The day after school ended in Spring of 2013, a group of people went to Beaver Creek to go cliff jumping. Its a 3-mile hike into the cliff jumping area, and apparently another mile and a half hike leads you to the Rim. What the Rim is, we have no idea. So after a few hours of cliff jumping and laying in the sun, some of us decided to go see what exactly the Rim was. The signs said there was supposed to be a trail, leading us to believe it would be easy to find. Well, we find out, there really is no trail. More just openings in the brush that may kinda sorta be a trail. Anywho, after not that long of a trek, we come across what I can only describe as Rock River. It was pretty beautiful, actually. The brush opened up into this canyon, with cocoa-powdered colored cliffs on either side of the canyon, 20-35 feet up if I had to take a wild guess. And between these rock faces, the bottom of the canyon was covered in beautiful blue-grey rocks. More like a cross between a rock and a boulder- most were about twice the size of a human head. The canyon looked like a once-roaring river, frozen in time and flash frozen to become like the Dippin' Dots ice cream. It beautiful, in a way that hinted of another time, a time lost to us humans.
Anyways, we started hiking through this rock river, and eventually came to a dead end. The canyon walls sort of came together, forming a V-shaped crevice. There were boulders and whatnot scattered within that crevice, creating a challenge to climbers. So naturally we wanted to see how far in we could get in. It kinda reminded me of Atlantis, you know, those giant floating stones with the ancestor's faces carved on them. Whatever. So my friend Brandon climbed up, and Shannon and I followed a few minutes later. Haley was about 45 seconds behind me, still walking through the blue rocks to get to the crevice. Shannon and I climbed up somewhat slowly, as the rock face was pretty sheer, and we didn't want to fall (obviously). Once we got up, we checked the rocks out for a bit, looking for ways to climb higher. At that point, Brandon had found a can of Bear Mace.
For those who don't know, Bear Mace is like pepperspray, but for bears. Its basically lethal to humans.
And it was in the hands of a curious boy.
Haley was climbing the last section of the crevice, and had just reached the summit where we were, when Brandon sprayed the Mace. It was like a fire hose. The mace sprayed out powerfully and abundantly. Thankfully, he sprayed it away from us, towards the back of the crevice wall. However, about half a second passed between Brandon lifting his finger off the nozzle, and realizing what he'd done.
"We should probably get out of here" followed the second of stunned silence.
It was then the coughing started. Badly.
Brandon first, then Shannon. I had just enough time to ask myself why they were coughing before I became affected.
We booked it off that crevice wall. Brandon first, then Shannon, closely followed by me. Haley let us go ahead of her, because the mace hadn't reached her yet. Talking to her later, she got up after we had figured out what that can was. She didn't know Bear Mace was just sprayed, and she was far enough back where she wasn't affected as quickly as the rest of us. So she let us out first. But in the 2 seconds it took the rest of us to jump down, Haley was overtaken. She knew instantly why we were running.
I had never thought it was possible to get down off of a cliff face that quickly.
We were coughing and hacking, snorting and spitting as we hopped from rock to rock, trying to breathe again. I had to blow a few snot rockets to get the burning sensation from my nostrils.
After we recovered, I saw Brandon still held that bottle of Bear Mace. I don't know why he kept it. There were no bears in the area. But we went back up to the creek to do more cliff diving, and within the hour I forgot he had that can. We hiked out of the creek and headed home, now laughing about how we almost suffocated on bear mace.
However…I never did find out what Brandon did with that can….
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