I want to apologize in advance for the horrible resolution on the image in question. It was taken by someone who had a rather old phone on trail because most of us do not carry phones out of fear of falling and smashing them.
Every now and then the Hares (the people who make the trails) really go out of their way to introduce something new and perhaps a bit dangerous into our trails. Generally speaking we try to keep it as safe as possible because the last thing we need is for someone to fall and bust their head open - and this has happened a number of times.
This past week's trail had something in it that I have never encountered in a run with the Chiang Mai Hash House Harriers in the years that I have been running with them.
There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea: For one thing, this ladder is homemade and was likely intended to support the weight of a tiny Vietnamese farmer, not some 220 lb American who only exercises on Hash days. The next reason why it was a bad idea is because the only injury that happened because of this was because someone in the group got impatient and decided to simply jump down the side. Despite the fact that this person is 20 years younger than most of us and is in better shape that most of us, this is a big drop and she ended up twisting her ankle. She hobbled back to camp and likely will not be with us for a couple of weeks. Another reason why this was bad is because we have a few people in our crew that are pretty mobility limited such as "Tiptoe" who walks all the courses with a cane. He had to turn back once he got to this point and walk around it. I think it would have been a good idea if other people had done the same.
While we didn't berate the Hares in the circle at the end we did have a management meeting about doing things like this in the future and how it shouldn't happen. We routinely cross over rather weak looking homemade bridges but if something goes wrong, the person will fall a foot or so into water, not 12 feet onto hard ground. So even though we don't have a lot of rules in the Hash, only suggestions, this was quietly told to all the people who normally will Hare to not do this to us again.
We like to push the limits and have new stuff in our Hash events but this particular gag could have gone terribly wrong. Just having one minorly twisted ankle as a consequence is something I consider to be really lucky compared to what could have happened. We are not tiny people so using tiny people ladders is always a bad idea.
It was still an amazing time and everyone really enjoyed it aside from the woman who had her leg iced up and by the time the buses were going back she had to be helped to her seat.
We like to have fun with the Hash but this was something that we cannot have in the future. I'm intentionally not calling anyone out because they were just trying to have some fun as well. We want to get a bit of exercise and socialize, not so much hospitalize.
This occurrence is a rarity and we kept it as quiet as we could. We don't want to chase anyone away because they were trying to have a bit too much fun with us.
We are still doing 3 runs a week so if anyone in the Chiang Mai area or even someone visiting there would like to come and join us all are welcome. Full details are available on our official website
On On!
