“I have not known true fear until now.”
-(I’m not sure who said it, but I’m sure someone did)
Okay, so it’s not like I’ve never been scared before. I’ve been terrified before (and I mean honestly and truly, I’m-going-to-die terrified). But I think this was probably the longest lasting. Although when I thought my mom, and several months later my dad, were going to die, that was kind of long lasting, but then I had school to distract me.
So. I must unfortunately start at the beginning. Weekend. Saturday. 8:30. It took us forever to actually leave the house and then drive to the hiking place, for the Bealey Spur Hut, and then find it. We had to stop off at this hotel to find the hike.
So, started out brilliantly. It was warm (fairly), I wasn’t wearing shoes. You know, all that jazz. Oh, and there was definitely no snow on the ground. The hike started out through a forest. Dirt. Spoungy ground. Yep.
Let me back up for a moment and explain. The hike we were taking went out to a hut up on the mountain. The hike was recorded as taking one to two and a half hours. We were thinking that we’d get to the hut, claim our bunks in the cabin and hike to the actual top of the mountain.
Well, about thirty minutes into the hike, we ran into snow. It wasn’t that bad. Just a little bit of left over from the last snow fall. It did however cover the path, so I went around the path (and through the bog like surrounding area). We eventually ran into a walkway that was completely littered in snow. I put on my shoes at that point.
So, all’s fine and dandy. Get out of the forest and starting walking through basically really tall shrub or short trees. There’s a little bit of snow, but not much. We stopped off at a place that kind of had a view and ate lunch. Ran into some hikers that were headed back.
Kept going and I’m trying to remember. I think there was another patch of forest. This was around the time when things started going downhill. Went through the forest, which was covered in a three feet of snow that our legs would sink into. Went through a valley, also covered in a three feet of snow. (Just might add that we were following orange triangles). Went through another forest, another valley, another forest, another much longer valley, another forest, another valley. That was about when we hit four hours.
Mom pulled up ahead of me and dad. I was at the point where I was going to throw myself on the ground and not move any further. I’d just like to point out that at that time my father had said an hour or two ago that we had fifteen minutes left. Yeah. Fifteen minutes aka three hours.
Well, I didn’t throw myself on the ground and dad made the observation that maybe the reason mom wasn’t stopping and waiting for us was because she knew what would happened if we stopped (we had probably two or three hours of sunlight left). I didn’t really catch on at that point.
We eventually caught up with mom and dad started leading. About a half an hour later, he was going really slow. I thought he was going to collapse or something. That was around the time I started freaking out.
I think what set if off was us starting to discuss us ever actually reaching the hut and us having to sleep in the snow and the having one hour of sunlight left.
We got to this huge snowdrift and dad paused because he wasn’t sure the best way to get through it. That was when I went around the path and started leading. I have to say that at that point I wasn’t exactly there any more. I wasn’t freaking out and I couldn’t feel my legs. I was just walking forever.
So, I actually ended up being way ahead of my parents, which I didn’t think was possible. Here’s the weird part. I found the hut (yeah rah) and my dad started looking for wood. I quickly piled on like five layers and crawled half way into my sleeping bag and sat on the bed, staring at the fireplace. Here’s the weird bit. I was scared before that we’d have to sleep on the snow and die, but now I was completely and absolutely petrified.
The cabin was freezing, when my dad finally got wood he couldn’t get the fire started and we completely and utterly alone. I was convinced someone was going to die. I wasn’t sure whether I would be more upset if it were one of my parents or me.
Well, my dad did eventually get the fire going. The only thing I could eat was bread because I was so tense anything stronger made me want to throw up. Much to my dismay, we had to go to bed eventually.
I might also add that I’m a fantic when it comes to fire and I was freaking out also because dad wanted to go to bed with the fire still going. But I wasn’t going to sit there staring at the fire while my parents went to bed, so I crawled into my sleeping bag and prayed for all I was worth that none of us died.
