I was supposed to go Inatting at the Pangaion Hills in Greece and summit today, but a last minute change because of bears led me to the Kavala Waterway Trail. I didn’t read all the Google reviews beforehand but everything looked good on the surface. At 4km I encountered a herd of around 100 goats but was able to scramble ~20 feet and avoid them. Everything else was fine until just past the 9km mark, where a Greek Shepherd dog started barking at me. I continued down the trail but was stopped by three dogs charging at me. I sprinted back the way I had come from and managed to shake them unscathed. I tried to go down a dirt road but couldn’t pass 1200m down because of hunters in the area that were shooting quite erratically. I also couldn’t backtrack because of the original herd of goats(and dogs) that had likely moved up the trail and blocked me. Pinned to a small area, I sat in the gazebo and with no other options had to alert the local police. Luckily I was picked up by them and reunited with my family at the trailhead.
Thank god I’m safe as that could have turned out much worse.
By far this is the scariest INat-related incident that has happened to me personally. Some (distant) runner-ups include my dad breaking his arm while trying to find plants in South Carolina, being within 10 feet of some unfriendly target shooters on a Utah mountain, and getting stung by 20 yellow jackets trying to find Platanthera lacera.
If you want to, please share some scary or just outright insane moments while Inatting.
European bears are generally very “polite” in the sense they do not seek out people, and almost always actively avoid them; having a bell, or singing and whistling and walking loudly along the way is enough to avoid them (but then also all other mammals and birds) - I live in a country with one of the densest populations of bears in Europe (in Slovenia, on the other end of the mountains that End in Greece), and I have not yet managed to see one while hiking.
The Balkan sheperd dogs (several breeds) are dangerous, but usually only if you com too close to livestock they are guarding. Even if they charged you, they would have stopped at an imaginary distance from the livestock and put themselves between you and the herd. But I have experienced the charge, and I know how uncofortable it can be. However, if they really wanted to attack, you spritning away would not have stopped them, and the fact they did not go chasing you very far, shows they were properly trained.
I am telling you this to let you know you were not in as much danger as you probably felt like, at least from the animals. The hunters… sheesh. (not minimising you experience - you did not know these things and both bears and guard dogs are still scary, even if you do know how to behave around them, but for me, it helps if I find out after the fact my scary experience was probably not as scary in reality as it was to me while it was happening).
You have, however, reacted correctly; to stay put and contact help when you felt in too much danger to continue by yourself.
As for my scary experience, a couple weeks ago I lost myslef in the Alps, and ended up climbing down hanging by dwarf pine bushes above a precipice (100-200m), because I was blindly following instructions from a book. Luckily I came to my senses and climbed back up to the marked path, but this turned into a much more strenuous hike than I was planning and I ran out of water; and although the mountains are generally well visited, there was no one, so I was alone, dehydrated and exhausted :). I did manage to get down the way I came, and fortunately I found water on the way; but I think I was not far from collapsing a couple of times. Also the moment of realisation of my own stupidity is burned into my head and the panic I felt then is seared into my memory…
Just come to Romania and you’ll have just enough bears looking for you and your sandwich
Seriously, we have lots of bears. They are kinda nice to watch when a door or screen separates you from them, but accidents happen when people forget that they’re actually watching a wild bear instead of a plushy
What I am sayng is that someone who does not to see a bear and does a bare (pun intended) minimum will be able to avoid encountering one.
(my parents live in the middle of, as serbs would nicely put it, wolf fuck zone. there are tons of bears, and they see them from the car all the time. I have gotten pictures of bears in the neighbours apple tree, bears making little bears, bears in the garden etc.; all the while none of us ever met a bear when going for a walk or a hike in the forest around their house yet.)
