Outdoor me

Surfing Arizona’s Wave

If you're lucky, you’ll die

The fossilized sand dunes at the heart of the Wave. Author’s photo.

If you have ever owned a nature calendar or screen saver, you are familiar with the Wave. Its image was everywhere.

Who knew you could die getting there?

To manage the risks, permits were limited to 20 people a day. Twenty measly golden tickets to a photographer's dream.

Despite the abysmal odds, I decided to try my luck.

AI disclosure: The writing and photos in this piece are my own. I had AI summarize the news articles below. I use Grammarly to save me from total embarrassment.

The lottery

A lottery is a tax on the mathematically challenged (fortune cookie proverb).

The 20 daily permits to the Wave were assigned via lottery. Ten were chosen four months in advance via the internet, and ten were chosen at an in-person bingo draw at the Forest Service office in Kanab, Utah — truly the back end of nowhere.

I arrived at 8:30 am to get a number and watched the door breathlessly, hoping the room would not fill up with potential rivals. It always did.

I was there in April, which didn’t help. The temperatures in April were survivable, and everyone knew it. That time of year, the room could swell to 300 people. Three hundred angry people hoping to snuff you out with their steely gaze.

It gets worse.

If a group of any size won the lottery, too bad; they just vaporized your chances. One winner could take half or all of the day’s quota.

Winners were chosen using old-school bingo balls in a squeaky metal cage.

Crank the cage. Hold your breath.

Crank the cage. A tourist just won.

Crank the cage. Knife in your back.

Disappointment lurked with every ball.

And yet, miracles happen. I was the last winner on my final day of trying. Thank god for smelling salts.

My shock was only beginning, however, because five minutes later, I had the kimchee scared out of me.

Fossilized sand dunes on the way to the Wave. Welcome to the frying pan. Author’s photo.

Death be not proud

A ranger looked me in the eye and told me I was going to die.

What a wanker. I was an experienced hike leader. I trained hike leaders. Who was this guy?

He ignored my obvious affront.

Why was I going to die?

• There would be no signage; you will get lost.
• There would be no shade or water; the sun will sous vide your organs.

Better give up now and hand your permit to the guy about to slice your tires.

As if.

The sad thing is, he was right.

Geological interlude

I love the sandstone formations of Utah and Arizona. Not only are the colors eye-popping, but their age, give or take 160 million years, gives me goosebumps.

So, let’s take a quick journey into deep time.

Imagine a desert of sweeping dunes stretching from modern-day Wyoming to Arizona. Practically, an entire continent covered in dunes.

Winds blew. The sun baked. There were no trees, no water, just hot blowing sand — every-bloody-where.

Finally, nature had had enough of the heat fest. The climate changed. The dunes were covered in volcanic ash or other sediment and compressed like a nurf ball under an elephant’s foot. This lasted for 10 million years.

Geologic time is a mind fuck.

Meanwhile, mineral-carrying water trickled down, gluing the sand grains together. Iron oozed in with the water and rusted things. That is where the stunning reds of Utah come from.

Then, after a measly 100 million years, the Earth hiccuped and launched half the continent upwards. Once exposed, the world’s weather machine went to work removing the detritus of millennia. What remained became a mecca for lizards and foolhardy primates yearning to see for themselves one tiny corner of the planet.

Even if they shouldn’t.

The desert landscape on the way to the Wave. Could you find your way? Author’s photo.

BBQ’ed alive

The ranger was not lying when he told me that people died hiking to the Wave. Just two years prior, two groups had met an untimely end.

July 3, 2013: Ulrich and Patricia Wahli (ages 70 and 69) were avid travelers who won a permit. They set out in 106-degree heat. The combination of deep, energy-sapping sand, lack of shade, and extreme temperature overwhelmed them. They were found dead off-trail the next morning; Patricia was found beneath a juniper tree where she had tried to seek shade, and Ulrich was found a short distance away (summarized by Gemini).

July 22, 2013: Elisabeth Bervel (age 27) was hiking with her husband. They had secured their permits seven months prior. On the trek back, they lost the trail and spent several extra hours wandering in the afternoon heat. Elizabeth’s legs gave out from exhaustion, and she went into heat-induced cardiac arrest before medics could airlift her to a hospital (summarized by Gemini).

My experience

After a sleepless night worrying about becoming a fossil myself, my hiking buddy and I took the long drive to the trailhead. Pro tip: If you are going to die, bring along a friend.

Yep, the landscape was exposed. The sun rays bounced off the rock and penetrated every part of my body.

Yep, you could get lost in a nano-second. The terrain looked identical everywhere you looked.

Yep, it was hot, even in April. I was a rotisserie chicken by 7 am.

But dang, it was magical.

Touching that rock, you could feel the breath of the Earth — hot dragon breath.

No mercy for you, human.

Thank goodness for my early-model GPS, which created a track I could follow back, cuz it WAS tricky.

Final thoughts

Why does wanderlust draw our souls to certain places? Is it vibrational resonance, or are we merely influenced by a few pixels on a screen?

Perhaps it is an unspoken longing to exit our four-wheeled exoskeletons and return to an ancestral time, when the Earth spoke to us, and we listened.

The author standing in the trough of the Wave. Yep, she lived to see another day. Author’s photo.