Okay, I am nominally, a guy, but I can admit this: I got lost. Took the advice I've been offering our editor, Leslie Strom, for months- hell, it's our by-line. But it wasn't much fun. I was only lost for an hour or so, but it was humbling.

Along the western side of Ross Lake, Big Beaver creek leads up to Big Beaver Pass. Near the pass is (you guessed it) Big Beaver Camp. When I plotted my itinerary at the ranger station at Marblemount, I told the ranger that I wanted to cross the pass and drop down the other side into the (!) Little Beaver drainage. He informed me that the pass had three to four feet of snow on it, but was easily navigable by use of compass. Asked if this was within my abilities, I nodded in a manly fashion. And so it went.

My itinerary bound me to cross the pass on the second day, and to stay at the camp at the base of 1,200 vertical feet of switchbacks along Little Beaver creek. But when I reached Big Beaver camp late on the second day, a mile or so shy of the pass, a roaring campfire beckoned. Plus I was dead on my feet. Tomorrow, said I.

The ranger in Marblemount had said that particular camp was still covered with snow, and hadn't offered it as an option for camping. But, while most of the actual campsites were either snow-covered or puddled, there were several dry spots around the emergency shelter. The party that welcomed me to share their fire (they'd come across the pass on the Little Beaver side) encouraged me to find a spot. They even gave me chocolate. Thanks, guys.

As the camp was obviously not being booked by North Cascades National Park, I didn't have to worry about staying there for a while. I decided that I wanted to cultivate my ability to sit on my ass and do nothing. Hey, that's always a transferable skill. The others were gone by midday next, and I sat there for the next couple days, but by the third day I wanted to at least check out the pass and look down the other side.

I set out with compass, camera and pocket food - for a Three Hour Tour. Heading northwest as the map showed (and leaving the map behind...) I found the pass in a bout half an hour, taking notice as I went of distinctly torn and twisted downed trees, a signpost for my return. Decided I didn't want to head steeply downhill through the snow looking for switchbacks just to have to retrace my steps and head back up. So I turned around, managing to retrace my footsteps in the snow for about fifty feet. Proverbial ka-bam! Those distinctly twisted and broken trees I'd noted on the way in suddenly sprouted hundreds of identical brethren and sistern. My footprints - gone.

Using compass, I aimed southeast, deviating only when snow bridges advised it. Eventually making my way out of the snow, I thrashed through devil's club and skunk cabbage. I decided to try another tack, as I most certainly overshot my camp, so I headed upstream and then downstream along every water course I came to, working in both directions from the starting stream. Time-consuming, but a methodical way to canvass an area, looking for a camp site bracketed by streams. I soon found the trail about a mile below camp.

Gave me a good scare. Did some things right, other things not so right. A map would have been useful, not to mention matches and knife. And a whistle. A few nights previous, one of the party that welcomed me to Big Beaver camp got lost after dark trying to find a toilet. He eventually found his way back to us because he found the whistle blown by one of us; our shouts, he said, could not be heard above the surrounding babble of a thousand brooks. Not that there was anyone to hear me if I had had a whistle, but I might have been able to amuse myself, or to call the large predators in to affect the cessation of any prolonged agonies.

Will think twice before telling anyone to Get Lost. Except you.