Years ago, I was into Geocaching. For the uninitiated, users hide small caches around the world, and the cache usually includes at least a log where people who find the cache can mark their visit. The coordinates of the cache are marked on the Geocaching website and people use GPS to locate it.

I thought it was finally time I’d put one of my own caches out for people to find, so I went to scout out possible locations for it. It was late autumn and was still light out. I knew that I wanted to put it on a nature trail I liked to walk so I went there.

One thing to know about late autumn up here in the Nordics is that it gets really dark really fast, meaning I was enveloped by a dark forest pretty quickly after making it to the trail. No matter, I thought, I had my phone and it had a flashlight, so I kept going, despite it having low battery (which, in hindsight, was a mistake).

I found a spot for the cache at about the halfway point of the trail and made a mental note of it, planning to come put it there during the limited daylight hours.

And soon after… Lights out. Phone was dead and I was in total darkness. Ambient light was close to non-existent due to how cloudy it was. I felt a bit panicked about the situation but kept going, feeling around with my feet to make sure I wouldn’t walk off the trail.

Lucky for me, I was quite familiar with the trail and eventually managed to come out the other end on a gravel road that was also unlit but at least easier to traverse and eventually got back home.

Not the scariest possible experience, but you can imagine how it feels to walk through a silent, damp forest in pitch black darkness while trying to feel your way out. Not sure I would have fared this well if the trail was unfamiliar.

I did get the Geocache out there the next day, and it remained there until I moved out of the area.

Was camping in central east Texas once and I woke up around 2 am to my dog growling softly, I petted her to calm her down and noticed light foot steps outside the tent.

I looked through a tiny gap in the zipper and could only see some sort of very large wide animal rummaging around the campsite.

Now bear wouldn’t be impossible but also isn’t super common in that area. My biggest worry was some sort of feral hog because if my dog barked and startled the hog it would trample us. A bear would more than likely run away.

All I could do was sit there and pet my girl to keep her calm and keep her from barking until the animal passed.

I moved from CAL to East TN in my teens. We lived in the middle of nowhere, like garbage got picked up every 3 months, had to drive a mile to get our mail, that sort of thing. Anyway, we had a pit we threw garbage in that was about 200 or so ft from our back door. I was the oldest and so it was my job to take the trash to the pit after dinner every night. I had forgot that night, and around 1am decided to run it down. I have a 12guage that we took when we went down that way as it was on the outskirts of a thick wood. This night, my genius ass forgot the gun, but grabbed the bag and headed down to the pit. It was a full moon and very easy to see. I get down there and toss the bag into the pit, and hit a black bear right in the face. Realizing what I did, I haul ass back towards the house, the bear roars and gives chase. I could hear it pounding behind me but was too scared to look back to see how far it was behind me. I get into the house, slam the door, heart pounding in my chest. I look out the windows and the bear is about 5ft from the glaring at me through the window, it’s standing on its hind legs and I swear it was 12ft tall! (I know it wasn’t, but this is the memory of someone who was in total terror. Also, this is 25 years ago.) It paced back and forth a few times, I went and grabbed the gun, just in case it decided to try to break in. When I got back to the door it was gone. I never forgot to take out the trash, or to grab the gun again though, I can tell you that much.

This may be tame but here goes:

When I was 15, I went walking up trail with my family in Chimborazo (a really big volcano in Ecuador) with lots of tourists and a guide. The walk is long and its windy as fuck with tiny tiny rocks and sand hitting your face/eyes but man seeing that mountain in front of you is amazing. It was tiring so I sat down to regain my breath while everyone kept moving on. I kept sitting and walking until I had enough and decided to walk down alone back to camp. Of course I told my family that I was heading down.

The thing is, it was real faraway or maybe it was that I couldn’t see that well with all the wind and sand so I felt disoriented, but I kept descending. I was feeling lost. I just saw ground all around me all alone with the wind hitting my ears loudly. I was getting a lil bit desperate but kept walking downwards to the left. Then I thought maybe it’s a bad idea to keep walking to the left, so I went to the right, and a few minutes later I arrived to the camp. I kept thinking to myself what would have happen if just kept walking to the left.

