“It’s amazing what a change in weather does. I woke up to find today sunny and calm. All is well, except we have to hike Matt out.”

Today’s weather completely reversed yesterday’s sour disposition. The sun was strong and bright, the sky clear as far as we could see, and the wind was no where to be felt. I crawled out of the tent in search of fresh air. The stench produced by three men all of whom have been sans-shower for the last few weeks is remarkable. If someone had been able to bottle and accurately preserve the stench from a previous twenty one day trek and gave me a whiff of it (High school science lesson: it’s better to waft with your hand kids) before I left I would not have gone. It is incredibly disgusting. If pooping in the woods didn’t force humans to invent things, the stench of their own bodies most certainly pushed them over the tipping point.

I get out of the tent and do an awkward morning stretch. I start packing up my gear and stumble around in my untied boots, too lazy to tie them up. I made the mistake of buying pants that don’t have zippers on the sides. Every time I need to remove a pair of leg coverings I need to undo, and then redo my boots. In the mornings especially you’re not sure how much clothing to wear.

I pack up my pack, and help with the tent. I head to the kitchen for breakfast gently cradling my wind massacred hiking pole. I’ve found out this trip that hiking poles are incredibly useful. I always used to see people hiking with poles and think that they were flakes who had problems letting the winter go. In fact, they are perfect for stabilizing your balance and allow you to move much quicker and use less energy than without. I’ve come to rely on them over the past three weeks and now one of them is snapped in half and it looks like I’ll have to carry the two broken pieces for two days.

I arrive at the kitchen to enjoy a couscous meal with dried fruit. By now, dried fruit almost instantaneously triggers my gag reflex. I’m literally sick of it. I choke down breakfast and ask folks what they think about my pole. Most think it is a lost cause. In fact, Petite Vero makes a bet with me that I can’t fix it well enough for it to last the rest of the trip. Being a competitive person I accept and start figuring out how to make good on my bet.

We have a small repair bag. It turns out to have two clamps, like one would use to clamp a dryer hose, in it. It also contained a small amount of wire. I now just needed to figure out how to join the two halves of the pole to make it strong enough to support weight. I opened the broken ends of the poles so they were as wide as possible. I found a triangle aluminum tent peg that barely fit into each half of the pole. I pounded it into one end, then pounded the other half of the pole onto it. I now had a single pole piece that was somewhat joined together.

I then took two small round tent pegs and wrapped wire tightly around them so they were on opposite sides of the pole. A few tight wraps of duct tape and the pole seemed to be as good as new. My handiness surprised everyone, none more so than myself. I truly had MacGyvered the thing back into use.

We were all in great spirits. We started out a few minutes ahead of schedule. We were to first meet up with Matt and Jasmin at their camp spot (which Matt had instructed us of last night). As we walked up smiling and singing we noticed that Matt and Jasmin weren’t enjoying the day as much as us. Matt told us why:

Matt had noticed glands in his legs swelling a few days before. He was not sure what they were. It is obviously an infection of some sort. Over the last 48 hours they became quite swollen. So much so that fearless Matt called in last night via Satellite and talked to the staff doctor of Outward Bound. The doctor advised him to take the antibiotics in the first aid gear immediately and to get out ASAP. As he is one of us, let alone an instructor, that means we all go out together.

The reality of the situation settles in. We are leaving the woods a full day earlier than we thought. We get down to the job of getting out. We haul out the maps and slightly alter our route. What was going to be a two day hike now is a one day hike. We have a van meeting us at the end of a logging road at 3PM. It is now 8am. We need to move and move fast.

Matt and Jasmin still want us to move on our own. They hang back and let us go ahead. We discuss the best and quickest way to move. It is decided that I will be out front “leading” the group. Three of the French girls (Julie, Super Vero, Virge) will be directly behind me. They are the map readers. They give me a general direction to go and I scamper ahead just slightly finding the best route.

We complete the first leg of the trip in less than a quarter of the time we though it would take. We take a small water break and push on. We are in an unbelievable bowl surrounded by a massive mountain. A glacier stream runs down from a huge glacier stuck in a valley of the mountain. At one point we heard a massive crack as part of the glacier moved downhill.

We continued up the bowl to a small saddle in to the right of the mountain. It would be here we would cross. We pushed hard and fast, taking only brief standing breaks. We arrived and the top of the saddle and celebrated by taking a longer packs-off break. We also opened the last treat from our instructors. They give us two treats at the start of the trip. They are wrapped in duct tape and called Hi-Lo. We are to either take them at a high or low point of the trip. We consider our fast pace to be a high point and we are delighted to find Oh Henry’s hiding beneath the tape.

