There is a wonderful waterfall hike up near Carson, Washington that is often crowded in the summer months. We had decided to snowshoe up to the falls to see what it would look like in winter. This is a super easy hike in the summer, but in winter you have to start down a longer road before even reaching the actual trailhead and then slog through a lot of snow to get there. Breaking snow is harder on you than just regular hiking for sure! But that was not our biggest challenge on this hike.
I had left my truck down along the closed Windy River Hwy (due to snow) and within just a couple of miles Nova suddenly alerted me to a man chasing after us up the trail. He was not dressed for hiking, didn’t have snowshoes on or any proper gear and clearly was up to no good. When I stopped and let him approach us, I immediately went on the offensive and asked him what he thought he was doing. He openly answered, as creepily as you can imagine, that he was coming after me. This was one of the few times I have been especially grateful to have a gun on me and I made it very clear that this was not going to happen. Not today, I told him. He passed me up the trail with a smile and we proceeded to play cat and mouse for many miles. Luckily the snow made it easy for me to track him. But it was not the relaxing snow hike I had hoped for and honestly needed after a difficult hike the previous week. After several more encounters with this man, and at one point him trying to tell me that he was too cold and wet to continue to the Falls (when we were maybe a half mile from them) Nova and I passed him to see the falls we had come to see and take our photos, while constantly watching behind ourselves. That is what she was doing in this photo…..she might look like a pretty princess, but she was watching over my shoulder for the man. That girl always has my back!
Once we started to leave, we then found that the “cold” man had dropped and made snow angels on the ground. We tracked him back as it turned to night fall, returning to our truck just as it was fully dark. We found his tire tracks and could see he had just left. That is when I discovered that my truck’s alarm system had been tampered with and my truck would not start at all. It was completely dead and couldn’t even be turned on for the heat. The thought of this man finding a way to hold his prey captive so he could bring his friends up to find me, led me to really quickly figuring out another way out of that cold, snowy night. God just so happened to send a different strange man for a Wednesday night drive up the closed highway to look at the snow. After flagging this stranger down, he offered to take me to his house in the woods to get to a working phone. While that sounded like a theme to a whole new nightmare, it seemed the best option at the time. So, for the first time in my life (and not the last), Nova and I climbed up into the largest truck I have ever been in with a strange man who happened to out number me in guns 3 to 1 to be taken to an undisclosed location in the woods.
Luckily, Luke turned out to be our trail angel only and helped us get safely out. This was the night that led to my husband receiving a phone call the next day from the Skamania County Sheriff doing a welfare check on me after Search and Rescue had used their canine search unit to track my prints from my snow covered and abandoned vehicle thinking the worst after they couldn't find me.
This was a hike that helped me realize how much fear I can truly conquer and that I will not let fear stop me from doing what I need or want to do. When that man told me what he was up to, all my inside voices were screaming to get out of there if I wanted to live. But I refused to let one bad guy ruin my plans that day and decided I was going to be as stubborn as hell and do what I wanted, damn the man! It set the tone for the rest of this year for sure! I am thankful to this day that I didn’t give up and go back to my truck when that man first appeared and revealed his intentions. If I had done that, I never would have captured this photo that I adore or tested myself to the extent that I did!
Unfortunately after the trail dust settled from this hike, I realized it created some new fears in me regarding this particular trail. In my February 2022 post, you can read what I did about that! I insist on facing fear head on and not hiding from it.
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