This one time... We were in a pickle

I'm thinking about incorporating a new series to this blog, where I jot down some random memories and/or stories.  These may bore some of you, but I think they are worth documenting.  Perhaps they even give insight as to how I developed into the dude that I am.  I'm calling it 'This one time...'

Dateline:  May, 1998 (it may have been 1999.  I'm not quite sure.)

It was a beautiful spring afternoon in Logan, Utah.  I think it was a Sunday, because I remember thinking that not much was going on the rest of the day/evening - but I know for sure that the next day was a weekday.

We were just recovering from the long, snowy Cache Valley winter, and I was itching to get into the mountains a bit.  I called up my on-again/off-again girlfriend (the very same woman to whom I am currently married) and asked her to join me on a nice drive up Logan Canyon to visit Old Ephraim's Grave (Old Ephraim was the last grizzly bear killed in Utah, prior to the Grizzly becoming extinct here).  The snow was about all melted, and trees were beginning to blossom.

We headed out on our little excursion with no particular reason to bring anything other that the clothes we were wearing.  After all, this was to be the classic 'Three-Hour Tour' kind of a drive.  A jaunt up Logan Canyon, then turn down a jeep road and 4-Wheel-Drive almost all the way to the monument.  We started out in the late afternoon and drove for a couple of hours.  Logan Canyon was beautiful, and the further we drove, the better the views got.  We were near the tops of the mountains, where the vistas were stunning and the snow melt was very recent.  As we drove, the road was getting more and more wet, and I was growing concerned about the conditions.  Eventually, we rounded a corner and decided it would be unwise to go any further down the road.  The road was soaked, spotted with puddles of water between 12 and 18 inches deep.

I put my truck in reverse and started to back up, looking for a place to turn around.  The road we were on was cut into the side of the mountain, with a not-too-steep, grassy hill dropping off our right-hand side.  As I backed up, my truck veered slightly over to the right-hand side of the road, near the edge.  I put on the brakes, but it was too late - the saturated mud upon which we sat just sloughed away, and began running downhill like a muddy avalanche, carrying my truck with it.

We slid about 50 feet downhill, eventually stopping in a puddle of mud and water about 2 feet deep.  I tried driving both forward and backward, but it was no use... we weren't going anywhere.  It was about 7pm, and we still had about 1.5 hours of daylight left.  I spent most all of this time wading about in the watery mess trying anything in my power to free my truck.  I pushed while Emily drove.  I tried rocking the truck back and forth.  I gathered branches, rocks, and anything else I could find and jammed it under my truck tires.  Nothing I did was getting me out of here - it was perhaps even making it worse.  The front of my truck was embedded in the mud, while one of the back tires was completely off the ground.  It really was quite the sight, and a horrible predicament to be in.

All my efforts to free us only really accomplished one thing: It got me really, REALLY wet.  Remember, I was wading about in a puddle of water, and I pushed and pushed until I fell in the water multiple times.  My clothes were drenched in muddy muck - and it was starting to get pretty cold.

It was now nearly dark, and I informed Emily that we were not going to be driving home.  No other human being had come by in the hours we had been there, and I certainly didn't expect to see anyone come by at night.  I recommended to Emily that we begin walking back to the main road - which was approximately 7.5 miles away.

"What in the world do you plan to do when we get back to the road?", Emily asked me.  "Hitchhike back to Logan", I replied, "We should get back to the road about 2am.  We can hitchhike home, and come back in the morning to get my truck."  Well, there was no way I was convincing her to accompany me to some nighttime hitchhiking.  She thought that was a terrible idea.  She also wasn't fond of my second alternative, which was to allow ME to hitchhike alone, while she waited.  So, that left us with one alternative:  Spend the night and deal with this in the morning. 

My truck at this time was a 1992 Toyota Regular Cab Pickup, like this one:

(Mine didn't have the skid plate, but my oversized tires were way cooler.  Awww, I miss that little guy)

This was not exactly the most comfortable place for 2 people to sleep, especially considering the forward-leaning angle at which the truck sat.  Comfortable or not, it was dry and it was all we had.  I did have a plastic blue tarp that I kept behind the seat - but that was about it as far as shelter.  We still had over 1/2 tank of gas and a working heater.

I was freezing.  The temperature had dropped drastically, and as I said before, I was drenched from head to toe.  I knew I had to get out of these wet clothes soon.  I stripped down to nothing but my underwear and threw the wet clothes in the bed of the pickup.

It was pitch black now, and I was barely clothed, sharing a tarp with my girlfriend, trying to get warm.  So, it wasn't ALL bad, I guess.

