Bridge To Nowhere (photo by Nobody Hikes in LA)
Yesterday a young woman lost her footing on the Eaton Canyon Trail here in the LA area and plummeted 200 feet to her death. This story reminded me of a treacherous hike I did with Lisa, so of course I had to write about it. But my right arm has been hurting so I composed most of this post using voice recognition on my iPhone. I decided not to edit it.
Later I went into the hard copy archives and found the photos and entries in my hiking journal which tells me why I was reminded so vividly by the recent news story. In April ’96 I hiked to the Bridge to Nowhere with Lisa. The next month I recorded a hike in Eaton Canyon that I did by myself.
In 1996 Lisa and I went on a foolish hike
We wanted to hike to the bridge to nowhere
The night before we had gone out drinking and woke up hung over
Still we were determined we drank our coffee one of us made pancakes
We made too many pancakes
So we put the extra pancakes in a Ziploc bag put them in our packs and
took them with us
Because we were hung over we left late in the morning
We were sort of experienced hikers but we weren’t really thinking
People were returning from the bridge to nowhere as we started on the trail
It didn’t matter to us we just kept going
At one point the trail crossed through a river a raging river
And then it snaked up the side of a mountain
The trail was very narrow and climbed very high
Lisa was afraid of heights
I am afraid of heights now but I wasn’t then
I looked behind me and I saw her stuck on the side of the trail
She was frozen halfway along a section of the trail that clung to the
side of a cliff
She was too afraid to keep going forward and too afraid to go back
She called to me “send a helicopter”
I remember the terror on her face
I went back to get her
I guided her down the narrow path to relative safety
We made it to the bridge to nowhere and ate our pancakes
On our way back to the car the sun was setting and it was getting dark
and we didn’t have flashlights
That was pretty dumb
But who cared
We were 25 years old we were invincible
Nice write up. Well must be careful and respect nature. Thanks for the reminder
Great telling of the story. So…what’s your ledge?
Holy Crap! Those were my first words when I opened this post, and you KNOW how I hate heights!!!!
Love this story Kim. And that app seems to work great. Yes, at 25 we were invincible weren’t we. (But what did we know?)
Charlene, it’s actually a little built-in thing on the iPhone, which should be #1 on your wish list. It’s time.
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