Last Autumn I went on a month long road and hiking trip around the Tohoku region of Japan to climb as all of the 100 famous peaks of Japan in the area. I drove in a kei van from Kyoto to Tohoku and then went around all the mountains on my list, so I did an absolute fuck ton of driving (4400km total) and over 200km of hiking in just under a month.

While these are generally not challenging hikes, I didn’t really want to mess around camping, since I don’t have a lot of camping experience, and although I could stay in a mountain hut, I’d still need to take a setup for sleeping and extra food, so I just tried to make everything a day hike.

Mostly this was fine, but one of the last hikes I did was Mt. Iide, which was the longest of all the hikes, with about 22km of mountain trail and total ascent of around 2000m (not height, just sections where I was hiking up a hill).

I set off at 6am, slightly later than planned, but it wasn’t a big problem, and the first hour and a half was absolutely fine. The weather was cloudy with some light drizzle, but I was feeling good, and had reached a narrow rocky ridge after emerging from the forest. I scrambled up a few rocky sections of path, and was quite enjoying it, but at one point it felt a bit steep and as I pushed myself up what I thought was the trail I realised that I must have made a mistake as it had basically turned into light rock climbing, and the rocks didn’t seem especially firm either. I looked down and realised that if I fell I would fall quite a long way down into a valley, because the ledge I clambered up from was too narrow to stop me. I didn’t really want to risk backing down onto it either as I was nearly at the top of the short climb, so with some effort I managed to push myself up and back onto the next part of the trail and to relative safety.

I looked around and realised there was another route up, with a chain to climb, and that I’d just done something really stupid because I wasn’t paying attention. The drizzle had also wet the rocks, and everything felt super sketchy, but I continued up the trail crouched low to the ground in a state of fear, and eventually reached a hut and took a short break.

Then I took a wrong turn, walking for almost 40 minutes in the wrong direction. I jogged back to the hut and continued the hike along another ridge with a couple more short rocky sections, eventually managing to reach the summit, but I was absolutely drained of energy and it was also covered in snow, so wasn’t especially pleasant to be there, but I had to slow down and take frequent breaks to refuel.

On the way back I was dreading heading back down the first rocky section, and was in a rush to get there before dark, but when I got there and saw it from above without the drizzle it didn’t really phase me at all and I walked down it in maybe 15 minutes. I managed to get back to the van by around 4pm, so I didn’t have to use my headlight at all, let alone on the rocks. Thanks to my route-finding error, I ended up walking 26km :/

This trip really woke me up to the dangers of hiking, and the need to plan carefully. I’d literally been driving to each mountain, usually sleeping in the van at the trailhead and hiking up the next day, but this time was almost too much for me, and I was lucky I didn’t have even a minor accident and that I had packed just enough food. I know there are far more dangerous trails, both in Japan, and especially in other countries where mountains are larger, more remote and the likelihood of bumping into dangerous fauna is higher, but I’m glad I learned this lesson in Tohoku, and not on any of the properly terrifying hiking trails in the Northern Japan Alps.

Let’s see…

One time? I took my parent’s dachshund, tootsie: camping- this was when they first got her; she was maybe a few months old.

It was bear country in WI. Specifically, what’s called “primitive” camping where you can park at a state forest walk in and just set up camp.

Right by a beautiful trout stream. I was waiting for the sun to come up, enjoying some coffee, before going off to wet my line and get breakfast.

She was laying next to me, (an aggressive snuggler.) when this big ole bear comes up the stream.

When she saw it, she started trying to pick a fight. Barking.

Fortunately the bear was incredulous and possibly faintly amused. It looked at the puppy. Looked at me. Back at the puppy. It’s expression said “you realize you’re a snack, right?”

Fortunately, it moved off down the stream.

Yeah, she’s a dachshund to her core- sass, class and won’t hesitate to pick a fight with anything and then run behind you when it starts.