We are just about to leave when Matt catches up to us and asks where we think we are on the map. We show him. We are wrong. We are off by two saddles. We need to either climb a steep ridge back over to our intended saddle or we will need to traverse the backside of the mountain. We choose the latter.

The going is tough. The backside of the mountain is very much like the mountains on the Island. Micro terrain covers the traverse. Still being out front I am forced to find ways through the terrain. It is hard but the time on the island helps. We manage to move quite quickly through to the backside of the mountain. We are then faced with a very very steep grassy decent to a lake. This lake is at the end of a very popular trail. This trail leads to our van. We descend the hill by doing quick little switchbacks. As we descend we are thrown into deeper and deeper woods. Mud holes hid beneath the grass and most people ended up with a completely brown leg.

We seemed to bushwhack forever. Down and down and down. I finally burst out of the woods directly onto a trail by the lakes side. I yell triumphantly to those behind me. I can hear the good news being spread up the hill. “Dan’s on the trail!” followed shortly by cheers and victory chants.

We break on the trail and eat lunch. We are making ok time. We’re not going to make the 3PM Van though. We will miss it by a few hours at best. While we’re eating lunch mountain bikers began to pass us on the trail. These were typical extreme good looking male mountain bikers. The girls went nuts. Virge actually chased one particularly handsome (so they tell me) lad down the trail a good 50 feet.

Lunch was pita bread, honey, canned salmon. I managed to spill both honey and salmon all over one of my pant legs. I laugh as I now smell like a bear’s dream food. As we pack up to go Matt and Jasmin come trotting down the trail. They break for lunch as well.

We continue on. We find the trail but it is not well marked. We continue down. We hear a whistle off in the distance. We’re not sure what it is. We keep going. Finally we find ourselves heading back up, not going down. We must have missed a trail junction. Matt then arrives. Whistle in mouth and out of breath. He forgot to tell us about a trail split that is not obvious. He knew we would take the wrong way and he dropped his pack and ran after us. We followed Matt back down to the trail junction and we then continued on, on the right path, alone.

This is the trail that never ends. What we thought would be a short walk down a well maintained trail turned into a grueling descent walking through mud and crawling over huge fallen trees. The highlight of the descent was meeting another Outward Bound Group ascending the trail. It was a 5 day group on day 1. We must have looked terrifying. They had the ‘I feel like I’m going to die” look spread across all of their faces. We smelled bad, we had hair in places we never knew it grew, and we were a tight knit group. They looked like they had had showers that morning, had never carried a pack, and knew no one around them. I realized that is what we must have looked like three weeks ago. We encouraged them and headed down our trail of doom.

We hiked for hours down this trail. Eventually we became quiet and the job of getting out silenced all of the talk and laughter. We were tired. We were pulling two days hike in one day.

After many false hopes to an end we broke free of the trail onto the logging road by a beautiful waterfall. Unfortunately, as the other Outward Bound Instructors told us, the vans could only make it to within three kilometers of the trail head. The road was too bad for them to get right to the end. We had another three kms to go.

After I had cursed the upcoming kilometers I noticed my environment. We were surrounded by a field of fallen and burnt trees. For the past three weeks we have been primarily in nature. It has been mostly nature that has no appearance of man. No buildings, no trails, no human life whatsoever. The shock of the clear cutting sends shivers through my spine. I can imagine this feeling if prolonged, is what drives people to chain themselves to trees and drive spikes into trees to break saws. It weirds me out more than makes me want to hug trees. I don’t know how to deal with the feeling so I block it out and we hike on.

We eventually find Dar (sp?) asleep in a van. We load up and get in. He then informs us we need to get out as we will be crossing a fairly large stream that is unsafe to do so with people in the van. We’ll have to walk just a bit more. We hop on rocks across the stream and wait for the van. It comes around the corned and roars through the water. We get in. The van immediately stinks to high heaven.

The logging road is littered with bumps and streams. More than once we need to get out and let the van cross a river; our weight would cause it to be caught on the banks. Finally we are out on the road and on pavement.

A quick 45 minute drive takes us back to the base camp with the large tent. We set up tents beside a river and make supper. There are other groups using the cooking facilities so we are forced to cook on our own stoves. The other group gives us insight as to the real work Outward Bound strives to do. It is a group for battered women. It is free for them to come. The gear is all loaned to them as well. They come and spend time together and conquer the wilderness. We are advised to give them their space as it is their last night. Each group has a “banquet” on their last night a time for the group to spend its final moments together.

We cook supper and get in our tents. Some of us contemplate heading home a day early. Tomorrow we’ll do some more rock climbing at a local crag. I am 50/50 as to whether or not I’d like to go home. I decide to decide in the morning.

Mice plague everyone’s sleep. On our faces, in our tents, everywhere. Bleck. Aside from mice sleep comes quick.

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