The Extreme Hobby! What have you done to collect them?
#1
Posted 04 March 2008 - 04:36 PM
#2 Guest_Nicholas_*
Posted 04 March 2008 - 04:40 PM
#4
Posted 04 March 2008 - 06:31 PM
#5
Posted 04 March 2008 - 06:56 PM
One of the crazy things I did was standing on the cliff face about 45% slope at the height of about 25 feet resting my foot on the ladder end which was extended to capacity, but it turned out that the ladder lock wasn't engaged. I was holding a 30 pound gas powered 14 inch blade concrete saw and cutting something out of the cliff for about 30 minutes. I am still suprised I came out of that one piece.
Another thing was climbing an about 75 degree slope to the height of about 100 feet because for an unknown reason i thought there was a strip mine across the rigde. When i found myself at the height of 100 ft I realized I was suddenly scared shitless and I have no idea how to go back down. I slid little by little on my butt to the bottom of the cliff. going up took me about 10 minutes. going down - 30-40 minutes.
Sometimes when I am so excited to explore a new area that i just run on rocks in a quarry - jumping from one to another at a pretty decent speed. I've gotten quite good at it, but sometimes looking back i realize that one wrong step would have cost me my life or cause a serious injury.
Last summer I walked about quater mile on a river over a very thin ice having no idea how strong it is. Nothing happened though.
Another example is driving off road into a rocky area on a ford explorer for 3 miles. I was literally driving on rocks as big as about a foot in diameter. they were beating and scratching on the bottom of the car but i was unstoppable.
But what I did still doesn't look half as dangerous to me as what the I read that the other guys here do when they dive.. it just seems much more scary to me to be under water...
Oh gosh, all these crazy things we do for fossils...
#7
Posted 04 March 2008 - 07:36 PM
#8
Posted 04 March 2008 - 08:33 PM
I have often rappeled off of cliffs in search of fossils. It's a skill I learned while in a rock climbing club and from rappeling out of helicopters in the military. I usually only do it after spotting something interesting from ground level.
One of the worst places I ever dove was a small river with trees all over the bottom. I don't know if the trees were in there because of people or beavers, but there were so many limbs that it was hard to find bottom. It didn't take me long to decide to look elsewhere. I ran into a Cottonmouth several years ago 28 feet down. I was about two feet from it when I was able to make it out in the dark water. I started throwing fossil bone at it, which in a stiff current works as well as throwing feathers at something above water. I decided to leave it alone and come back another time. Later that day I went back and the snake was nowhere to be seen above or below water. I found the spot where it had been sitting and when I went past that spot I found some decent fossils including three big megs between 5 15/16" and 6 1/4". The Dragon guarding the treasure hoard, sort of.
#13
Posted 05 March 2008 - 01:07 AM
N.AL.hunter, on Mar 4 2008, 07:20 PM, said:
No kidding. Some of the dives I do I only have 6 to 8 inches of visability in a ripping current. But the big teeth make it worth the effort.
#15
Posted 05 March 2008 - 02:03 AM
#16
Posted 05 March 2008 - 03:38 AM
This summer I collected and jacketed a small baleen whale skull. The jacket ended up weighing about 250-300lbs, which granted, isn't that large, but I'm not a huge guy, and neither was the guy who helped me out that day. Anyway, the tide was moving in, and we had to get it up and off the beach via some slippery rock steps. Lets just say the jacket spent about 20 minutes in Davy Jones' Locker before we mustered to courage to go rescue it, and heave the jacket up over some very narrow algae covered rock steps, all while being pummeled by waves. Then we had to get it across a narrow rock ledge 15' above the waves, and the ledge was about 1.5' wide or so (the jacket was 3' wide). Then we had to heave it up over several shoulder height surfer's wooden stairs, which was just about the physically most challenging thing I've ever done. All in all it took 4 hours to move the jacket about 300 feet.
Ah lets see... three summers ago while doing fieldwork a friend of mine found some float on a rock ledge 25' above the beach (see photo). So we climbed up, and one of the pieces of float was a very nice walrus radius. The ledge we used to get there was only 6" wide, and started to crumble (just like in the movies, where the piece of rock below your foot falls to the ground, with a satisfying thud).
In the same field area two summers ago I collected a porpoise cranium from the ceiling of a sea cave. Basically I had to trench upside down. The trick was that high tide was in the middle of the day, and it was located in a protected cove only accessible during lower tides. So I basically trapped myself in there for about 5 hours during high tide, which was fun. Another time leaving this site, I couldn't go around this rocky point adjacent to the cove, so I had to climb down through a natural arch. Unfortunately there were no handholds (and I was running out of time as the tide was coming in), and the interior of the arch was covered in algae, so the weight of my backpack would have made me slip (a 20' drop, easily). So I rigged a rope and lowered my gear down before me, and went down that way (I had to do that several times).
Ah, just a couple of stories.
#17
Posted 05 March 2008 - 01:01 PM
I've cut myself twice REAL bad while out artifact diggin. Once with a razor sharp shovel that almost took off my heel and another time due to digging in bare feet (white trash, LOL), when I got up from the hole my weight was on the arch of my foot that sliced open on a chip of coral. Deep.
Got a few baaaaaad sunburns on my back due to snorkeling all day. I never wear sunscreen, don't wear sunglasses, either. I can't see squat with sunglasses on!
Knees take a beating if not covered while working rubble piles.
#18
Posted 05 March 2008 - 09:57 PM

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