Getting caught in a large rainstorm in the evening while on a mountain trail with 3 more hours of rocky descent to go.

Mine doesn’t involve nature, so much as just unfortunate timing and bad luck. But it was outdoors and one of the only times I thought I was actually going to die, so maybe that counts?

I was probably 15 or 16 when this happened. My family went to visit some other family members in Denver. While we were there, we took a day to go up into the Rockies with a bunch of ATVs and go riding around some trails along the mountains.

We end up finding this trail that runs along a really steep cliff. It wasn’t so steep that you’d have gone into freefall if you went over the edge, but it was steep enough that you would absolutely roll uncontrollably downhill, hitting every tree along the way for what looked like a hundred feet or so. But the trail was wide enough and had enough of a buffer along the edge that you had plenty of space to not have to worry about sliding off. You would have needed to try to fall off the edge, so I wasn’t really worried about that.

I was at the back of the line in our group, and was letting them get a bit of a head start, as I wanted to speed up a bit along the straightaways. As I begin catching up with the rest of my family, they’re all going along this really wide curve. And as my brother ahead of me goes over this slightly loose patch of ground, a mini landslide happens and just wipes out the trail right in front of me, going straight into that steep drop.

I slam on the brakes as soon as I realize what just happened, but the front wheels end up going just over the edge where the earth just fell apart. So now I’m stuck on this ATV, leaning downwards at a nearly 45-degree angle, trying desperately to reverse back up the hill, but I’m getting no traction on the fresh soil that got torn up, so the wheels are just spinning in place. Nobody ahead of me even realized that the earth just got swallowed up behind them, and since they thought I was giving them a long head start, they didn’t think to look behind them for some time.

Meanwhile, I get off the ATV and try to push it back onto solid ground, but it weighs a ton and I’m just a wimpy teenager at the time, so I don’t make much happen there. I’m trying really hard not to let the ATV go over because it’s expensive and I was already in hot water for wanting to speed around on it in the first place and had to beg for my uncle’s trust to do it, and because we were miles into this trail by this point, and I had no clue how to even make it back to where we were parked. And this was just before everybody had cell phones, so I was completely out of contact. So I was really doing my best to get this ATV back into gear so that I could at least make it back before it got dark out.

Trying to save the ATV was a bad idea, because in attempting to reverse it back onto solid ground, I loosened up so much dirt that it began sliding back down, knocking me over onto my ass, nearly rolling right over top of me. Luckily, I slid just a couple feet into a small tree, and I was able to climb back up. But the ATV was long gone.

Just a few scrapes and bruises, nothing sprained or broken, so I’m good to walk back. It took me a couple hours, and the sun was setting just as I made it back to our cars. Nobody was there yet, so I figured I’d just climb into the car and lay down until they got back. Turns out, they eventually did realize I wasn’t behind them, sent my brother back to look for me, he saw the landslide and the ATV flipped at the bottom of the hill, turned back and told the rest of my family who freaked out and assumed I was dead or dying. They end up making it back to the cars after a while, but not after my uncle climbed down and then back up that hill to see if I was down there.

All was well, I didn’t need any medical attention, and my uncle ended up going back out the next day to recover the ATV. Somehow, aside from having most of the body dented to all hell and snapped apart in several places, it was completely functional.

Three come to mind, not sure which is scarier:

