The Morning
As I’m starting to get used to sleeping on granite, getting up in the morning is getting harder and harder. For most of my life I’ve had the “I would rather sleep in than escape my burning house” problem. When I have had to get up I’ve always relied on the faithful shower to wake me up. I’m so bad at waking up that I often end up shampooing my hair three times because I keep forgetting whether or not I’ve put shampoo in or not. Out here in the mountains I don’t have a shower…..and shampoo, pffff…who needs it?!

I struggle to climb out of my sleeping bag. It’s futile. I’ve given up on hiding my odor. Me and my stench unzip the tent and wander away for a pee. Nine days in and I’m still loving the pee anywhere, anytime thing. There’s just something right about that.

It’s hike out day. Due to the crappy weather, the fire bans being lifted, and the lousy camping we’re going to make a mad dash out of Strathcona park. The mad dash is a 10km long trek back to the trail head we were dropped off at. Please keep in mind that this is more than twice the distance we’ve traveled in any of the previous days. It’s going to be a long one. The goal is to get to the road by night, camp on the side and be ready for our pick up at 7am.

We pack up our gear, which we are getting better and better at now. I no longer pack lunch at the bottom of the pack. Ah, that feels nice. Our packs are as light as they get. Since we are nearing the last few days of the trip our food weight has dropped dramatically. It’s nice to be able to actually function with the pack on.

Outward Bound really focuses on making you work as a team. Getting the students (the ten of us) to work together and become self reliant is one of the main goals of the organization. Because of this Matt and Jasmin have decided to step back….far back. Once they give us the general idea of where we need to go, they disappear. We’re on our own.

Virge and Julie decide to co-lead to start off the day. They are great, great senses of humor, great girls all around….except they took a wrong turn right off the bat. We’ll chock it up to no coffee for breakfast.

So after a forty five minute detour that had us climb almost straight up the side of a ridge we’re back on track. I’m just behind Julie and Virge so I do some scouting for them. Up a rock here, around a corned there, run for ten minutes, etc etc.. The key for the leaders is to work efficiently and quickly so that the group can move a good pace without having to stop and wait for extended periods of time for micro decision making.

Julie and Virge lead for most of the morning. We occasionally see Matt and Jasmin off to the side, or a while behind us. It’s nice to know that they’re looking out for us. Just before lunch, Virge and Julie decided to go a certain way which leads to us climbing a very steep section of flat rock sheets that is somewhat moist. Some of the group feel that we should just skirt around the side of this as it looks way easier and leads to the same place. Due to some communication breakdown, people not willing to speak their minds. and a little bit of stubbornness on Julie and Virge’s part, this leads to us having to make the difficult trek up, only to find we could have walked easily around it on nice meadow to arrive at the same spot. It was time for a leadership change but the leader’s didn’t want to make the switch……because of fatigue, stress, and the daunting day ahead it started to get a little tense. People started grumbling under their breath, etc… Then miraculously Matt and Jasmin came around the corner to save the day. They pointed out that we should have gone around the easy way, and that we should have worn helmets on the steep part.

Matt and Jasmin obviously are good at what they do. Immediately they sensed that there were some tensions and made us sit around in a circle and openly discuss them. It was agreed we needed new leaders and that we all loved each other, ya da ya da ya da. So the two new leaders were yours truly and Jacquie.

We were about a thousand feet above a lake (Lake McNish) and needed to get down to it as quickly as possible. We’re loosing time, it’s going to be a “hike in the dark” kind of day.

Jacquie and I scout the trail ahead. She goes left, I go right. There is a lush valley that follows a stream all the way down. It’s steep but I’m pretty sure we can make it. Left is a dead end. We hustle back to the waiting group and make our way down. The going is fairly easy and fun. Lots of lush green grass, flowers, and tall trees. We follow the stream for about 20-30 minutes downhill. We were getting pretty close to the lake. Only about 400 feet of elevation left…….then we hit a problem. A major problem. We’ve led the group to what appears an impasse that we can’t go around, through, over or under. It will take about an hour and a half at least to climb back up to where we started. It’s not looking good. The creek veers left and drops steeply, it is rock on both sides, not passable. The right leads to a bunch of plateaus, dozens off them. They seem to all lead to 250 foot sheer cliffs, but they’ll all need to be checked to make sure. Jacquie and I decide to make it lunch and scramble to find a way down while the group eats. We don’t want to have to tell them that we’re going to have to climb back up. We tell the group to start lunch and we start scouring the landscape for a way down that isn’t impossible. The stress of leading a group of people into a dead end is pounding in my chest……

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