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.

I’m filing this blog post under our Epic Trail Fail series although I’m not sure it really qualifies. I did fail to reach my intended destination, so there’s that. However, there were no real fails along the trail. Maybe I should just tell you about it.

I took a week off of work to hike the Appalachian Trail while The LeeLander was landed near Erwin Tennessee. My plan was to hike from Watauga Lake to Damascus, VA. Michelle dropped Finn and I off on Monday and we headed out. The forecast for the whole week was pretty soggy and it was on the mark. However, I put my head down and Finn put his tail down and we chalked the whole rain thing up to the fact that if you power through those kinds of days, the good days will feel even better. It didn’t rain the whole time and the last day we were out on the trail it was absolutely gorgeous. Speaking of the last day, it came a day earlier than I had planned. On the morning of the second day I stepped on a pointed rock and turned my ankle a bit. The pain wasn’t bad at first, but as we hiked on it got worse and worse. Every morning when we woke up it felt a little better so I powered on. That is until Thursday when I had only gone a mile and I started getting shooting pain from the injured area. This slowed me down so much I knew I wouldn’t make it into Damascus by Friday. When I could get a signal, I called Michelle and had her pick me up at the last road crossing before Damascus. It turned out to be good luck for another thru-hiker. We met her and her dog at the shelter the night before. Her trail name was Syrup and her dog’s was Maple. She was going to try and hitch into the town of Boone, NC where she had friends she was going to take a couple of zero’s (zero miles hiked days) with. We were able to give her a ride to town and allay her fears of doing a difficult hitch because most people won’t pick up hikers with dogs.

I ended up going to Urgent Care to get my foot X-Rayed and was glad to find out I didn’t have any fractures. The doctor said I had strained some tendons and I had to be off of the foot for a few days. I wish I had made it to Damascus but we ended up going in the rig the next weekend for the Trail Days festival which was a blast! I’ll write about that later.

Oh yeah, there is a video. Didn’t think I would forget about that, did ya?

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