Every couple of months Trail Notes will go off-trail with Backcountry Brad. This mild-mannered software engineer and dad to two daughters from Austin seems like a nice enough guy if you chat with him at the local swim meet or brewery, but if he invites you on a hike, think twice.
Back in 2016, Backcountry Brad invited me on a little jaunt into the Tusk Zone of Big Bend National Park. I was an Eagle Scout with my orienteering merit badge. I did fine in all the Land-Nav exercises with the military and I recently soloed Big Bend’s Outer Mountain Loop, so how challenging could a little off-trail jaunt be? Well, I broke a hiking pole descending a scree slope, desolated a pair of Italian mountaineering boots and shredded my legs with a thousand cuts from cactus, lechuguilla and agaves. Also, I’ve never been happier as a hiker!
Let me begin by saying, “Don’t try this at home.” Off-trail navigation these days has become dangerously easy with state parks and national parks seeing a spike in backcountry deaths and rescues. With the advent of apps like GAIA GPS and CalTopo coupled with emergency beacons like Spot or In-Reach, people who never would have dreamed of sticking a toe off a trail now march brazenly into the wilderness like Michael Scott in that episode of The Office where he drives his rental car into a lake following the directions of a TomTom.
