[NewChief]

A few: 90 mile per hour winds on top of Guadalupe Peak at night, in our tent. Luckily, I had a pretty bomber 4-season tent that stood up to it. On the same trip, my girlfriend (now wife) had the flu. We had hiked around 10 miles into the backcountry carrying all of our water for 3 nights as there was none available in the backcountry, so we were rationing water pretty heavy. You ever tried to ration water when you have the flu? It was a good bonding experience, though.

At Philmont, some buddies and I sidehiked up to Yuraca Mesa, which has a high iron content so your compasses don't work. In addition, it has a reputation as the "haunted mesa." We ran into a mother bear and two cubs there.

This summer my 10 year old and I were riding down Windsor Trail in New Mexico (a 10 mile descent from Mt. Santa Fe into town). He threw his chain on his bike. We stopped to get it going again, looked up and had two black bear staring at us from about 40 yards away. At first we were like "Cool!" then they started raising up and looking at us, and I got the bike rolling again pretty quickly. Part of me KNOWS that black bears aren't going to screw with humans... but still.

Driving back cross country with a friend from the Pacific Northwest to Arkansas. We hit the "loneliest Highway in America" that comes out of Reno, NV in the wee hours of the morning. We were both exhausted, so we pulled over at a pullout to sleep in the car for a couple of hours. We both woke up feeling completely freaked out, like someone was staring in the car at us and decided we needed to get out of that place immediately. Really weird. Only we both had to pee. Jumped out of car to pee and saw an informational nationa/state park sign saying this area was sacred to the Native Americans. Probably only time I've ever really believed in ghosts.

In my college days, we used to do a lot of caving. In my college days, we used to do a lot of psychedelics. The two don't always mix. Was never in any real danger, but it's very easy to convince yourself that you might be lost and stuck in a cave forever.

Probably the most scared I've ever been in the wood was also the funniest. At Boy Scout Camp. The staff loved to start all kinds of bullshit stories to get the campers scared. They told us about some devil worshippers that people had seen repeatedly staring in people's tents. These stories were floating around all week. One night the adult leaders all had a meeting to attend, and we started telling each other about all these stories. We all ended up huddled around the lantern, facing outwards into the dark, holding our knives, convinced that the devil worshippers were coming to get us. Our leaders returned to quite site. We were absolutely convinced we were about to get abducted and sacrificed. Luckily, no one got stabbed.

We did a lot of backcountry snowboarding in Colorado. We had avalanche beacons and all that jazz, but you still run into some crazy intense and scary situations where you're worried things could go south, even if you're taking precautions.

My wife and I were visiting relatives of hers in Australia. We did a couple of scary things. The first was we spent 3 nights backpacking on Hinchinbrook island on the Thorsborne Trail. They only allow 20 people on the island to hike at a time, so you're very isolated (her relatives were convinced the stupid yanks were going to die). You have to do a lot of creek crossings and hike along saltwater estuaries on this hike, which is prime "saltie" (saltwater croc) territory. We didn't have any close calls, but you're still freaked out and envisioning those freaking impalas on Planet Earth that bet ambushed by crocs along the banks of a river.

We also went kayaking out to an island. We saw several dark shadows under us. Probably not great white sharks, but your mind goes a little crazy when you're out on the open water in a little kayak.