The Value of Not Taking the Quick and Easy Path

A couple of weeks back, while I was in the general vicinity of Seattle for my daughter's graduation from the University of Washington, my family and I took a day trip to Olympic National Park to do some hiking. We had a loose agenda, one that was only partially formed and barely researched. (As an aside, you find some of the most amazing things when you are willing to explore and I always include some "hey, that looks cool, let's stop" time in my trips!) It included a stop at Hurricane Ridge, which we learned was closed due to an ongoing investigation of a fire. That, obviously, required a bit of a shift. The helpful staff at the ONP visitor center in Port Angeles suggested a couple of different hikes and the best alternative for the sorts of views you find at Hurricane Ridge.

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The alternative to Hurricane Ridge was to drive up to Deer Park Campground, which has an elevation of 5,400 feet. (The day lodge at Hurricane Ridge is 5,242 feet.) We were warned that it wasn't as easy to get to as Hurricane Ridge, which is a paved road all the way to the day lodge. To get to Deer Park Campground, you take a road that is 18 miles long with 9 miles of gravel switchbacks up the side of the mountain. I wasn't particularly bothered by this, nor the suggestion that the road was slow going, and you wouldn't want to drive more than 15mph on it, nor by the note that there were no guardrails. I'm from Wisconsin! Some of the best places in Wisconsin are also only accessible by gravel road.

?We decided that it would be one of the places we went. (We also hiked at Lake Crescent and a couple of state/county parks outside of ONP.) About a third of the way up the gravel road, it became clear that the offhand remarks from the ONP visitor center staff were, shall we say, definitely accurate.

?It was slow going, less than the recommended 15mph at times. In places, the gravel was a bit washed out. There were a number of blind corners in the switchback, and some of those were in places where the road was eroded enough that it was down to one useable lane - and the places that were two-lane were none too wide! The National Park Service website notes this about the road: "The 18-mile Deer Park Road is narrow and steep with occasional turn-offs. The last 9 miles are gravel. It is not suitable for RVs or trailers. Please use caution."

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There was also, relatively, a lot of traffic. In retrospect, this isn't surprising. If the visitor center told us to head there, they probably told a lot of people. We met cars coming down the mountain in places where there wasn't room to meet an oncoming car, and immediately to the right of the road was a sheer drop-off. Frankly, for most of the road, there was a sheer drop-off at one side and tall cliffs on the other side. In some places, there were trees that would slow your fall if you went over the edge. In other places, not so much.

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We met cars coming down the mountain that clearly hadn't considered they might meet someone coming up the mountain. We met people coming down the mountain in vehicles that were inadvisably big for the road. We hit places where the road was a precarious angle, with small rubble falls that changed the side-to-side grade of the road - enough so that I wouldn't have wanted to attempt it in a vehicle with a high center of gravity.

?What I'm trying to say here is that it was a bit of a white-knuckle drive.

?It was also absolutely worth it.?Deer Park Campground is gloriously beautiful, and the views were unparalleled, as you can see in the photo attached to this article.?We chose not to hike too far up the trail, as we had seen a bear within a mile or so of the campground on the way up, and none of us had bells or bear spray with us.?Even given that, it was completely worth the drive to get there.?It provided us with an experience that we wouldn’t have had if we had taken the easy route.?

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There are lessons here for many other things in life.?The fast and easy path is not always the best one. Sometimes great things take effort, and they are worth working for.?Choosing to simply take an easy drive might have gotten us someplace beautiful (and, frankly, there is little in ONP that isn’t beautiful), but it wouldn’t have gotten us to expansive vistas – or tested my driving skill.

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There’s a lot of pressure in the valuation world to provide “really quick” valuation conclusions, to turn projects around in a matter of days.?There’s also a tendency among valuators to want to stick to the beaten path, to do only the things they already know.?Sometimes, however, the most rewarding valuation engagements are the ones that are challenging, that take time, that take extra research.?The ones that you call your colleagues on to talk over as you need a sounding board.?The ones that send you back to the literature, looking for answers to interesting questions.?The fastest possible valuation deliverable isn’t necessarily the best, not for us and not for our clients, and certainly not in a case where there are challenges and unknowns surrounding the valuation.?Personally, I like the challenges.?I’ve experienced the biggest career growth – and I mean this from both a knowledge perspective and a success perspective – when I’ve chosen the hard path, chosen to take on projects or roles that I knew wouldn’t be easy. ?It makes me better at what I do today than I was a year ago or five years ago, and that’s good for my clients, too.?I guess what I am saying here is: tale the road to Deer Park Campground.?It's worth it.??