Well, the heater did work - however, my tailpipe was only a few inches from the top of the water and Emily could swear that all the exhaust was coming right into the cab of the truck, so she was very reluctant to let me run it.  A few times throughout the night, we couldn't bear the cold anymore, so we would run the truck for a little while and allow ourselves to heat up some.  But for the most part, it was a long, miserable night.  Temperatures were well below freezing the entire time.

Around 5 am, the the morning finally arrived.  It was no longer total darkness.  Although there was no direct sunlight yet, blackness had given way to shades of blue and grey that told us the warm sun was on its way.  Now came the REALLY tough part.  Somewhat reluctantly, we got out of the truck to begin the trek out.  Naturally, I went for my clothes first thing.  Remember the great idea I had to strip them off and discard them in the bed of the truck?  Horrible idea.  My shirt, undershirt, pants and socks were frozen together in a giant clothescicle.  I couldn't even break them apart.

Nevertheless, I still had to get out of there.  Clothes or no clothes, we had to walk out.  I got the last of the warmth that I could in my truck then Emily and I headed back down the road we drove in on.  Both of us shivering, we started briskly walking back to Logan Canyon.  Did I mention that I was wearing tennis shoes without socks and a pair of underwear (garment bottoms) - AND NOTHING ELSE???  I was really hoping Emily wasn't looking too closely.  Obviously, my attire was very revealing - and I was freezing cold (if you know what I mean).

Moving helped keep us warm, but I was still shivering like Michael J. Fox operating a jackhammer (tasteless joke, I know).  As we proceeded down the trail, we kept watching a line of sunshine inch its way down the mountain.  It seemed to take an eternity before it finally was able to peer far enough down the canyon and hit our freezing bodies.  Eventually, it did hit us, and even warmed us enough that I was able to wear my shirt (but still not my pants).

I think it was about 8:30 or 8:45 am when we got really close to the main road.  I was still essentially naked from the waist-down, my pants had done very little thawing, and the shirt I was now wearing was caked in mud.  I couldn't imagine this being a very appealing wardrobe to a passing motorist.  Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), the Logan river runs very near the road, and I saw this as an opportunity to get dressed and a little cleaner.  I waded into the water, carrying the frozen wad of clothes and soaked them until they were pliable enough to put on my body.  I removed my shirt, and doused it a few times in the river as well, so that it was as clean as possible.  Once dressed, we made a B-line for the road, desperate to flag down the next car that passed.

It didn't take too long (maybe about 5 minutes) for a car to come by.  It was an officer from Utah State Parks and Recreation, who was on his way to an interview in Logan.  We sat in his car for awhile, and he took down all of our information and was a great help (come to find out, he knew my Uncle Larry pretty well.  hmmm... small world).  I felt so lucky that we found him, because he had a CB and was talking to a dispatch officer who was offering to call our roommates to come help us.  They also called both of our employers and explained why we would be late to work.  To this day, I still don't understand why he just didn't give us a lift down the canyon (perhaps because I was dripping wet), but he left us there and drove off.  Help, he assured us, was on the way.

About AN HOUR later, I saw my roommate, Scott, driving his truck toward us.  He looked like he was on a Frankenstein-hunting mission, because there was an army of people in the back of his truck with shovels, pitchforks, torches, etc.  (OK, maybe they didn't have pitchforks and torches - but they did have a bunch of tools, some of which seemed to provide little value to the situation).

And they also had a tow-rope.  Scott drove up to the spot where we spent the night and in about 5 minutes my truck was freed.  As his 6-cylinder Toyota helped extract my 4-cylinder Toyota, I recall him yelling out "V-6 POWER!!!".  Despite the humiliation of getting stuck, the physical exhaustion from the lack of sleep, and the worry I had for missing most of the workday, my overwhelming emotion at that moment was envy.  I had secretly always been envious of his larger engine.  Grrrrr.  But, there was also relief.  We had been stuck for about 14 hours, and we were finally free, warm, and among friends.  The rescue party consisted of both of our roommates, and some random people Emily's ward.   Upon receiving the call from dispatch, Emily's roommates had called her bishop, and he had been able to gather a number of people to assist.  To be honest, I really just wanted someone to hurry up and get us off home - I don't know why the army of garden-tool-bearing students needed to be assembled.  I felt like time was an issue here - have these people never head of hypothermia?  (that reminds me of this one OTHER time...)  Oh well, I really was grateful they came.

Free at last: I drove home, dropped Emily off, and we both got ready for work. We were very tired, but I was just grateful to be able to have a hot shower and to know we were safe.  I remember my truck was so muddy both inside and out that I took it to a car wash and actually used the power-spray on the INSIDE of the cab.

Thinking about it now, I don't believe that I've been back to Old Ephraim's grave since.  I think its high time I pay that place a visit.