1. Road tripping as a youth during summer, saving money by sleeping outside as often as possible. Staying in a beach town, sleeping near the beach in a grassy kinda public area. In the middle of the night I wake up to some voices of aggressive sounding men talking about “fucking these kids up etc”. They start hitting my friend or something else physical (it was only two of us), and in the moment, as I’m still literally waking up having not even opened my eyes, I realise this shit is real. My reflex was to get up to my knees and yell at the men “Fuck off Motherfucker”. On my knees, feet still in the sleeping bag, being the skinny kid I was/am, I realise that some chunky looking bikie is in front of me and pretty keen to get violent and that I’m in pretty bad trouble. I was genuinely scared for my life then.
   • The ending to that one is that there were two bikies, and the second was actually behind me somehow. He kicked me in the head, I fell to the floor unconscious for half a minute and they apparently just walked away having got their fill of violence and luckily not too keen on anything extreme.
2. This one kinda doesn’t count, but it felt scary at the time, also Content warning tragic loss of life involved … driving late at night in the suburbs, waiting at the lights to turn into a major street, I hear loud and strange sounds I’d never heard before. My brain’s best guess is that they’re gun shots (which I’ve never heard in real life before). Lights go green and I turn into the street looking around for the source of the sound. Ahead I see a car turned on its side, stuff all over the road, and some people lying on the road and scrambling on the side of the street. I’m thinking that this is a shootout or something and have no idea what to do.
   • Turns out it was actually worse, but not for me. It was a car accident which had resulted in the car spinning, which, if you don’t know, is awful and bad things happened. What’s worse is that it was a drunken joy ride by a bunch of teenagers packed into the car.
3. Young and enthusiastic motorcyclist on a ride with my motorcycle friends. We’ve picked a road that’s the most challenging we’ve ever done. Up in the hills, nice and windy with cliffs on the sides. I occasionally get dizziness (it’s a thing) and got it in the middle of this ride, but was determined to power through. It’s getting harder to keep up with the road though, and I’m making mistakes and relying on my breaks in the middle of turns. very very dumb stuff for any new motocyclists … I should have just pulled over and reassessed the ride. Before I know it, in the middle of a turn, my bike wobbles, slips out from underneath me and I’m sliding along the road. Luckily I’ve got all the right gear on. But you don’t know what it’s like to slide helplessly along the road at >60km/hr speed, especially in relatively wild mountainous terrain. I still have the image burnt into my brain of seeing the road flying by the front of my helmet at that speed, relying entirely on my leather jacket, boots, and of course helmet to protect me until I stop and hopefully don’t go flying off the cliff.
   • Luckily I stopped just off of the road and was fine apart from a sprained finger. The motorbike was mostly fine too! My friend riding behind me, however, probably got more scared than I, turning around the corner to see my bike on the road and me lying still and facedown on the side.
   • Lesson: apart from taking of yourself and not pushing yourself … always wear the gear … all of the gear!

Woke up one morning at summer camp with a rattlesnake curled up on my sleeping bag. I did not move until late afternoon.

Turned around on a hiking trail to see a large tusked boar a few feet away staring me down and huffing at me. All the trees around me too small or too big to climb. I backed away reeeeeeally slow and it went the other way.

Got ejected from and then trapped underneath a 12-person whitewater raft that was also stuck on rocks in a shallow section between rapids. I don’t know how I ended up back in the raft, I just remember silently saying goodbye to the world and blacking out. Then went down the same river again the next day, cause apparently I killed some brain cells the first time.

(etc)

I saw a hornet. Killed him and a few more came. Then i swiftly moved away and they left me alone.

My life is pretty tame.

I was visiting some family in Transylvania, Romania and in the afternoon we decided to go for a small hike, in the mountainous woods. It was my wife and I, her local cousin and a dog. We head off into the woods on a path leading up a mountain.

At some point we passed a smallish stream and when we later returned to go back it had flooded and we couldn’t cross so had to take a detour. No phones/gps but the cousin claimed both he and the dog knew the way, so we followed them. Not long after we were in the middle of the forest in pitch black darkness as the sun went down fast, no longer following a path, but climbing up steep slopes on our hands and knees. At one point my wife put her hand down and touched something she claims was a mouse, she nearly started crying at that point. I was more worried about bears, but hoped the dog could scare them away if we met one.

Took us a few hours, but eventually we found a road and was able to follow it back. Though with Romanian traffic, I’m not sure if being lost in the woods wasn’t safer than walking a busy road at night with no lights.

As a cyclist I lost count on the number of times I was almost ran over by some vehicle at 100+ km/h

All of my outdoor horror stories involve moving or driving. I find being out in the wild quite relaxing, particularly crisp autumn or late spring/early summer before the bugs are out of control.

Hunted by cows.