When hiking off-trail, it’s important to keep an eye on where you’ve been as well as where you’re going. Otherwise, you run the risk of what experienced hikers call being “ledged out”, which means you’ve descended to a point where you can’t go any farther, but you’ve slid down so far that you can’t go back up and try a different route. It’s a good metaphor for life as well. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ledged Out”
Grant i came across a cool hiking term the other day that i think you’ll appreciate it’s
Ledge out no guesses here what is that okay you might talk about a hiker being ledged out in
Fact i was reading a report of a hiker who got ledged out in one of the state parks here
And that has to do with the fact that when you’re trained to do wilderness backpacking, one of the things you’re trained to do is to look back frequently when you’re hiking so that you know what the trail looks like from the opposite direction.
And if you forget to do that and you sort of lose track of where you are and are not paying attention, sometimes if you’re trying to get someplace, you can go down and down and down a mountain and start to slide over rocks and slide over ledges to get to the next level.
But if you’re not continually looking back, you might just get yourself too far down a ledge so that you can’t get back up.
So what do you do when you get ledged out?
Shout for your friends?
You do.
Get on the phone?
Yeah, you call the rescue people.
And I found that a fascinating term, but I also found it fascinating metaphorically.
Isn’t that just a great notion that you need to keep looking back and paying attention to where you are or you’ll get ledged out?
So just to be clear here, you are allowing gravity to let you slip down a distance that is impossible for you to climb back up.
Thank you.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I can see that.
That sounds like the stuff of nightmares, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it definitely does.
Yeah, but it happens.
Down in a hole.
It happens.
Down in a well, basically.
Yeah.
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Here in the Los Angeles area we have always called this cliffed out. Which I have done. I did self rescue but lesson learned