Canadian Rockhound: Lesson for Rockhounds

Home

A Lesson for all Rockhounds
By Liz Askew

How one rockhounding field trip in the desert
nearly turned tragic

We were on a field trip with our rockhounding club. The day was beautiful and all went well, until around 2:30 PM, when an older fellow decided to take some of us to "a place he went to years ago." We followed happily along, when all of a sudden there was deep sand on the road, and we got stuck. We honked the horn at the woman ahead of us to let her know we were stuck, but she did not hear us.

As you know, it gets dark around 4:30 PM. By now was after 3 PM. I took a water bottle and started walking, while Dick tried to dig us out. I walked until I could see across a large valley and knew the other people were way out of my range. I was walking in sand most of the time and my legs were starting to ache. I planned along the way back (at least two miles) to find a place where I would spend the night, if I could not make it back.

When I thought I could go no further, along came Dick. I could hardly walk the rest of the way, since my legs hurt so much. We decided no one was coming to get us, or even knew where we were. We made a fire, as it gets cold in the desert at night. By now, it was after 5 PM. Daylight starts around 5 AM, so we had twelve hours. I felt really close to death, as we had very little water left and it was so cold. Luckily, I had brought a sweat shirt to put on over my sleeveless top (it was a warm day) and Dick had a boiler suit in the back of the truck. We sat up until 8 PM and then tried to sleep sitting up on a hard truck seat. You want to talk misery? Try this sometime. We had some rags for pillows. We slept as well as one could and turned the heater on occasionally.

Finally, it was daylight. We made a fire and Dick started on the truck. I heard voices in the distance I called, "hello, we need help!" They heard me and started coming toward us, two young men out hunting. They went and got their four-wheel drive truck and pulled us out – we never would have made it by ourselves. The good road was miles away, and we were so happy once we were on it. You don't appreciate water, warmth or anything, until you have an experience like that. Thereafter, we went to the first store and bought the largest drink they had. We were only an hour from home. Our poor dogs were so happy to see us, as we had been gone over 24 hours.

This adventure is a good lesson for all of us rockhounds. We were unprepared because we never planned on being away from home for very long. We only had 1 gallon of water and two sandwiches and apples. As a rule of thumb, never go anywhere in the desert or mountains without food, water (5 gallons), blankets and warm clothes.

This article may not be copied, distributed or reprinted in any form without the author's permission. To contact the author, please use the e-mail address provided. If you are unable to contact the author, please contact the Canadian Rockhound. Authorized reprints must acknowledge the author and the Canadian Rockhound, and include the website URL address of the Canadian Rockhound.