Stuck in the Long Valley Caldera

Driving through snowy mountains, Kelly’s hot spring adventure suddenly went wrong—or did it go right? Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. A few weeks ago, I was up in the Sierra Nevada mountains by myself for the weekend. I like doing that sometimes. The ski mountain I like is about five hours north of L.A. I usually leave town on a Friday night. On the way up, I sleep in my van at a rest stop or a campground on public land. And I wake up the next morning and the mountains are right there. On this trip, I decided that after a day of skiing, I was going to go explore the Long Valley Caldera. A caldera is basically a big depression caused by a volcano that has collapsed on itself. And the Long Valley Caldera did that about 700,000 years ago. It’s actually one of the largest calderas in the world, 20 miles by 11 miles, right near Mammoth Mountain, where I go skiing. It looks like just a big, flat, open field covered in sagebrush. But underground, there’s still an active magma chamber that heats the groundwater and forms some of my favorite things in the world: hot springs, these little blue pools that pop up all across the field where hot water has bubbled up, and you can just get in and sit there on a really cold day. So on this day, I was searching for hot springs in the Long Valley Caldera by myself in my van. Oh, and it was after a really big snowstorm. What could go wrong? I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And here at the show, we ask people a lot of questions about the places they go. Sometimes we like to ask ourselves those questions too. Today’s question for me was this: What is a time when you felt like you were in over your head? This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Hot Creek, a hot spring in Long Valley Caldera CC BY 2.0 / James St. John There are really good maps of the Long Valley Caldera. I did not have one. Instead, I decided to type “hot springs” into Google Maps and wing it. I drove down the highway, took a left at the old green church I remembered, and went another few miles on a paved road. Then I got to a turnoff that Google Maps said would take me to some hot springs. They have names like Crab Cooker and Wild Willy’s and Hilltop. But the problem was: that road had not been plowed. It was covered in snow and ice. And my van is not four-wheel drive. I should have hesitated … I didn’t. At this point, I should probably come clean about the fact that in my life, I have turned down a lot of roads I shouldn’t have turned down. Because for many years I was an international correspondent for NPR and others. I’ve covered wars. I’ve worked in a lot of intense places. And so when I first got the question for this episode, I thought: Do people really want to hear about the time I was detained by the KGB? I mean, that was because I went down the wrong road near the border with Chechnya. Do they really want to hear about the time I ended up on the road with the ISIS checkpoint? The road in Yemen where the U.S. was dropping bombs from drones? That time in Syria when my fixer said, don’t worry, we’re just going to the back of the front line. The problem with these stories is not just that they are super intense and scary, but—and bear with me here—the problem is that I actually came out of those situations okay. And this has given me a very false sense of confidence that I will always make it out okay. Call it privilege. Call it stupid luck. I call it positive reinforcement for bad behavior. So, at the caldera, I’m on the bad road. It’s bumpy, but it’s not too bad. And I make it to the first hot spring, which was so cool. It’s just this little depression of warm water lined by smooth rocks right in the middle of the snow-covered field with the Sierras on the horizon. Big blue sky. I have the pool all to myself. I started sending selfies to my girlfriends, like, look what I found. And a few people had been in the pool just before me. They were putting on their boots and getting ready to leave, and they said they were heading to the next pool just a couple miles away. They didn’t have four-wheel drive either, but they said they were going to try. Getting to that next hot spring meant turning down another bad road, one that looked like it might be even worse than the first bad road. So, I waved and told the people I wasn’t going to risk it. Yeah, yeah, bye. Have a good time. But then, I got back in the van and I was in such a good mood. And I thought, that first pool wasn’t quite warm enough. And I knew they got warmer the further you drove into the caldera. And the sun was shining and the sky was so blue. So I figured, I’ll try to go a little bit further. When I did get stuck, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Even though it seemed like I was out in the middle of nowhere, I still had a phone signal. I’ll just call AAA. Everything will work out, I thought, like it always does. Seven hours later, I was seriously questioning the way I live my entire life. I don’t believe in luck running out, but it felt like mine had. Pro tip: if you’re out on a caldera on a small dirt road, AAA will not come for you. They consider it off-roading. The road was super narrow, and my tires were super stuck in this very deep rut of snow and ice on kind of a little hill and a turn. The crazy thing was, though, there were other people out there, so I started waving them down. And after a little while, some guys drove up and said they had a tow rope. So they tied my van to their four-wheel drive truck, and they towed me out of my spot. But then I got stuck again. And we kept trying and trying and trying, and then they got worried that they would get stuck. And then it started to get dark. And then they said they had to leave. They had a couple kids in the truck, and they just couldn’t help me anymore. At this point, I have to be honest. I started to think, maybe this isn’t going to work out. I might actually have to spend the night out here. And to be clear, I have been in worse situations. I once spent the night in a school in Syria, in an area that was under heavy bombardment. But this was nature. What if it dumped snow again and I got really buried and no one could find me? I could make it for a while in the van. It has a bed. It has blankets. It has a little kitchen. There’s a fridge with some food in it. And there’s a heater that works even if the van isn’t running. There’s also a bunch of other crap in the van that I wouldn’t need, like maps and spices and mosquito repellent and tents and about six different ways to make coffee. So, I would survive. But how was I going to get out? Before the guys with the tow rope left, they actually gave me the number of a professional who might come and tow me out. For a fee. I called her. She said her truck was in the shop. But she gave me the number of another guy. I called him and he said it was going to cost a lot of money. Like hundreds of dollars. So I tried to get myself out. I let the air out of my tires. I put my floor mats under my tires and tried to use those as traction. I tried to put the chains on, but that only works when you can actually move the vehicle forward to get the chains into place. I tried digging out with a dustpan. Why do I have a dustpan? Eventually, I called the expensive guy back. His name was Tim. He sounded like he knew I was going to call him back. It took him a couple hours to get there, but he finally came roaring up in this jacked up Jeep with a crazy hefty tow rope and these big treads that you put down under the tires to get traction. I was so close to the part of the road that was okay to drive, but it still took like an hour for Tim to get me out. And by this point, it was fully dark. Tim was super cool. He had worked on search and rescue teams. He does marathon training at elevation. He had been in Iraq, too. We traded cool stories. I later even went to his house so he could fix a sensor that had broken on one of my tires. And Tim told me not to be embarrassed. Getting stuck happens to the best of us. But yeah, I was embarrassed and also just kind of sad. I know one of the reasons that I always do the thing is that I don’t worry about the worst case scenario. I joke with people that I don’t have a worry gene. I just do not have the ability to imagine what could go wrong. And that is how I’ve lived my life, how I’ve been able to do all the things I have done over the years. And yes, I acknowledge that I might not have been able to wriggle out of situations near Chechnya and in Yemen if I wasn’t a white middle-class American lady. But now, since this mistake, I can imagine what could go wrong. And maybe the next time, I won’t turn down that road. But what kind of life is that? I mean, who is this person? Other worriers I know say worrying is actually a good thing, a healthy thing. That if you worry all the time, you will be pleasantly surprised when things go right. I don’t buy it. I would much rather assume the best than assume the worst. People will talk to you. People will be helpful. How bad can that road be? I sulked for days about getting the van stuck. I tried to tell the story to my friends, but I thought, it’s not a good story. But then I realized, I did get Tim out of the deal. I made a cool new friend. He put a pic of the rescue on his Instagram page, and I didn’t have to spend the night out on the caldera. I guess in the end, things did go right. Right? Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM Podcasts. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.