Apres Burning Man 1999 - High Rock Canyon, page three

4:35pm, 57.7 miles. A friendly person in a Chevy Blazer confirms my suspicions. This road is taking me East towards Gerlach, not West towards Susanville. I turn around.

5:05pm 62 miles. Back at the entrance to High Rock I meet three men on dirt bikes who tell me that it's 8-10 miles to route 34 if I take the rightmost fork. Route 34 is the fastest way back to Susanville and civilization.

Notice nothing man-made visible in any direction.

5:15pm 165.6 miles. A road branches off into a narrow canyon to the right. Is this it? Perhaps. We'll go straight.

It's getting late. I've been bouncing around on gravel roads for over six hours. I'm tired. When I make it to Route 34 I'm two or three hours away from my campsite.

Visible in this photo is a tiny building. I can't help but be fascinated by the artifacts of people who tried to build a life is such a remote and unforgiving place. I have enough food and water to go several days, but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to have to spend the night in the desert. I left a note with the camp host telling them to call for help if I'm not back by the next morning. I don't want to be the idiot you read about in the paper

Another view of that same cabin. I'm tired of first and second gear.

5:40pm 171.8 miles. A homemade gate closed across the road. Now what? I continue. 172 miles. Another closed homemade gate. Not a good sign. In my experience public roads don't have gates on them, they have cow grates. I've gone farther than the dirt bike guys said I needed to come, I must be on the wrong road. I turn around.

This is the shack at the cross roads. Something about it said "Blair Witch Project" to me.

6:12pm 179.8 miles. Here it is, the turn I didn't take thru a narrow canyon that matches the verbal description of the bikers. If this isn't it I'm going to just go out the long way.

I tried the road. It turned out to be a muddy rutty track through an even narrower canyon than High Rock. No place to turn around in case of a problem, and mud is the one thing that's know to stop a Thing. While it did match the description from the bikers something about it didn't sit right with me. I turned around

When I did eventually make it back to Gerlach, one of the locals at The Miner's Club listened to my description and told me, "I know that spot. You did the smart thing. You would have died back there." Encouraging.

6:50pm 189.5 miles. The first sign that I'm out of the trackless wilderness and into the regular wilderness.

I'm back on the gravel highway that's actually on the map, but I'm on the wrong side of High Rock Canyon. Rather than trust to the signs or my free BLM maps I stop at a dude ranch cum off-the-grid resort called Soldier Meadows for directions and run into the brain trust that runs Burning Man. That's me with Larry Harvey. There's no escape for this poor guy.

At 7:40 I hit the road back to Gerlach. This road is so dark and desolate at night that I feared alien abduction above all else. This must be how it happens, all alone, not another single human for an hour's drive in any direction. Who would ever know? I'm nearly out of my head when I finally leave the gravelly washboad and hit the paved road. I pull into Gerlach around 9pm, some 12 hours after I left my campsite.

A happy ending... This is the next morning. This is Jen, an intern at Planet X who saved me from the three hour drive back to Goose Lake campground. I managed to get ahold of the park staff by phone and let them know that I was safe and not trapped in the desert somewhere. I had bought some pottery from Jen the day before and here's where it pays to be nice to people. She found a spare bedroom for me to crash in. Wotta lifesaver! Jen - wherever you are - thanks!