Stuck on the cliffs
When I was 18, I went on a challenging but fun week-long hike into the Deer Creek part of the Grand Canyon. Because of misbegotten zeal to be lightweight, the food was miserable - cracked bulgar wheat flavored with curry powder. I panicked when I walked into a stinging nettle field, apparently part of an abandoned Native American plantation gone riot with weeds. I thought I was under attack by spiders. My mentor told stories of a childhood fishing trip, where he used stinging nettle as toilet paper in a pinch, and rued the day. Another mentor recalled a grueling summer hike where he had mixed honey with water in order to make an energy drink and instead created the perfect bacterial breeding fluid. Their water supply ruined, they nearly died of thirst. Some other hiking party got lost and we ended up shouting pleas of ignorance to bullhorn-bearing helicopters sent to find them. But still, there were wonders to behold, like Thunder River, a dramatic cataract shooting from a cave at the base of a thousand foot tall cliff.

Anyway, five years later, I brought two friends here, so I was the mentor now. Still, I missed the trail, and we ended up at the top of a 30 foot tall cliff that we couldn't descend. It was so tantalizing. We could see the stinging nettle field. We could hear the cataract. But on the summertime south-facing slope, we were like bugs under a magnifying glass, and were swiftly running out of water. So, we were forced to do the sensible thing, turn tail, and clamber back out of the Grand Canyon.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 15:16, Reply)