If you spend time in the outdoors, eventually something will go wrong. It’s a law of nature. But if you survive, those epic failures become the best stories! We’ve all read about amazing accomplishments in the wild, but now it’s time to tell us about the not-so-great times and what you learned from them. Share your best #EpicTrailFail stories on your own page, include this paragraph as a header, and then provide a link in the comments [here] or [here]. We’ll curate and circulate the best stories in future posts. We can’t wait to read about what you’ve survived!
Arionis of Just A Small Cog and Rebecca of Wild Sensibility.

Since Rebecca and I first started this series I’ve only posted previous #epictrailfail stories. Now I have a brand new one! Several weeks ago I discovered a trail around a lake not far from the house. I have driven across the bridge that crosses the lake at least 42,567 times without ever once realizing the trail existed. I often looked at the lake when crossing over, seeing the boat launch next to the road and thinking that was all that was there, but thanks to an app I downloaded called AllTrails, I found out there was more there to be seen. The first thing I did after downloading the app was to hit a button that showed the trails nearest me and, wallah, there it was.

The trail actually winds it way through two lakes that are joined by a small crossover waterway channel. Remember that, it figures promptly in this fail. I decided to take the two dogs to check it out and we all enjoyed it very much. We unanimously decided that this would be our new venue for our frequent walks since it was only about five minutes away. When I go on walks (or hikes) with my dogs I use a hiking leash system that is buckled around my waist. The leashes are elastic and connect to hooks around the waist band. This leaves my hands free for doing other things such as carrying my walking stick. One drawback to this system is that if the combined two hundred pounds of dog get rambunctious, they tend to jerk my whole body and upset my balance sometimes. Sawyer is a pro hiker and usually hangs along my side following the trail. Finn, on the other hand, is a wild child on the trail and darts too and from everywhere, regardless of whether there is a path there or not.

The dogs and I have been walking on this trail for several weeks and I described it to my wife, Michelle. She has suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis all her life so she doesn’t normally get out in the woods as much as she would like to. That is why I video a lot of my hikes so she can experience them when I get home. Unfortunately for you readers, I wasn’t videoing during this trail fail. You’ll just have to picture it in your head as I tell the tale. Last Saturday Michelle said she was feeling pretty good and wanted to go with us for a walk on the trail. I was thrilled at this for a couple of reasons. First and foremost I would enjoy her company on the walk. Second, she could take one of the dogs and I’d only have one dog on my hiking leash which would allow me to enjoy the walk more. I wouldn’t need to worry about them tangling leashes.

Even though it was 40 degrees and a bit nippy (I don’t need to hear from you Northerners about how that’s not cold) we were enjoying the hike. Michelle had Sawyer on a conventional leash and I had Finn on my hiking one. As we came to the part where a bridge spanned the crossover waterway channel between the two lakes, Michelle halted and sat down on a bench. She was having a problem with keeping her coat closed and was going to work on the fasteners. She asked me to take Sawyer as she was doing this, so I took his leash and hooked it up to my waistband one like I normally do when it’s just the dogs and I. As Michelle started to fiddle with her coat she informed me that there was someone coming up behind us with a big dog. These are the times I usually regret having the hiking leash on. Sawyer is a teddy bear when it comes to meeting other hoomans. Not so much when it comes to other doggos. I think he wants to establish his alphaness right away when meeting new dogs. He tends to rush upon them in an intimidating manner. Finn isn’t like that but always rushes along with his big brother to see what’s going on. This can result in me getting jerked quite hard during these encounters.