This isn’t really scary, it’s just insane. My neighbors came over to get some worms from us to go fishing, knowing we have a worm colony. My brother goes to get some for them, then comes running back yelling that there are wasps in the worm bin. Being obsessed with insects, I went straight to the worm bin, the lid having been flung back in terror, and what do I see? A few adorable little soldier flies. I called my brother back, but he was still convinced they were wasps. The flies just stared up at us with their big eyes, wondering what we were doing disrupting their meal. The neighbor searched them up on his phone, found that ‘while soldier are often mistaken for wasps, they neither bite nor sting’, and by brother went to tentatively picking out worms. One soldier fly flew away, the others did nothing but watch. Case closed, the neighbors went fishing and my brother ranted about how he couldn’t tell the difference because he didn’t love entomology like I did. I told him that it was the same as me not being able to tell the difference between a green sunfish and a bluegill (He’s a fish lover). He always thought I was crazy for that, but the waspish soldier flies kind of evened us out. He likes fish, I like insects. And he is forever scared of a caterpillar-hunting wasp in our bathroom (Wouldn’t take a shower because it was in there)
Ooooh, I got a good one! During a recent trip to the Drakensberg mountains with CREW (Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers), we climbed up to a fairly high peak, botanizing and iNatting along the way. As we got to the top, we split into a few groups, trying to cover as much ground as we could before the storm that was looming on the horizon. Well, mountains and storms don’t go well together, I’ll tell you that.
My group got too far ahead on the plateau and got caught in the mother of storms. Imagine yourself running through a grassland, with no cover of any kind in sight, and with lightning striking the ground just hundreds of meters away from you. I honestly thought we would die. The rain got hectic too, but luckily at that point we reached a small ravine with a few scraggly trees to huddle under. It took us about 2 hours to get off the mountain, thankfully all safe and sound.
It was a lesson learned for sure; do not separate from your group, and for the love of iNatting, get off a mountain as soon as you hear thunder.
Yikes! That reminds me of a hike I did in Waterton, Alberta. Only six and a half or so miles, but it started thundering and we barely made it back before it started pouring. My group decided to have our picnic anyway, and we ate under a pavilion in the middle of nowhere with lightning flashing around us and among the mountains. It got pretty loud, but was actually really pretty, especially since we were under cover. The trouble started when we were heading home and it started hailing so bad we had to pull the car over there were some pretty cool animals there though, so definitely worth it!
Although I technically wasn’t iNatting (because I wasn’t on iNat then), I do have observations from archived photos. It was my first time trying to summit Mt. Ka`ala, the highest peak on Oahu. The trail led to the base of a cliff. Okay, I thought, so there’s a rock scramble – no biggie. A few minutes later, as I was edging my way along the face of a sheer wall, it dawned on me that this was not the right route. It also dawned on me that a fall from there would not be survivable. I edged my way back to the the trail, and cast about for the right path. It was a sheer wall in any direction. Bewildered that it seemed to be a dead end, thought it wisest to turn back and try again another day.
As it turned out (when I came back for a second attempt), I was supposed to turn off onto what looked like a minor side trail; staying straight ahead on what had looked like the main trail led to the dead end.
This year alone, we’ve had four Broadbill Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) encounters during blackwater dives, ranging in size from 4 to 15 feet. And honestly, they are not that cool to see in the water. Their eyes are so highly adapted to low light that they reflect our 50,000 lumens of downlight into eerie green beams that swivel as they move. You can actually see what they’re looking at like a real-life Eye of Sauron.
More than that, swordfish are far more primal than sharks. If you hit them with a strobe or light, they can and will charge. Just this May, we had an encounter with a “small” seven-footer cruising at about 100 feet. We were at 50 feet when my flash went off. It was like a gunshot. The fish immediately charged between me and another diver, fast enough to cavitate the water. It shot up to the surface, then came back for four or five more passes, slashing at us with that three-foot-long bill.
I’ve dived with tiger sharks, oceanic whitetips, and bull sharks. But never will I underestimate a swordfish. My buddy got impaled last year to boot.
was looking for reptiles in the Joppa Nature Preserve and stumbled on what I think was maybe a drug deal or something? one of the guys opened a coat and put his hand on the butt of a gun and I GTFO’d and haven’t really been back
there were some pretty cool animals there though, so definitely worth it!