I Confess My Lack of Personal Responsibility in Utah

In this email I'm going to admit to violating a basic tenet of the CHS Way on my trip to Utah and in retrospect I feel like a total heel for doing it. The overarching tenet is "We bring personal responsibility to the group." I am admitting here and now to what I did on the Utah trip in the hopes that others might learn from it. I admit to: treating my hike leader (in this case my friend who was organizing the trip) as a tour guide whose personal mission was to make sure I had a good time. There, I've said it! 

How did I do this? By not finding out a single scrap of information about our hikes or our backpack trip beforehand. Heck I didn't even  buy a damn map of the area or look at a single hiking book that described the trips even when I had them sitting in front of me! Instead I followed my friend around like a sheep expecting her to tell me all about the trips and what challenges I might expect. As you might remember from my last posting--this plan turned out kindly of poorly for my feet. It also meant that we when we got the trailhead for our backpack trip, I didn't have a friggin' clue as to which direction our trail was supposed to go from the trailhead. If you haven't hiked in the desert before, I can tell you that washes sometime look like trails and the terrain all looks a lot alike. 

So needless to say, we headed off in the wrong direction and spent about an hour trying to figure out what we were doing. I wasn't any help in the trail navigation because I was the only one in the group that hadn't read any trail beta. When we finally got back to where our car was parked to regroup, I was feeling pretty sheepish and admitted to my friend that I was guilty of treating her as my tour guide and resolved to behave differently. I still didn't have a damn map of the area, but I did pay attention the route for the rest of the trip and made sure we were on a trail on our travels through the desert. 

Oh sure I have lots of great excuses as to why I behaved this way--I was really busy at work before the trip and had been dealing with a lot of stress beforehand, blah, blah, blah. But none of it counts for a hill of beans. I should have been more prepared. I should've bought a map of the areas we were going to beforehand and I should've read the trail descriptions so I could provide meaningful input to the group's decisions on where to go. 

So this is my advice to you: be an active participant on all of your hikes. Don't be guilty of treating a hike leader or a friend (if you're going on a private trip) as a tour guide, expecting them to know everything about the trail and destination. Bring a map and read up on the trail before you go so that you can provide meaningful input on navigation or route finding should the need arise. Plus it's just really nice to know about where you're going should adverse circumstances arise (I'm sure you would never plan to get lost would you?).  

So be sure to bring this up next time you're with me on a hike. I deserve it. But I won't be behaving that way again in the future, you can count on it.