In order to avoid this potentially unpleasant outcome, I took the two dogs under a spit of land under the bridge so that they could check out the water and hopefully not notice the impending passage of the other dog. It seemed to be working fine as they were looking out over the dank water, checking out the stumps jutting from the edges of it. Finn is a big swimmer so I had to keep pulling him back because I didn’t want him jumping into the nasty looking water. After a few minutes I figured the dog and his hooman had surely went over the bridge by now and passed us by. I started to lead the dogs back out from under the bridge when Sawyer caught sight of the dog, who was not over the bridge yet, trotting up close to where we were. In a flash Sawyer took off after him! Finn had not noticed the other dog or Sawyer going after him and at the same time decided he wanted to explore the shore further, so he took off in the opposite direction! I had already taken a step back to prepare for the jerk that Sawyer was going to give me and unknowingly had put one of my feet across Finn’s leash which played out in a second as he was going the other way. That leash wrapped around my ankle and jerked me off balance. I started to flail backwards trying to regain my balance and for some reason Sawyer aborted his charge at the other dog to look back and see what was going on. This was actually a bad thing as I could have used his pull in the other direction. You know, the direction not going toward the water? I tried my best to gain my footing again but after two or three backward steps, while becoming increasingly more parallel with the ground, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. All I could remember at that point were all the stumps near the shore of the water and how it was going to really hurt when I landed on them. So I did the only thing I could think to do. With my last step on dry land, I launched myself upwards and backwards hoping to at least clear the stumps! I was successful in that goal at least. What came after did not feel like success at all.

I’ve often heard people describe how time slows down during a sudden unpleasant or stressful event. I had never experienced this myself, until now. I was airborne no more than two seconds but it felt like minutes. I had time to think about all the following before my flight was over:

• I hope the dogs don’t get hurt since they are still attached to me.
• Hang on to your walking stick. You might need it to recover from this.
• Damn! My down puffy jacket is not supposed to get wet.
• Good thing the phone in my pocket is waterproof.
• Sure wish I had been videoing this.
• Hope there aren’t too many people watching, it’s going to be embarrassing.
• I’ll finally have an original epic trail fail story for the blog!
• This is going to suck!

SPLASH!!! I hit the water on my back and went under. Now, Northerners, tell me how it’s not cold at 40 degrees when you fall in a lake. I’m here to tell you it was hella cold! It was like a thousand knives being stabbed into me all at once and it took my breath away. Luckily it wasn’t deep. I was able to get my feet under me and launch back up to the surface where I was greeted to the concerned sounds of my wife asking, “Are you all right?” I started to say I was, but then I noticed she wasn’t asking me. She was asking Finn who had been dragged down by the leash into the water and was cowering near one of the stumps I had managed to avoid. Figures. Somehow, Sawyer managed to keep from getting pulled in.

I sloshed my way over toward the bank and relieved the pressure of the leash. I was able to scoop Finn up and get him back on land and then proceeded to do the same with myself. Even though my wife’s concern initially went to Finn, I had to give her credit for not laughing at me until she found out I was fine. I reached up and felt the absence of my cap. My favorite cap! When I voiced my dismay at the loss of my cap, Michelle took my walking stick (which I did manage to hold on to) and started rooting around in the water to see if she could find it. I stripped my now drenched puffy jacket off and shook it out as much as I could. That when I noticed something in the hood of the jacket. It was my cap! It got caught in the hood when I fell. That was a stroke of good luck among many other strokes that day that were not.

I looked around to see if anybody had witnessed my Olympic quality dive because out of all the things I should be worried about at the moment, being embarrassed was certainly number one. The other dog and his hooman had certainly seen it but they had crossed the bridge and were out of sight. I found out later that the guy had come to help, but my wife had asked him to move on since she didn’t want to introduce the chaos of having another dog near Sawyer while dealing with extracting a soaked husband from the lake. I didn’t see anyone else around so the embarrassment factor was pretty low. That is, until we started to walk back to the trail head and met many other people that could see I was wet. Michele tried to assure me that it wasn’t noticeable but I knew that was bullshit. I asked a girl that was passing us if she noticed something wrong. She said with barely contained laughter, “Well, uh, yeah. You look like you fell in a lake.” I gave my wife an I told you so look. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

At this point the adrenaline started to subside and I realized I was really cold! Due to that fact and the increasing number of people that were giving me the strangest looks, I turned on the afterburners and flew up the trail to get back to my jeep. Both dogs were still attached to my hiking leash and now it was me who was dragging them along. I reached the jeep, put them in the back, then got in and turned the heater to mile away from the sun setting while I waited for Michelle to get back. Once she was back, I floored it back to the house where I lost all my clothes in the walk from the garage door to the house and on to a 30 minute hot shower!

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