Balls" in Red Rocks and we were hunting for the descent route. We met up with "Scary Larry," and he led us down HIS way, which was terrifying but hilariously funny, featuring failed carabiner brakes , rappeling off the ends of ropes , 15' falls down scree gullies , etc.. What reminded me of it was the "caught foot" in your post, Sierra. The last part of Larry's "descent route" was on-sight soloing DOWN a 5.5 pitch. Swinging under the roof at the very bottom, about 12' off the ground, I caught my climbing shoe lace on a cam on my harness, and I was stuck. Finally managed to rip the lace out of the shoe and clamber the rest of the way down.

I think the "Duh" moment was when we decide to follow Larry - but no one got hurt, and it makes a good story!

Back in my rock climbing days, two friends and I agreed to climb Sam's Swan Song on Cannon cliff in Franconia Notch as a rope of three. Sam's is a fairly long 5.7 route that each us had climbed several times, but one of my friends claimed that it could be climbed in six pitches with a 165 ft rope. To save time, we agreed that each of us would lead two pitches, with the third person self-belaying behind the second until his turn to lead. All of us arrived at Boise Rock separately from different directions, and each of us assumed that the other two would each bring a 165 ft rope.

Of course, you have probably already guessed that none of us brought a 165 ft rope. However, I had a short piece of static rope for towing, perhaps 100 ft in length, in my vehicle, so given that we had all of our other climbing paraphenalia, we used the short static rope to simul-climb Whitney-Gilman, a much shorter 5.7 route, instead. We never did manage to climb Sam's together after that embarrassing snafu.

BobC said:

I once met a friend at a park-and-ride lot, and before getting in his car, I grabbed two boots out of my trunk that were from different pairs. They were both brown, and in the dark, I didn't realize what I had done until we got to the trailhead, and I had two left boots. All I could say was "sorry". I would have worn the mis-matched pair if one was for the left foot and one was for the right!

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Yeah, but you forgot the best punchline for this mistake. What were we supposed to hike that day?......SMARTS Mountain.

Brian

NewHampshire said:

Yeah, but you forgot the best punchline for this mistake. What were we supposed to hike that day?......SMARTS Mountain.

Brian

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Actually quite apt. Mr. Smarts, after whom the mountain is named, was somewhat lacking in what his name implies. He was a trapper in the region in the 1700s. Stupidly and underhandedly, he stole pelts from the local Native Americans' traps. They expressed their displeasure by cutting a hole in the ice in a nearby pond (now Reservoir Pond) and stuffing him in. That must have been truly a "D'oh!" moment for Smarts.

Dr. Dasypodidae said:

Back in my rock climbing days, two friends and I agreed to climb Sam's Swan Song on Cannon cliff in Franconia Notch as a rope of three. Sam's is a fairly long 5.7 route that each us had climbed several times, but one of my friends claimed that it could be climbed in six pitches with a 165 ft rope. To save time, we agreed that each of us would lead two pitches, with the third person self-belaying behind the second until his turn to lead. All of us arrived at Boise Rock separately from different directions, and each of us assumed that the other two would each bring a 165 ft rope.

Of course, you have probably already guessed that none of us brought a 165 ft rope. However, I had a short piece of static rope for towing, perhaps 100 ft in length, in my vehicle, so given that we had all of our other climbing paraphenalia, we used the short static rope to simul-climb Whitney-Gilman, a much shorter 5.7 route, instead. We never did manage to climb Sam's together after that embarrassing snafu.

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Rope issues seem to be commen amoung climbers huh. I met this girl in North Conway for a date, we had a great dinner and movie together. She stated that she had been learning how to rock climb and I offered to take her up a slab route on Whitehorse ledge. The day was nice and I was cruising up "sliding board 5.7" without paying much attention, when I realized I had "cruised" right by the belay. So Im in no mans land in the middle of a slab I didnt care to downclimb, 20ft from a belay station. So I yell down for her to start climbing. Mind you I had a great stance and was sure I could make the belay with a little rope. well she was fresh out of rock climbing school and would not untie and climb until I was anchored. I did not think I could downclimb safely, so we bantered back and forth as at least 3 guides watched on from standard route at our epic in progress. She fianally decided to move and I made the anchor no problem. When we reached the top she said she would climb with me again if I stopped putting her life in jeapordy.

This is more of a "Gimme a break!" than a "D'oh!" moment:

Many years ago, I camped at the site of the (long gone) Phelps lean-to in the Adirondacks. I found a mature birch tree to bear-bag my food. It had a perfect, three-way fork, about 25' up its trunk, and the plan was to get one end of an orange nylon parachute cord up and over it.

I tied a rock to the end of the cord and, after several tries, pitched it through the fork. The rock sailed through the fork but, unfortunately, did not land on the ground. The rock-end fell short and hung a feet feet below the fork. Nothing helped to make the rock-end slide down the trunk to the ground.

I decided to retrieve the line and start over. I pulled hard, figuring the rock-end would come whipping back through the fork but it simply got lodged in the fork. I pulled with all my might (full body-weight) but it wouldn't let go (or break).

I wasn't going to give up yet so I decided to toss the free end of the line through the fork. I tied a rock to the opposite end, tossed it through the fork, and it suffered the same fate and fell short. Nuts. I pulled the cord and, you guessed it, the second rock became wedged. I now had both ends of the cord secured 25' in the air.

Hanging down the length of the white birch, the orange cord was now a bonified eyesore. Being a persistent cuss, I tied another cord to the mid-point of the fouled line, for added length, and tossed it through the fork. Third try was not a charm.

I felt bad about the day-glo orange line draped from the tree but I was out of ideas (for one stupid moment I considered scaling the tree). Like Charlie Brown's kite-eating tree, I had met my match; the birch devoured over a 100' of parachute cord plus three rocks.

Gotta think of something (from a long list). I'll be back.